Committee autonomy in parliamentary systems – coalition logic or congressional rationales?

Understanding MPs’ perceptions of party voters’ opinion in Western democracies

“…This finding is consistent across countries if we run individual country models (Online Appendix G). Thus, despite the different levels of autonomy that parliamentary committees have (Mickler 2017), membership in a relevant committee does not make an MP more accurate. The third indicator of competence is the self-reported specialisation.…”

“…first-past-the-post in Canada, proportional system in Switzerland, and mixed system in the German Bundestag). Moreover, the autonomy of parliamentary committees varies considerably across the four countries, ranging from a low level of autonomy in Canada to the, in international comparison, highest autonomy scores in Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland (Mickler 2017). These substantial variations in institutional rules and party systems might influence the role of certain competence measures over others, i.e.…”

Constituency Preferences and Assignment to Agriculture Committees

“…One assumption required for the predictions of distributive theory to hold is that committees are attractive enough for representatives to want to be selected: while some research provides evidence that constituency preferences influence selection to committees, this assumes representatives can use committees meaningfully to claim credit and take positions signalling their positions to constituents. However, previous research shows there is considerable variation in the strength and autonomy of committees, particularly outside the US (André, Depauw, and Martin, 2016a;Mickler, 2017). Therefore, we might expect that the clearer the opportunities for position-taking and credit-claiming, the more likely representatives will seek selection to committees aligning with their constituents' interests, and thus, the stronger the impact of constituency preferences on committee selection.…”

“…Previous research (e.g. Martorano, 2006;Mickler, 2017) suggests that committees are more autonomous and influential when their remits match those of the government ministries they are tasked with overseeing because these committees' members do not have to share oversight responsibilities and compete with other committees for attention and influence over the ministry's actions. Moreover, members of committees with overlapping remits do not have to share credit with other committees for particularistic goods delivered to constituents -even if the representative did not have any actual impact on delivering the goods in question (e.g.…”

The Resilience of Democracy in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Although the stringency of policy responses varies considerably from one country to the next, COVID-19 containment measures all depart from ordinary democratic governance and restrict fundamental rights and daily liberties. The scope of the measures and their duration have sparked a great deal of media and scholarly attention (see, for a comparative account, Bjørnskov, 2020;Migone, 2020), especially as they started to be contested. Yet alongside visible and impactful restrictive measures, governments have also implemented packages of democratic compensators that aim to offset the negative consequences of the restrictions on the rule of law, democratic governance, civil liberties and daily freedoms.…”