Committee Chairs and Legislative Review in Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

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.

Multilingual Sentiment Analysis: A New Approach to Measuring Conflict in Legislative Speeches

“…One important unresolved challenge is the measurement of issue‐specific legislative conflict. For instance, the literature on coalition governments predicts various implications of coalition divisiveness on policy issues: Bills on which coalition members are divided take longer to be introduced on the legislative agenda (Martin ; Zubek and Klüver ); once introduced they tend to take longer to pass (Martin and Vanberg ); and they are subject to greater scrutiny in parliament (Fortunato, Martin, and Vanberg ; Martin and Vanberg , , ; Pedrazzani and Zucchini ). Similarly, regarding the implementation of EU law in member states, coalition governments should be more likely to resort to the use of a legislative instrument—rather than an administrative procedure—when coalition parties are divided on an issue (Franchino and Høyland ).…”

Representing the compromise: How institutions serve government support coalitions in European Union policy making

“…Our model merges the compromise and ministerial autonomy approaches by considering how political institutions limit ministerial autonomy in policy making. First, legislative institutions -most importantly the powers of parliamentary committees and the allocation of committee chairs -serve coalition partners to 'police the bargain' (Carroll & Cox 2012;Fortunato et al 2017;Kim & Loewenberg 2005;Martin & Vanberg 2004, 2011, 2014Zubek 2015). Second, executive institutions, such as cabinet hierarchies and dispute resolution mechanisms (e.g., coalition or cabinet committees), also solve intra-coalition conflicts over policy making (Bowler et al 2016;Falcó-Gimeno 2014;Greene & Jensen 2016;Indridason & Kristinsson 2013;Lipsmeyer & Pierce 2011;Martin & Vanberg 2011;Thies 2001).…”

“…First, legislative institutions – most importantly the powers of parliamentary committees and the allocation of committee chairs – serve coalition partners to ‘police the bargain’ (Carroll & Cox ; Fortunato et al. ; Kim & Loewenberg ; Martin & Vanberg , , , ; Zubek ). Second, executive institutions , such as cabinet hierarchies and dispute resolution mechanisms (e.g., coalition or cabinet committees), also solve intra‐coalition conflicts over policy making (Bowler et al.…”

How voters' perceptions of junior coalition partners depend on the prime minister's position

“…Fortunato and Stevenson (2013a) argue that voters infer that governing parties have converged toward similar sets of policy positions. The authors base their argument on theoretical and empirical findings that parties who converge on policy are more likely to coalesce (Martin & Stevenson 2001, 2010, that coalition partners experience pressure to compromise over policy (Ganghof & Bräuninger 2006;Goodin 1996) and that parties leverage legislative institutions to enforce policy compromises struck at cabinet formation throughout the life of the government (Fortunato et al 2014;Martin & Vanberg 2011;Thies 2001). Fortunato and Stevenson (2013a) demonstrate that citizens perceive coalition partners' positions as more similar than is implied by the left-right tone of their policy manifestos alone.…”