Parliamentary Control of Ministerial Policymaking

• In Event: Comparative Studies on Executive-Legislative Interactions

Abstract

A key issue in the organization of parliamentary government centers on the parliament's ability to contain ministerial drift. Absent adequate controls, strategic ministers could seek to exploit their executive privileges for partisan gain, rather than serve on behalf of the governing coalition in the parliament. Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of strong legislative institutions for enforcing the parliament's wishes, emphasizing that the ministers' policy choices can often be corrected after the fact by the overseeing standing committees. In this paper, we argue that the parliament's oversight can also create strong incentives for the ministers to adapt their policy positions in advance---and thereby obviate any need for actual parliamentary enforcement. To substantiate our analysis, we field five decades' worth of data from the Swedish government and show that the ministers systematically stack their bills in favor of the governing coalition already at the preparation stage. Specifically, by selectively eschewing proposals from ministers that lie relatively far from the coalition median's ideal point, the ministers collectively ensure that the bulk of bills that reach the parliament will typically support the governing coalition’s interests. Our conclusions suggest that ministers in parliamentary governments may enjoy significantly less policy discretion than is commonly believed.

Authors

• Mikael Holmgren, Örebro University

• Carl Dahlstrom, University of Gothenburg