1. Policing the Bargain: Coalition Government and Parliamentary Scrutiny L. Martin and G. Vanberg (2004)

2. Focus on legislatures in parliamentary policymaking in periods of coalition government. Theory of the interactions between coalition parties: Multiparty governments involve delegation to cabinet ministers Delegation creates agency problems Agency problems increase in severity on issues that divide the coalition Parliamentary scrutiny to overcome these tensions Empirical evaluation: original dataset on 276 government bills from two parliamentary democracies. Results: legislatures play a more important role in parliamentary democracies than is usually appreciated (they help solving intracoalition conflicts).

3. LITERATURE REVIEW Agency problems inherent to modern democratic government: citizens/government officials (Lupia and McCubbins 2000; Strøm 2000) elected officials/bureaucrats (Huber and Shipan 2002) among parties in a coalition: –Cabinet-level institutions as a solution (Müller and Strøm 2000; Thies 2001) –Legislative-level institutions as a solution: »They strengthen opposition parties (Powell 2000; Saalfeld 2000; Strøm 1990) »They strengthen government parties (Martin and Vanberg 2004)

4. Multiparty policymaking Two problematic features of policymaking by coalition governments: Divergent preferences: policy and position-taking incentives of coalition parties continually put them in competition with one another Delegation to the cabinet provides considerable discretion to ministers in drafting legislation Incentives for ministerial position-taking Ministers, acting as agents of the cabinet as a whole, may not work fully in the interests of all their principals  need for ex post oversight and correction (legislative scrutiny)

5. THEORY: Delegation and ministerial discretion Delegation within the cabinet: P = cabinet as a whole (or the legislative majority) A = individual ministers In her policy jurisdiction, each ministers enjoy considerable discretion in drafting legislation (see Laver and Shepsle 1996): the precise content and wording of a bill are usually decided by the cabinet minister under whose jurisdiction a bill falls.

6. In other terms, to the extent that the coalition compromise deviates from the ideal policy of a minister, that minister will be tempted to use her discretion in drafting bills to undermine the coalition agreement and to move government policy toward outcomes she prefers. Ministers can do so in so far as they enjoy an informational advantage vis-à-vis the other cabinet members. THEORY: Delegation and ministerial discretion

7. Two-party cabinet: Assume Party A controls defense policy and Party B controls welfare policy. Suppose that A and B have agreed on a common compromise policy X. Despite the agreement to pursue X, each minister has incentives to move policy in directions favoured by her constituency. The policy implemented by the government will then be AB. This is what Laver and Shepsle’s «ministerial government» model would predict. However, AB is Pareto inferior to X. Unmanaged delegation

8. If coalition parties find ways to manage delegation to hostile ministers, the compromise policy X can be implemented as an equilibrium outcome. The outcome under managed delegation (X) is Pareto superior to the outcome under unmanaged delegation (AB).

9. Intracoalition accountability mechanisms How can ministers effectively monitor hostile ministers? -Executive-level: JMs (Thies 2001) -Legislative-level: parliamentary scrutiny (Martin and Vanberg 2004) Parliamentary scrutiny: thanks to legislative committees, coalition parties can keep tabs on their partners during the legislative process (thus overcoming information asymmetries and succesfully managing delegation).

10. How to derive an empirically testable hypothesis from Martin and Vanberg’s theory? The various activities that signify that parliamentary scrutiny of legislation is taking place (e.g., committee hearings, contact with outside experts and interest groups, etc.) require time. As a result, bills that are scrutinized more carefully will tend to experience longer legislative processes than than bills that are not subjected to close scrutiny. Second, as is the case in P-A problems more generally, the problem raised by delegation to ministers tends to become more severe as the ideological distance between coalition partners increases.

11. HYPOTHESIS If coalition members make use of parliamentary scrutiny to “keep tabs” on their partners, if such scrutiny requires time, and if the incentive to monitor increases with ideological divergence, then: Hypothesis: The greater the ideological divergence between coalition partners on the issues addressed by a bill, the more likely the bill is to encounter delay in the legislative process.

12. THE DATA Original dataset on the legislative process of government- sponsored legislation in the lower chambers of Germany (1983-1994) and the Netherlands (1982-1994). Two «most similar» countries. Unit of analysis: government bill. Excluded bills: –budget bills, budgetary adjustment bills, constitutional bills –bills non classifiable into Laver and Hunt’s eight policy dimensions N=276

13. Germany and the Netherlands («control by design» strategy): Coalition parties with divergent policy preferences Similar coalition-specific features (MW coalitions) Similar parliamentary rules Nonmajoritarian democracies with proportional electoral system Legislative institutions that strengthen the role of legislators in lawmaking: a.Large number of specialized committees (composition, jurisdiction) b.Agenda for debate determined by (a committee of) the chamber c.Committee powers not restricted by a prior decision of the plenary d.Similar voting procedure at the final voting stage (simple majority, quorum, “successive” voting method) Representative of other European parliamentary democracies (institutional features and coalition-specific features –MWC) Drawback: unable to assess the impact of alternative institutional arrangements and coalition features on legislative delay Advantages of the time frame chosen: –Relatively small number of years  less prone to unmeasured temporal effect –Recent expert survey (Laver and Hunt 1992)

15. OPERATIONALIZATION: the dependent variable Parliamentary scrutiny is operationalized as the length of the legislative process. Length of the legislative process (or legislative delay) = the number of days between bill introduction and the final vote on the bill.

16. The independent variables Key explanatory variables: -Government issue divisiveness Hypothesis: as the coalition becomes more divided on policy, coalition partners are more likely to scrutinize government bills, hence lenghtening the legislative process. -Government issue saliency For bills on which government members are not divided, the more salient the issues involved, the higher policy benefits will be for all coalition partners, and thus the more likely that they will wish to move quickly to get these bills enacted. Control variables: –Opposition issue divisiveness If the opposition does possess significant influence over policymaking, we should expect longer legislative delay on those bills dealing with issues that greatly divide opposition parties from the party of the minister proposing them. –Opposition issue saliency If the opposition does possess significant influence over policymaking, we should expect longer legislative delay on those bills dealing with more important issues for opposition parties. –Policy area indicators Bills dealing with certain types of issues might be always subject to more or less legislative delay, regardless of the policy preferences of coalition partners.

17. METHODOLOGY Survival analysis: Weibull model Hazard rate: the probability that an event will occur at a particular point in time, given that it has not yet occurred. A positive coefficient implies that an increase in the level of the corresponding independent variable will reduce the duration of the legislative process. A negative coefficient implies that an increase in the level of the corresponding independent variable will lengthen the duration of the legislative process.

19. RESULTS -Bills that more sharply divide the coalition face longer legislative processes (because they are more extensively scrutinized in parliament). -Bills dealing with highly salient issues for the government are likely to move more quickly through the legislative process (but not in the model including policy dummies). -No evidence that bills that divide the government from the opposition are likely to face legislative delay. -Bills dealing with highly salient issues for the opposition are more likely to face legislative delay (but not in the model including policy dummies).

21. CONCLUSION Role of legislatures in parliamentary democracies policymaking Central role of the legislative process in strenghtening government (not opposition) parties Delegation creates tensions between coalition parties that grow particularly strong on issues that sharply divide them Coalition partners attempt to manage these tensions trough both cabinet-level (as shown by Thies 2001) and legislative- level institutions (as shown by Martin and Vanberg 2004) Ministerial drafts are likely to be scrutinized for longer time in the legislative process the greater the level of policy divisiveness among coalition partners Parliament as an arena in which coalition parties interact