Ministerial policy dominance in parliamentary democracies

Abstract

To what extent do ministries dominate a particular policy domain? The policy dictator model and many principle-agent models of governmental control that followed suit assume that governments create ministries with clear and exclusive policy responsibilities. We test this assertion using data from parliamentary bills from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. For each bill, we observe its substantial policy content and the responsible ministry. The data show that bills on similar issues regularly are drafted by different ministries in parliamentary democracies. About 40 per cent of policy issues cannot be ascribed to one dominant ministry. The regularities elucidate that ministerial division of labour within governments is considerably more complex than commonly assumed. The variegated level of ministerial dominance across policy domains calls for a new research agenda on how governments assign responsibility for legislative action in parliamentary democracies.

Minding (Your Own and) Others’ Business: Assigning Co-Responsibility in Cabinet Decisions

“…However, the practice of co-responsibility is not unique to Israel. For instance, Klüser and Breunig (2022) demonstrate how several ministries are assigned as co-responsible in government bills in several countries and call for further research on how government assigns responsibility among ministries. Since the findings in this research resemble other findings on mechanisms for managing delegation costs, it is logical to assume that at least some of the findings can be generalized to other countries with coalition governments, especially those in which there is coalition discipline on parliamentary affairs, a weak committee system, and some type of cabinet government.…”

“…Moreover, the assignment of responsibility over policies is often political and strategic (Klüser & Breunig, 2022). This is also true for cabinet decisions that do not necessarily fall under the jurisdiction of a specific ministry (Timmermans & Moury, 2006).…”

Colleagues or adversaries: Ministerial coordination across party lines

“…While not yet established in the discipline of public policy, a similar operationalization has already been used and corroborated (Klüser, 2022a;Klüser & Breunig, 2022). We provide additional empirical description regarding the measure's validity and distribution in the appendix (Figures A1-A5 in the online appendix).…”

“…225-226). Yet, the empirical allocation of government bills to individual ministries is suggestive of political negotiations among ministers in the cabinet, who seek to participate in the policymaking process (Klüser & Breunig, 2022). During these negotiations, we assume that strong ministers, who enjoy authority within the cabinet, are more successful in getting their will.…”

Political time in public bureaucracies: Explaining variation of structural duration in European governments

“…This relevance of ideological profiles also relates to scholarly research into governmental policy agendas and their effects on structural change at the level of ministerial departments and delegated agencies (Mortensen & Green‐Pedersen, 2015; Tosun, 2018), which lately also aimed for ascertaining the correspondence of policy authority inside ministerial departments and governments' legislative output (Klüser, 2022; Klüser & Breunig, 2022). However, all this empirical research takes a strong emphasis on post‐electoral formal structures and thus assumes that governments' agendas are enshrined into government organizations as part of government formation processes, and then shape how ministerial departments formulate government policies for the following legislative term.…”