Talk:Whip (politics)

Perhaps somebody else could add some information about the other sense of "whip". Whipping already exists as a disambiguation page, but there are several inward links to whip that refer to the non-political sense of the word. --rbrwr

"A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature". So says the article.

Meanwhile, Michael Heseltine links here, saying that "In May 2019, he had the Conservative Party whip suspended", suggesting the hanging of the disciplinary party official. Elsewhere (in the wider world) there is talk of politicians having "the whip removed", which might be the resolution of the unfortunate placement of a riding crop, for instance, or an even more unfortunate physical entanglement with the aforementioned party official.

In other words, yes, it is imperative that someone add information to explain these otherwise rather alarming terms. :o)

79.66.198.244 (talk) 17:38, 12 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Should, perhaps, this page be moved to whip (politics) and whip (implement) be moved here? I would imagine that "whip (implement)" is a more common use of the word than the meaning given on this page. Just a thought. -- Vardion 02:20, 15 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

Alternatively, perhaps most of this should be moved to whip (politics) and whip should become a whip disambiguation page, linked to whip (implement), whip (politics) and the others? -- ALoan 10:08, 17 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

Sounds reasonable to me. -- Vardion 06:11, 19 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

VIP, why don't you change it to VIP — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:810A:9440:D88:102E:D7E9:2EFB:3AD0 (talk) 22:13, 18 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

The U.S. Senate has whips too. Someone please add that in. --Jiang 02:56, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This page says that Nancy Pelosi is likely to become the House Majority Leader, but most of the current speculation is that she will become the Speaker of the House. The two roles are separate, so unless there is a protocol I'm unaware of, shouldn't this be changed?

Looks like that's been removed... but other possibly obsolete name references are still there Hmoulding 21:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

As far as I know the Whip in the US system is not part of the line of succession for the president. Someone who actually knows this stuff might add the correct information, complete with a reference to the constitutional amendment that sets the line of succession. Hmoulding 21:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

And while we're at it, do all or most US state legislatures have whips? Is that something that should be mentioned here, as well? Hmoulding 21:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't want to make changes since I'm not a member, but the listing of the whips in the US section seems to mix tenses ungrammatically-- "whip A is so-and-so, who reported to such-and-such" 68.239.20.77 00:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

"In the House of Representatives in particular, the influence of a single member individually is relatively small and therefore depends a great deal the member's seniority—that is, in most cases, on the committees on which a member serves." That doesn't make sense to me. Should that be "therefore depends a great deal on the member's seniority"? --Icehcky8 (talk) 18:19, 18 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Both the Australian Federal and State Parliaments also have whips. Commking 1 May 2005

What is the date the Irish Parliamentary Party added in the whips? 20 November 2005

The article states that 'Whips exist for all parliamentary parties in Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann'. The attribution no longer affirms this, nor is it accurate as Solidarity-People Before Profit do not have whips. I'm new to editing wiki, so I'm going to leave this note here and revisit it later this week. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.125.7.209 (talk) 18:29, 14 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

The disambiguation page lists the whip as something in Canadian or British politics but this page lists nothing about how Canadian whips work. 198.162.96.13 02:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

The article says (for British politics): "underlined one or three times". Is a two-line whip not also possible? --David Edgar 11:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

I believe it is. Ben Finn 11:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't know which bot is responsible for the links to other wikis : they lead on straight in some cases to the whip as in SM, and not to the political institution. I will remove the wrong references I am able to check, but I advise other contributors to check the remaining ones for disambiguation. --Anne97432 07:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

If you're going to talk about details like who is currently in office, then I'd want to see dates. If you're going to talk about who may run in the future, I'd want to see sources. Hmoulding 21:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

Why does Lord-in-Waiting redirect here? If someone like Peregrine Cust, for example, was a whip, why is that not mentioned? No mention of Lord-in-Waiting besides the redirect itself. Awful. Trst (talk) 08:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Okay I came here to find out what a WHIP was. Most pages start off like this- A (whatever) is a object used for blah, blah, blah. This article starts off with this -"Because legislatures typically only require a majority of the quorum in attendance, a majority party can be outvoted if a large number of its legislators are absent and the opposition is in full attendance." I had to read through the article to find out what a whip was,when I think it should tell you what a whip is right off the bat. In other words I don't like the way the article opens. I've read a lot of articles on here,and I've never read a article that opens up like this.--68.19.233.184 (talk) 17:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

The article seems to suggest that the only kind of whipping is forcing people to attend. That is definately a principle feature, but we have to accept that dissent within the party does happen. This is what makes parties with slim majorities less likely to pass contraversial matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HandGrenadePins (talk • contribs) 17:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

Isn't the following the case -- why is it not written as so?

The House Minority Whip for the 110th Congress is Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri who reports to the House Minority Leader, Representative John Boehner of Ohio.

Thanx! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 16:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

There is a mention in the article that "party discipline in Australia tends to be tighter and genuine threats to cross the floor are much rarer." I am wondering if there is some data that could be compared with this article looking at the frequency of floor-crossing in Australia between 1950 and 2004? (http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/Pubs/RN/2005-06/06rn11.htm) Maybe then the question of how rare party crossings are, can be addressed? Asfridhr (talk) 07:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

• The introduction is terrible - there is nothing to back up the reasons why whips exist either through citation or in the rest of the article. The introduction implies that whips exist because of first past the post voting systems - this might have some basis in fact but this should be discussed elsewhere in the article and properly cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.42.251.3 (talk) 02:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

The section associating whipping with First Past The Post is basically just barefaced lying and should be NPOVed or removed. Australia and Ireland don't use FPTP for any of their dozen or so legislatures but have whips. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mk270 (talk • contribs) 18:56, 23 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have removed the relevant paragraph, currently reading as follows...

