“No Irish Need Apply”? Veto Players and Legislative Productivity in the Republic of Ireland, 1949-2000

Conley, Richard S.; Bekafigo, Marija Anna

doi:10.1177/0010414009341726

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…Second, a similar expectations‐based argument applies to politically weak governments. In particular, voters may not expect much productivity from a minority government (Conley & Bekafigo ; Conley ) . Thus, parties in a minority government may be given more credit than parties in a majority government for attempting to complete and/or actually completing a social pact agreement; and may be blamed less for failure to convert a social pact proposal into a social pact agreement.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trying not to lose: The electoral consequences of unilateral reform efforts and the social pact formation process

Castater

Han

2017

European J Political Res

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Abstract. The existing social pact literature claims that governing parties offer social pact proposals because they anticipate they will receive an electoral benefit from social pact agreements. Yet the available data on social pacts inform us that in a substantial minority of cases social pact proposals fail to become social pact agreements. In an effort to better determine the political calculations made by governments before they propose a social pact, this article examines the effect of implementing reform legislation unilaterally, social pact proposals, social pact proposal failures and social pact agreements on the vote share of government parties in 15 Western European countries between 1981 and 2006. It is found that social pact proposals do not have any electoral consequences for governing parties, unilateral legislation and social pact proposal failures reduce the vote share of governing parties, and social pact agreements provide an electoral benefit to parties in minority governments only. These findings suggest that governing parties propose social pacts in a good faith effort to complete a social pact agreement; and that such an agreement is not a way for these parties to gain votes, but to avoid the electoral punishment associated with enacting unpopular reforms unilaterally.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Conley and Bekafigo () and Conley () find that minority governments produce less legislation than majority governments, Vowles () finds that minority status does not significantly influence voters’ perception of governing parties’ ability to ‘make a difference’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Trying not to lose: The electoral consequences of unilateral reform efforts and the social pact formation process

Castater

Han

2017

European J Political Res

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“…Others have done so with some success. Using annual productivity as the unit of analysis is commonplace in other single-country studies in the comparative literature, including Germany (Bawn, 1999), Ireland (Conley and Bekafigo, 2010), Italy (Motta, 1985;Kreppel, 1997) and Norway (Strøm, 1990, Ch. 6), all of which share general features of the Fifth Republic's parliamentary and electoral structure.…”

Section: The Proble´matique Of Assessing Lawmaking In Francementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analysis treats each bill as of equivalent importance. Dividing out categories of laws -significant legislation with broad societal impacts (see Mayhew, 2005), non-routine bills (Conley and Bekafigo, 2010), bills with parochial benefits (Kreppel, 1997) and budget bills (Bawn, 1999) -may reveal differential impacts in the institutional and external variables brought to bear in this research. Cavanna's (2001) study is a starting point in the quest to identify systematically the long-term effect of the most important legislation passed in the Fifth Republic.…”

Section: Reprise: Charting a Future Research Agendamentioning

confidence: 99%

C’est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron? Assessing legislative productivity in Fifth Republic France

Conley

2011

Fr Polit

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This exploratory research note theorises about and tests the factors that have affected legislative productivity in France from 1960 to 2007. The empirical model accounts for intra-parliamentary dynamics such as the parties' ideological placement on a left-right scale, the government's seat strength, coalition governments and intensity of opposition to the majority in the National Assembly. The model also considers features unique to the Fifth Republic, such as judicial review of bills by the Constitutional Council and presidents' 'sacking' of prime ministers. External factors include strikes and social movements, as well as prime ministers' and presidents' job approval that are posited to impact lawmaking. The results of the analysis suggest how the model developed in this research may be extended to future analyses of parliamentary activity in the Fifth Republic. French Politics (2011) 9, 158-181.

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“…As a theory of legislative decision making, it makes predictions about the amount of significant laws that change the policy status quo. However, because of the difficulty in separating significant from incremental legislation, there are only a few studies explicitly focusing on law production, which are either single‐country studies or cover only a limited number of policy reform areas (Kreppel ; Tsebelis , ; Conley & Bekafigo ). Instead, scholars interested in the role of veto players in policy making typically investigate patterns of spending, taxation and budgetary changes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Veto player theory and reform making in Western Europe

Angelova

Bäck

Müller

et al. 2017

European J Political Res

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Veto player theory generates predictions about governments’ capacity for policy change. Due to the difficulty of identifying significant laws needed to change the policy status quo, evidence about governments’ ability to change policy has been mostly provided for a limited number of reforms and single‐country studies. To evaluate the predictive power of veto player theory for policy making across time, policy areas and countries, a dataset was gathered that incorporates about 5,600 important government reform measures in the areas of social, labour, economic and taxation policy undertaken in 13 Western European countries from the mid‐1980s until the mid‐2000s. Veto player theory is applied in a combined model with other central theoretical expectations on policy change derived from political economy (crisis‐driven policy change) and partisan theory (ideology‐driven policy change). Robust support is found that governments introduce more reform measures when economic conditions are poor and when the government is positioned further away from the policy status quo. No empirical support is found for predictions of veto player theory in its pure form, where no differentiation between government types is made. However, the findings provide support for the veto player theory in the special case of minimal winning cabinets, where the support of all government parties is sufficient (in contrast to minority cabinets) and necessary (in contrast to oversized cabinets) for policy change. In particular, it is found that in minimal winning cabinets the ideological distance between the extreme government parties significantly decreases the government's ability to introduce reforms. These findings improve our understanding of reform making in parliamentary democracies and highlight important issues and open questions for future applications and tests of the veto player theory.

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“No Irish Need Apply”? Veto Players and Legislative Productivity in the Republic of Ireland, 1949-2000

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Trying not to lose: The electoral consequences of unilateral reform efforts and the social pact formation process

Trying not to lose: The electoral consequences of unilateral reform efforts and the social pact formation process

C’est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron? Assessing legislative productivity in Fifth Republic France

Veto player theory and reform making in Western Europe

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