Members of parliament and governments in western Europe: Agency relations and problems of oversight

Abstract

The vast majority of West European polities feature an agency relationship between members of parliaments and members of cabinets as the latter depend on the confidence of the majority of the former to remain in office. In this article, the terminology used by principalagent theory to characterise oversight activities -contract design, screening, monitoring and the use of institutional checks -and elements of transaction cost economics are applied to the agency relationship between members of parliaments and cabinet members in Western Europe. Traditional studies of parliamentary oversight have narrowly concentrated on monitoring, although parliaments (with considerable cross-national variations) use a broad range of oversight mechanisms including equivalents of contract design, screening and institutional checks. In addition, traditional studies have focused almost exclusively on one particular type of monitoring often referred to as 'police-patrol oversight', whilst neglecting or underestimating the effectiveness and low transaction costs associated with 'fire-alarm oversight'. Despite the valuable insights the principal-agent framework has already added to the study of executive-legislative relations in parliamentary democracies, future research will have to account more realistically for the role and organisation of political parties which structure the delegation process, help to solve a number of co-ordination problems in parliaments (for example, the co-ordination of committees and floor activities) and generate important internal agency relationships that are fundamental to an understanding of executive-legislative relations in Western Europe.

Pengaruh Fiscal Stress Dan Legislature Size Terhadap Expenditure Change Pada Kabupaten/Kota Di Sumatera Utara

“…Faktor-faktor politik memiliki pengaruh dalam pengambilan keputusan, termasuk: peran dan organisasi partai politik, komposisi legislatif, cara konsensus dicapai dalam legislatif, asimetri informasi antara anggota legislatif dan pemerintah, dan aliansi antara politisi dan birokrat (Saalfeld, 2000).…”

Conclusion: regional parliaments – a distinct role in the EU?

“…Ideally, a parliament would do at least three things as part of its scrutiny function: It would constrain its government ex ante by giving it a clear mandate, it would control the execution of the mandate ex post by asking the government to report to a committee or the plenary and it would be able to access the necessary information to (a) understand the policy and its effects, and (b) know the true actions of its government (Saalfeld, 2000;Author 4, this volume). In this ideal case, the parliament would also be able to compensate for the loss of legislative competences, as a strong mandate would allow it to influence negotiations in the Council of Ministers via its government.…”

Transaction Cost Economics: An Assessment of Empirical Research in the Social Sciences

“…In addition, TCE has proved fruitful in applying institutional analysis to political institutions just as it does to firms and private institutions. Notable examples include examinations into the internal organization of legislatures (Weingast and Marshall 1988) and bureaucracies (Moe 1990), the institutional arrangements between different branches of governments (Weingast 1995;Saalfeld 2000), the mobilization of political parties (Wielhouwer 1994;Jones and Hudson 1998), the engagement in political lobbying (Alt, Carlsen et al 1999), the political facilitation of private agreements (Richman & Boerner 2006), and the making of public policy (Dixit 1996;Spiller and Tommasi 2003). These applications into political institutions might be one of the more important recent developments in TCE research.…”