rice {politicsR}

Rice Index

Description

'rice' proposed by Rice (1925) is used to measure party cohesion in parliamentary votes by considering two voting blocks (usually government and opposition)

Usage

rice(x)

Arguments

x

(factor). A factor vector with two levels (i.e., Yay or Nay)

Value

The index ranges from 0 to 1, where 1 is complete cohesion and 0 the formation of two equally sized subgroups within the party.

References

Rice, S. A. (1925). The Behavior of Legislative Groups: A Method of Measurement. Political Science Quarterly, 40(1), 60–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/2142407

Examples

voting <- as.factor(c(rep("Yes", 90), rep("No", 10)))
rice(voting)