Clarification question re political economy article

[saritainPhD]

Hello all!

Hope this isn't a stupid question/hope this is the right place in the forum, but I'm struggling with the issue of endogeneity. I know the definition, and can understand it well enough in certain contexts...but not all. I'm struggling with the following paragraph from an article in the Oxford Handbook of Political Economy:

"Treating parliamentary parties as endogenous coalitions of parliamentarians is intellectually liberating, not just because it gives us an interesting way to analyze the self-evidently important politics of single-party majority governments, but also because it gives us analytical leverage on the legislative role of opposition parties in parliamentary democracies."

What does 'endogenous' mean in this sense? In simple, plain terms please!! ?

 

Much appreciated.

[not@prof_yet]

It means that political parties aren't taken as given (i.e. they are not exogenous), but rather they are determined by the strategic interaction of parliamentarians. 

 

So, one example you could think of is the following question: What impact does party size on MP voting behavior (i.e. does party size impact whether MPs vote with the party)? The endogenous part means that party size (i.e. MP party identification) may be determined by how much freedom the party gives to MPs. So, perhaps MPs prefer joining parties that give them voting freedom, leading to large, but weak parties and small, strong parties.

 

This is just illustrative of course.