Official party whips are almost exclusively found in legislatures based on single-member district electoral systems, as these discourage the formation of small parties and therefore tends to create a two-party system with "big church" parties where the distance between members on the parties' right and left wings may be significant, which in turn can easily lead to internal rebellion against the official party platform when certain issues are voted on. In legislatures based on proportional representation elections such party officials are rarely found, as PR increases the chances for smaller parties to be represented, which in turn encourages the formation of more parties with more homogeneous ideology where party discipline is less of an issue.

...as I don't believe it and it is unsourced. It has been changed from FPTP to "single-member district" since Mk270's complaint but still smacks of WP:OR (though hardly of NPOV let alone "barefaced lying"). Parties in Greece and Czech Republic have recently expelled members for defying the party line in parliament; both countries have PR systems. Of course those disciplinary methods may not have involved "whips" as the term is understood in the anglosphere (though Ireland is still a counterexample there). It seems more likely to me that whips are inherited from the Westminster tradition, independently of Duverger's law. But I will not add an assertion to that effect to the article unless I find a WP:RS that confirms my hunch. jnestorius^(talk) 20:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Due to overlap of material and scope, references, and small size of articles (especially after merging) Widefox (talk) 19:40, 9 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Charles Stewart Parnell essentailly created the modern whip system for his Irish Parliamentary Party in order to create a solid block of votes in Westminster to bargain for Home Rule as mentioned in his own Wikipeda page here.^[1] I think at least a brief summary of this should appear in the article.178.167.254.181 (talk) 18:31, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

It seems like a pain to search for sources, but what's written here seems self-contradictory:

In the Senate, the majority whip is the third-highest ranking individual in the majority party (the party with the most seats). The majority whip is outranked by the majority leader and, unofficially, the president pro tempore; because the office of president pro tempore is largely honorific and usually given to the longest-serving senator of the majority, the majority whip is in reality the second-ranking senator in the majority conference in terms of actual power. Similarly, in the House, the majority whip is outranked by both the majority leader and the speaker. Unlike the Senate's presiding officer, the Speaker is the leader of his or her party's caucus in the House.

I think "unofficially" should be "officially", or perhaps nominally or some other term depending on how unofficially officially it is, but you surely don't mean de facto. And the House is possibly not "similarly", given that the majority leader and the speaker presumably have power -- but are they even different? I should remember that but I'm spacing, which is about when I thought to have someone else chase this rabbit. Wnt (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

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Everything I say here pertains to the article as it existed on the date I'm posting this. The section for the United Kingdom's whips doesn't have a link to an article that is SPECIFIC to U.K. whips, although many countries far less globally significant than the U.K. DO have such articles explaining ONLY what a whip is in THAT country. As to the U.K. section itself, it's impenetrable. There is SOME attempt (but it could be clearer) to relate that "whip" is a noun with two different meanings, one of which refers to a person, while the other refers to INSTRUCTIONS that are issued BY that person.

Then, in a paragraph numbered "2.", it says that some aspect of a two-line whip is "PARTIALLY binding". What does that even MEAN? (Is this article really some hoax perpetrated by the sado-masochist community, all this "whips" and "binding"?) Something is either binding, or it isn't. To make it MATERIAL and OBJECTIVE, you might specify a range of penalties for disobeying a two-line whip as being fewer or less severe than penalties for disobeying a three-line whip. In fact, ALL language that refers to "binding obligation" is rather imprecise. "He has a binding obligation not to burn down his neighbor's house" is rather metaphysical. The material FACTS are "if he burns his neighbor's house down, he could be placed in prison and have some or all of his assets (including money) seized to compensate his neighbor". Only the latter sentence describes what actually HAPPENS in a way that Martians spying from a space-station can understand and verify it. And I believe that for something to be ENCYCLOPEDIC it has to be understood by people who, like Martians, do not possess the context.

In addition to the imprecision on what is "partially binding" as opposed to "binding", the language of the penalties for disobeying a three-line whip is obscure. The article mentions "expulsion from the parliamentary political group" as one thing, and "expulsion from the party" as a DIFFERENT thing. Well, if they're different, then DESCRIBE them. Given that, to be listed this way, they MUST mean two DIFFERENT things, then just what DO they mean?

Finally, the language "documenting MPs' indiscretions" is NOT encyclopedic and objective. That's the way old male English aristocrats speak in code to each other. "We had, shall we say, certain, urrrr, 'information', as to the Minister's " [tilt head to make it more salacious and superior] 'indiscretions' with a certain daughter of a certain person". Wikipedia should be ashamed to contain such oblique allusion. The phrase should read "documenting MPs conduct that, if revealed, would have adverse consequences (shame, and/or prosecution, and/or losing elections) for those MPs". We are LONG past the age where it's permissible to describe crimes, misconduct, adultery, pedophilia, and use of the powers of an office one occupies for personal gain, as "indiscretions".108.234.62.240 (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence SimpsonReply