“Trust Is Good, Control Is Better”

Abstract

Even though institutional design clearly shapes legislative processes and outputs, explanation of cross-national variation in how legislatures are organized remains elusive. Building on research that emphasizes the role of legislatures in enforcing coalition agreements, we provide new data on committee structures in thirty-one parliamentary democracies, demonstrating that where multiparty government is the norm, legislatures tend to develop strong committees that are structurally equipped to enable the governing parties to keep tabs on one another’s ministers. To probe the institutional argument further, we present a case study of committee reform in the Irish parliament. We demonstrate that institutional change within the Irish parliament is directly related to the shift from single-party to multiparty government and in particular to the desire of the smaller coalition party to be able to keep tabs on the larger party’s ministers. The paper aims to spark a deeper dialogue among party and legislative scholars in search of the micro-foundations of legislative organization.

Parliament’s (lack of) agenda-setting power over the executive decision agenda: evidence from Belgium, France and Portugal

“…In particular, our study suggests (but does not theorize or test) that levels of transmission may be structured and constrained by institutional or historical forms of friction specific to each agenda and each country. A substantial literature dwelled on the importance of institutional design for legislative behavior (André et al, 2016;Wiberg, 1995).…”

(A falta de) Poder de definição de agenda do parlamento sobre a agenda de decisões executivas: evidências da Bélgica, França e Portugal

“…Post-1974 Portugal has mostly seen the alternation in power of two parties, the socialists (PS) and the social-democrats (PSD, typically in a coalition with the Christian democrats of the CDS-PP). On the one hand, we know that coalition systems, as a means for coalition partners to keep tabs on each other's ministers, often produce stronger parliaments and committees (André, Depauw, & Martin, 2016). On the other hand, it seems plausible that cabinets with fewer parties (i.e.…”

Small in Size but Powerful in Parliament? The Legislative Performance of Minority Governments

“…Lastly, I control for committee power since it has been argued that minority cabinets perform more successfully in systems with strong committees (Strøm 1990). I rely on the data by André et al (2016) which, however, lack information for Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania. Descriptive statistics for all variables can be found in Table in the online supporting information.…”