Coalition Policymaking and Legislative Review

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
LANNY W. MARTIN ◽  
GEORG VANBERG
Keyword(s):  
Agency Problems ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Legislative Review ◽  
Institutional Mechanism ◽  
Legislative Institutions

Political scientists know remarkably little about the extent to which legislatures are able to influence policymaking in parliamentary democracies. In this article, we focus on the influence of legislative institutions in periods of coalition government. We show that multiparty governments are plagued by “agency” problems created by delegation to cabinet ministers that increase in severity on issues that divide the coalition. We also argue that the process of legislative review presents an important—but understudied—institutional opportunity for coalition partners to overcome these tensions. We evaluate our argument using original legislative data on over 300 government bills collected from two parliamentary democracies. The central implication of our findings is that legislatures play a more important role in parliamentary democracies than is usually appreciated by providing a key institutional mechanism that allows coalition partners with divergent preferences to govern successfully.

scholarly journals The cost of coalition compromise: The electoral effects of holding salient portfolios

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090442
Author(s):  
Zachary Greene ◽  
Nathan Henceroth ◽  
Christian B Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Government ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Cost

This article highlights the electoral effects of holding salient portfolios within a coalition government. For voters, holding ministries can be seen as a symbol of a party’s success within the coalition. As a voting heuristic, parties not controlling the portfolios on issues important to their platforms signal their failure to achieve these goals. Following this perspective, we hypothesize that the difference between coalition parties that hold salient portfolios and those that do not partially predicts the extent of the electoral cost of coalition participation. Using a data set that covers 11 European parliamentary democracies between 1966 and 2002, we show that for junior coalition partners there is an electoral reward for holding their most salient portfolio. There is also an electoral benefit for a junior partner to hold a larger number of portfolios if they do not control their most salient portfolio. Conversely, holding their most salient portfolio and a larger number of additional ministries results in greater electoral losses in the subsequent parliamentary election. These results indicate that parties’ success at negotiating for their policy priorities in coalition governments holds consequences for their future electoral success.

Committee Chairs and Legislative Review in Parliamentary Democracies

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 785-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fortunato ◽  
Lanny W. Martin ◽  
Georg Vanberg
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Parliamentary Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Legislative Review ◽  
Opposition Parties

Recent research on parliamentary institutions has demonstrated that legislatures featuring strong committees play an important role in shaping government policy. However, the impact of the legislators who lead these committees – committee chairs – is poorly understood. This study provides the first examination of whether the partisan control of committee chairs in parliamentary systems has a systematic impact on legislative scrutiny. The article argues that committee chairs can, in principle, use their significant agenda powers to serve two purposes: providing opposition parties with a greater ability to scrutinize government policy proposals, and enabling government parties to better police one another. Analyzing the legislative histories of 1,100 government bills in three parliamentary democracies, the study finds that control of committee chairs significantly strengthens the ability of opposition parties to engage in legislative review. The analysis also suggests that government parties’ ability to monitor their coalition allies does not depend on control of committee chairs.

Legislative Review and Party Differentiation in Coalition Governments

2018 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 242-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID FORTUNATO
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
External Support ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Legislative Proposals ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
Legislative Review

Multiparty governance requires compromise and this compromise can lead to electoral losses. I argue that coalition members are motivated to differentiate themselves from their cabinet partners to mitigate potential electoral losses resulting from voters perceiving them as not rigorously pursuing their core policy positions or not possessing strong policy stands. I test this argument with original data on the scrutiny of over 2,200 government bills gathered from three parliamentary democracies incorporating information on voter perceptions of partisan ideology and parties’ policy preferences as derived from their manifestos. I find that coalition partners that are perceived as more similar will amend one another’s legislative proposals more vigorously in an effort to differentiate in the eyes of the electorate—to protect their brand—and therefore provide evidence for “pure” vote-seeking behavior in the legislative review process. Furthermore, these original data provide answers to several open questions regarding the policy motivations of cabinet parties in legislative review and the role of committee chairs and external support parties on policy outcomes.

Coalition Government Membership in West European Parliamentary Democracies

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul V. Warwick
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Formal Theory ◽  
Set Covering ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
West European

The results of a quantitative investigation into the factors affecting coalition government membership in West European parliamentary democracies are reported in this article. Using a new data set covering the post-war era to 1990, separate logistic regression analyses are performed to determine what influences the odds of becoming the government ‘formateur’ and the odds of becoming a coalition partner. In addition, Laver and Shepsle's portfolio allocation theory is subjected to testing. Among the independent variables considered are a party's size, its previous experience in government, its willingness to trade off policy for office, and its ideological position in the parliamentary party system. The findings point to the important roles played by the formateur's preferences and by the need to build workable coalitions, given party-system constraints. They also suggest several criteria that ought to, but often do not, guide formal theory-building.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF THE PEOPLE IN POST LEGISLATIVE SCRUTINY: PERSPECTIVES FROM MALAYSIA AND AUSTRALIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sarah Moulds ◽  
Ying Hooi Khoo
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future ◽  
Legislative Review ◽  
Cultural Features

The purpose of this article is to critically examine the role of the people in the process of reviewing the implementation and effectiveness of existing laws, described in the emerging literature as ‘post-legislative scrutiny or ‘PLS’. Examining the options for citizen engagement with legislative review is critical for all parliamentary democracies grappling with the challenge of rebuilding trust between citizens and institutions. This is because reviewing the content and purpose of proposed and the implementation and impact of existing laws is a way for parliamentarians to give effect to their democratic promise. The methodology employed is qualitative in nature with a tiered approached to identifying and examining the extent to which individuals and non-government actors can contribute to parliamentary review processes in two Westminster-inspired parliamentary democracies: Australia and Malaysia. Using case study examples and examining both structural and cultural features of the systems of legislative review in both systems, this article directly challenges some of the assumptions previously associated with PLS in the existing literature. Experiences of different ‘ad hoc’ forms of PLS in both Australia and Malaysia suggest that there could be substantial benefits for lawmakers and citizens by moving toward a more deliberative, ‘bottom up’ approach to PLS in the future.

Legislative Institutions and Coalition Government

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Martin ◽  
Thomas Saalfeld ◽  
Kaare W. Strøm ◽  
Lanny W. Martin ◽  
Georg Vanberg
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Government ◽  
Legislative Institutions
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