Making Punches Count

Abstract

This book seeks to explain why individual legislators engage in parliamentary brawls. In addition to extensive description of this phenomenon, the authors offer a political theory of brawling that draws on the logic of contentious politics and signaling theory to explain why individual legislators might brawl in an attempt to further their political careers. The authors argue that individuals make brawling decisions in a specific institutional context, where the strength of political parties is particularly important for determining the brawler’s audience. With research drawn from Taiwan and Ukraine, book chapters follow major implications of the authors’ theory including identifying who brawls, establishing that brawling is covered by the media, offering evidence of the audience for brawls, and finally evaluating re-election prospects of brawling legislators. While the bulk of the authors’ theory and evidence focus on instances of brawling when opposition parties disrupt legislative proceedings, they also discuss a smaller but impactful subset of brawls that they call honor brawls.