To Oppose or Not to Oppose: Legislative Voting Strategies of Opposition Parties

Political parties often face hard decisions, pursuing votes, office and policy (Strøm & Muller, 1999). For parliamentary parties seating in opposition, this can translate to a dilemma when voting on legislation in the plenary. On the one hand, they can oppose government legislation regardless of its content, and use plenary voting to criticize the government and distance themselves from it, in hope that disgruntled voters will turn to them as the alternative to the ruling party/ies. On the other hand, they can strive to cooperate with the government, having impact on legislation through compromise and discourse and demonstrating this impact to the voters as proof that their support is not fruitless. What determines which strategy is picked by which opposition party and to what extent? And (how) has the recent economic crisis affect the opposition parties' choice of strategy? This paper will attempt to answer these questions in two steps: First, by conducting cross-national analysis of plenary voting in twenty European and other western parliamentary democracies, in order to uncover the system- and party-level factors influencing the behavior of the opposition parties in those countries. Second, a longitudinal analysis of two EU members – Finland and the United Kingdom – will be used to uncover any chronological differences within these two very different political settings, such that would be expected to result from an international phenomenon as the economic crisis.