Title: Governments and Parliaments
1Governments and Parliaments
- Two important variables one has to examine in
order to understand the power of the government
as an agenda setter in parliamentary systems. - The first is positional, the relationship between
the ideological position of the government and
the rest of the parties in parliament. - The second is the institutional provisions
enabling the government to introduce its
legislative proposals and have them voted on the
floor of the parliament -the rules of agenda
setting.
2Positional advantages
- The government controls the agenda for
non-financial legislation because it can
associate a vote on a bill with the question of
confidence. The parliament is forced to accept
the government proposal or to replace the
government. - Every government as long as it is in power is
able to impose its will on parliament, it does
not matter the kind of parliamentary government,
whether or not it controls a majority of
legislative votes. In more than 50 percent of all
countries, governments introduce more than 90
percent of the bills. Moreover, the probability
of success of these bills is very high over 60
percent of bills pass with probability greater
than .9 and over 85 percent of bills pass with
probability greater than .8. - Even if governments control the agenda, it may be
that parliaments introduce significant
constraints to their choices. Parliaments can
amend government proposals so that the final
outcome bears little resemblance to the original
bill. Most of the time, neither of these
scenarios is the case. Problems between
government and parliament arise only when the
government has a different political composition
from a majority in parliament but such
differences are either non-existent, or, if they
do exist, the government is able to prevail
because of positional or institutional weapons at
its disposal - Three possible configurations of the relationship
between government and parliament minimum
winning coalition , oversized government and
minority government
3Minimum winning coalition
- The most frequent (if we include single party
governments in two party systems). The government
coincides with the majority in parliament no
disagreement between the two on important issues.
The minimum winning coalition represented in
government restricts the winset of the status quo
from the whole shaded area of the figure to the
area that makes the coalition partners better off
than the status quo. - If the government parties are weak and include
members with serious disagreements over a bill ?,
only a marginal possibility because votes are
public and party leaders possess serious coercive
mechanisms that pre-empt public dissent
4Minimum winning coalition of A, B and C W(SQ)
5Oversized coalitions
- Oversized majority governments are quite common
in Western Europe. In such cases, some of the
coalition partners can be disregarded and
policies will still be passed by a majority in
parliament. Should these parties be counted as
veto players, or should they be ignored? - Ignoring coalition partners, while possible from
a numerical point of view, imposes political
costs if the disagreement is serious the small
partner can resign and the government formation
process must begin over again. - Simple arithmetic (Strom argument) disregards the
fact that there are political factors that
necessitate oversized coalitions. For the
coalition to remain intact the will of the
different partners must be respected a departure
from the status quo must usually be approved by
the government before it is introduced to
parliament, and, at that stage, the participants
in a government coalition are veto players.
6Minority governments.
- These governments are even more frequent than
oversized coalitions. When there are minority
governments there is a difference between a
governmental and a legislative majority. However
according to Tsebelis this difference has no
major empirical significance - Governments (whether minority or not) posess
agenda setting powers. - In particular, minority governments posess not
only institutional advantages over their
respective parliaments but also have positional
advantages of agenda setting
7Positional Advantages a memorys refreshment
8Consider a five-party parliament in a two
dimensional space (A,B,C,D,G) and a minority
government G quite centrally located. (E is the
multidimensional median) Can government
preferences (G) have parliamentary approval ?
Any proposal presented on the parliament floor
will either be preferred by a majority over G, or
defeated by G.
9A, C, D is a parliamentary majority that can
defeat G
10Also B, C, D is a parliamentary majority that can
defeat G
11The set of points that defeat G are located
within the lenses GG and GG. If the parliament
is interested in any other outcome and the
Government proposes its own ideal point, a
majority of MPs will side with the Government.
12The situation would be tolerable for the
government if SQ were moved in the area of these
lenses that is close to G, but the hatched areas
called X are a serious defeat for the government.
13However imagine that the SQ is in the the hatched
areas. The government G can propose something
(SQ1) better just simmetrically located. If the
government takes advantage of a closed rule SQ1
will be the final outcome.
14Institutional Means Of Government Agenda Control
- the rules to determine the agenda of the plenary
- the degree of restrictions imposed on the
legislature to propose money bills - the timing of committee versus plenary
involvement in the decision-making process - the power of committees to rewrite government
bills - the rules governing the timetable of committee
proceedings - the rules curtailing the debate before the final
vote in the plenary - the maximum lifespan of a bill pending approval
- http//www.uni-potsdam.de/u/ls_vergleich/Publikati
onen/PMR.htm - Chap 7, p.223-246
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16Legislation
- General hypothesis policy stability (defined as
the impossibility of significant change of the
status quo) will be the result of many veto
players, particularly if they have significant
ideological differences among them. - How to test this hypothesis ? Using a dataset of
significant laws on issues of working time and
working conditions. - The two issues are highly correlated with the
Left-Right dimension that predominates party
systems across Europe. - One dimension test of a multidimensional model.
17- All parties are located along the same dimension
once you identify the two most extreme parties of
a coalition, all the others are absorbed since
they are located inside the core of the most
extreme ones. Italian First Republic Example
PSI
PSDI
DC
PRI
PLI
18Specific hypotheses to test
- The number of significant laws is a declining
function of the coalition range, namely the
ideological distance of the two most extreme
parties in a government coalition.
(heteroskedastic relationship) - The number of significant laws will be an
increasing function of the distance between the
current government and the previous one the
alternation - The number of significant laws will be an
increasing function of the government duration
19Heteroskedasticity
20Operationalization of significant laws in the
selected policy area
- Laws (1981-1991) that were in the intersection of
both sources (NATLEX from ILO and Encyclopedia of
Labor Law) are considered significant, while
laws existing only in the NATLEX database were
considered non-significant.
21Operationalization of Governments
- the variable that matters for the veto players
theory is the partisan composition of government.
Two successive governments with identical
composition should be counted as a single
government even if they are separated by an
election, which changes the size of the different
parties in parliament. - A dataset of merged governments, in which
successive governments with the same composition
were considered a single government regardless of
whether they were separated by a resignation
and/or an election. Obviously, merging affects
the values of duration and the number of laws
produced by a government. - Three different sources to calculate (after
standardization) government range and alternation
(Warwick, Castles-Mair, Laver-Hunt)
22Operationalization of Governments
- Three different sources to calculate (after
standardization) government range and alternation
(Warwick, Castles-Mair, Laver-Hunt)
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26Veto Players and incremental legislation
- Tsebelis Hypothesis Ceteris paribus,
significant and nonsignificant laws should vary
inversely, because of time constraints. The
ceteris paribus clause assumes that the
parliament has limited time and uses it to pass
legislation (either significant or trivial). - Doering Hypothesis government control of the
agenda increases the number of important bills
and reduces legislative inflation (few small
bills).
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28- The correlation between all laws and significant
laws is negative in two of the three versions of
the table, most notably the one that excludes
Sweden. - Veto players correlated positively with the
number of all laws, and negatively with the
number of significant laws - Agenda control by the government is negatively
correlated with legislative inflation. - The number of veto players is highly correlated
with agenda control