Oppositional Strategies Between Cooperation and Conflict: An Analysis of Opposition Party Voting in the German Bundestag, 1949–2013

Electoral competition with opposition parties is a crucial aspect in most theories of representative democracy. Nevertheless, political science research has paid less attention to oppositions than to governments. This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating the factors driving the strategy of opposition parties in parliamentary votes. Our core question is when, and why, opposition parties pursue cooperative or competitive strategies vis-à-vis the government in plenary voting. Policy concerns may motivate an opposition party to cooperate with the government and support its position in voting. However, this effect is conditioned by the desire to send signals to voters because opposition parties also try to distinguish themselves from the government. Using data on all roll-call votes in the German Bundestag from 1949–2013, we show that spatial variables affect opposition voting only in electorally salient policy areas, whereas ideological distance has no discernible effect in less salient policy areas. Furthermore, we find that on average different opposition parties are more likely to act as a cohesive block instead of being divided. We also show that opposition parties behave more competitive in their own motions and that they become more cooperative the longer they have been represented in the Bundestag. Overall, these findings suggest that simple spatial arguments based on policy preferences alone are insufficient for explaining opposition behaviour in parliament and that signaling plays a major role.