Making Punches Count: The Individual Logic of Legislative Brawls

by Nathan F. Batto, Nathan F. Batto

In Making Punches Count, the first comprehensive account of legislative floor violence and its consequences, Emily Bacchus and Nathan Batto focus on recent episodes from a wide variety of countries, including Turkey, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, Mexico, Uganda, and others. What do cultures of legislative brawling tell us about the health of democracy in a given country? Are the brawls mere fits of passion, or is there a deeper logic at work? Bacchus and Batto argue that legislative brawls are, in fact, calculated acts that serve the interests of the legislators who engage in them. Beginning from the incentives driving lawmakers in different party systems and drawing on both signaling theory and theories of contentious politics, they develop a powerful explanation of why individual legislators choose to brawl. As they show, brawls are more common in younger democracies, particularly ones with high levels of corruption, but sometimes there are contextual factors that make violence an attractive strategy even to legislators in long-established democracies. Ultimately, brawls should be seen as calculated acts of political violence initiated by legislators to advance their careers. Legislators can strategically use brawling to send costly signals to the actors--both opponents and allies--who will have the most influence over their political fortunes. A genuinely novel account of why conflict can reach such extreme levels in democracies, the book also sheds light on the structural mechanisms that drive politicians to violence in settings where we least expect it.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published May 24, 2024

Reviews

[Julian Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first book-length discussion of legislative brawling, Batto and Beaulieu differ from prior literature by making a compelling and well-explained argument that legislative brawling is an act of costly signalling meant to demonstrate to a small group of elites an MP's loyalty to the party or devotion to a cause-- similar to a new mobster committing acts of violence to demonstrate their fidelity. Their argument is convincing and well-explained, focusing on largely quantitative evidence from Taiwan and more qualitative evidence from Ukraine, Mexico, and South Korea. I was familiar with Batto from his excellent blog "Frozen Garlic," the best English-language source I've found for updates on Taiwanese politics, and I was pleased to see that his clear style continued to this book.