Political Group Cohesion and ‘Hurrah’ Voting in the European Parliament

This research note re-examines the evidence for the claim that political group cohesion has risen over time in the European Parliament. We first demonstrate that political group cohesion has always been high in the EP and one of the principal reasons for this is owing to the large number of lopsided votes that take place. We next demonstrate that on votes in which the main political groups are opposing, intra-party cohesion is lower than conventional wisdom would have us believe and, furthermore, cohesion on such votes has not systematically increased over time.