Spójność frakcji parlamentarnych w pierwszym roku działalności Sejmu RP IX kadencji

Abstract

The article is devoted to the level of cohesion of parliamentary factions in the first year of the activity of the 9th Sejm of the Republic of Poland. It was assumed that a high level of cohesion renders political factions the most important participants of political competition at the parliamentary level. Low faction cohesion, on the other hand, would result in a transfer of competition to non-formal parliamentary structure levels. Additionally, the hypothesis that the smaller the parliamentary faction is, the lower level of cohesion it represents was tested. In a small group, behaviours of so-called dissidents, i.e. MPs voting differently comparing to the majority of its members, are more visible than in large factions. The research problem was solved on the basis of an analysis of 2323 votes, for which a modified version of the agreement index of Simon Hix was used. It is founded on the assumption that MPs choose between not three, but four options (“yes”, “no”, “abstain” or not taking part in a vote).