Making Policy Stick: Why the Government Gets What It Wants in Multiparty Parliaments

Heller, William B.

doi:10.2307/2669324

Cited by 95 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…2 Cocozza (1989) claims that the government's power to present amendments, subamendments, and additional sections up to the final vote on an article allows it to correct problems created by unexpected votes. Heller (2001;see also, Weingast 1992) looks at the same procedure and sees a government ability to threaten defectors from the erstwhile majority fold with policy losses if they fail to support the government. This "last offer" power (Heller 2001) has been successively diluted in changes to article 86 of the legislative rules in 1986, 1997, and 1999(Camera dei Deputati 2003.…”

Section: Yes Yesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Heller (2001;see also, Weingast 1992) looks at the same procedure and sees a government ability to threaten defectors from the erstwhile majority fold with policy losses if they fail to support the government. This "last offer" power (Heller 2001) has been successively diluted in changes to article 86 of the legislative rules in 1986, 1997, and 1999(Camera dei Deputati 2003. 3 For short-term measures designed to confront actual emergencies, the question of convertibility is irrelevant.…”

Section: Yes Yesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2000

Cox

Heller

McCubbins

2008

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Abstract:We find strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly zero, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties' roll rates, which average about 20% on all final passage votes. Second, we find that, controlling for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills that on ordinary billsconsistent with our theoretical analysis of the differing procedures used in each case.

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Section: Yes Yesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Yes Yesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2000

Cox

Heller

McCubbins

2008

Legislative Studies Qtrly

Self Cite

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“…Theoretical literature on aggregate-level party unity has examined how institutions and government agenda control induce discipline among governing parties (e.g. Diermeier and Feddersen 1998;Heller 2001;Huber 1996). The need to pass a policy agenda and the requirement that government have the confidence of parliament leads governing parties to demand loyalty from their backbenchers.…”

Section: Voting In the Westminster Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament

et al. 2017

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Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel Members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party position regardless of MPs' individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs' ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion to strategically differentiate themselves from their party. The strategy that MPs employ is contingent upon an interaction of ideological extremity with party control of government. Extremists are loyal when their party is in the opposition, but these same extremists become more likely to rebel when their party controls government. Additionally, they emphasize their rebellion through speeches. Existing models of rebellion and party discipline do not account for government agenda control and do not explain these patterns.

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“…For example, in Alesina and Rosenthal (1995), government proposals may be amended by the legislature under open rule, so the final bill may be the ideal point of the median legislator, or just a weighted average of the ideal points of the executive and the legislature. Still, as Heller (2001) puts it, governments who ''propose carefully should never be rolled '' (2001, 790) and bills should not be amended in such a way that the government is made worse off compared to not sending any bill at all. Similarly, in Groseclose and Snyder's (1996) model, there are no equilibria in which the status-quo policy prevails.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates

Saiegh

2009

The Journal of Politics

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How successful should we expect chief executives to be in their relationships with the legislature? Answering this question is key to making judgments about the political prowess and lawmaking abilities of particular rulers. I introduce a standard to compare the actual performances of chief executives around the world based on the notion that variations in chief executives' legislative success rates stem from the unpredictability of legislators' behavior. The results underscore the role of uncertainty in statutory policymaking: on average, chief executives' performances are not much different from what should be expected if legislators flip coins to decide how to respond to their proposals. I also analyze the individual performance of chief executives statistically. The findings suggest that the standard by which we should judge the performance of chief executives cannot be conceived in isolation of the conditions under which they operate. So, for example, to be deemed as successful, a typical Westminster-style prime minister should be able to obtain passage of almost all of her pieces of legislation. In contrast, if a chief executive operating in a separation-of-powers system, with a highly fragmented legislature, secures passage for more than two-thirds of her proposals, she can be considered a very successful lawmaker.

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Making Policy Stick: Why the Government Gets What It Wants in Multiparty Parliaments

Cited by 95 publications

References 46 publications

Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2000

Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2000

Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament

Political Prowess or “Lady Luck”? Evaluating Chief Executives’ Legislative Success Rates

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