In the cradle of laws: resolving coalition controversies in the executive phase of law-making

Abstract

Law-making in most parliamentary democracies is dominated by the executive. Yet so far, all research has focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making. Studies suggest that the changes to bills submitted by coalition governments are the result of coalition policies dealing with the agency loss caused by ministerial drift. This is puzzling because it is already easier and more effective for coalition parties to attempt to change the bills in the executive phase than in the parliamentary one. The article aims to close the knowledge gap, and it quantitatively explores the factors that facilitate changes during the understudied executive phase on case study of the Czech Republic. Analysis reveals that government bills are altered more during the executive phase than the parliamentary phase. While we find no significant impact caused by the distance to coalition compromise, the saliency of a bill for coalition partners has a negative influence on the ratio of changes.

Patterns of Legislative Agenda Setting: Evidence from Switzerland

“…First, parliament often amends the laws the government proposeseven in parliamentary democracies (Gava et al, 2021;König et al, 2023). Second, the drafting process before the government submits a draft to parliament consists of complex negotiation processes between various political actors-among other things, between coalition parties in coalition governments (Lysek & Zbíral, 2022;Zbíral et al, 2023). Third, governments and their administrations are challenged from various sides in the decision-making process that precedes the drafting process, that is, in legislative agenda setting (Seeberg, 2022).…”