1

Sara Zennaro European University Institute sara.zennaro@iue.it

Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops Granada, Spain (April 14-19, 2005)

Workshop 7: Evaluating, Comparing and Classifying Legislatures Please do not cite without permission from the author

« MEASURING PARLIAMENTARY PERFORMANCE: Executive-Legislative Relations in Fourteen EU Legislatures »

1. Parliamentary arenas and the structure of executive-legislative relations

The question of the interaction between executive and legislature is obviously of highest importance in liberal democracies. As a matter of fact, even a casual observation shows that such a relationship varies markedly from country to country. In some, the executive dominates the legislature, in others the executive depends on the legislature. Yet the problem has not so far given rise to any comprehensive explanatory model; indeed, there is not even a common methodology to approach this issue. This paper aims at proposing a plausible contribution to the study of parliamentary democracies. The key-element on the basis of which this goal is achieved is the legislative performance of parliamentary arenas. To this end, a number of variables are identified. In particular, the procedures distributing opportunities and constraints among institutional actors are proposed as the main independent variable responsible for the performance of legislatures. In each parliamentary system, there is a peculiar configuration of rules which codifies the pattern of opportunities/resources at the disposal of either the cabinet or the legislature. These procedures can be more or less majority-oriented. In other words, they can limit the hyperactivity of a legislature that dominates the decision-making process. Otherwise, they can promote the co-operation among the political actors in parliament and prevent the excessive concentration of power in the hands of a cabinet and of its parliamentary majority [Anderweg, 1993; Blondel and Müller Rommel, 1988]. The distribution of these procedural constraints will be compared throughout a selected number of legislatures. If the performance of institutional actors depends upon the configuration of procedural assets, a few clarifications need to be made to this respect. In particular, it is important to highlight that legislative performance in parliamentary systems is here measured by primarily focusing on the relative strength of the executive face to the legislature. The paper is articulated into two parts. The first focuses on the description of the distribution of procedural constraints across fourteen parliaments across Western Europe. In the second part, a typology of legislatures is proposed, based on the elaboration of the information previously collected.

In the existing literature, the studies adopting a similar institutional perspective are scarce and mostly grounded on excessively simplified theoretical perspectives [King, 1975]. Polsby, Mezey and Norton are the most significant contributors to the study of comparative legislatures from an institutional perspective [Polsby, 1975; Mezey, 1979 and 1994; Norton, 1992 and 1994]. Although with some limits, these authors share at least one merit. They all ground their

2

comparisons of legislatures on the acknowledgment of different nuances in the legislative performance of both cabinets and parliaments. This common conjecture, however, needs to be further articulated. One issue, in particular, has to be raised: the elements that determine the viscosity, in Blondel’s terms of legislatures need to be individuated [Blondel, 1970 and 1973]. To this purpose, the following two hypotheses are here formulated:

1) Parliamentary arenas are based on a set of procedural resources differently distributed in any empirical case. These resources influence the nature of the control the cabinet is able to exert vis-à-vis the legislature.

The performance of the executive is expected to be as great as the procedural resources on which it can rely. The distribution of resources affects the capacity of the majority supporting the cabinet to bring about the rigid logic of separation of roles between the parliamentary majority and its opposition. A definitive list of these procedural resources cannot obviously be provided. In order to overcome this difficulty, procedural constraints can be ideally correlated to two alternative patterns of institutional arrangement [Cotta, 1971]. On the one side there are minority-oriented legislatures. These are parliaments in which the individual (i.e. the single legislator) is the basic unit whose rights and activities are ultimately granted. The procedural rules adopted in these legislatures will tend to endow single MPs with consistent powers of initiative and amendment. At the same time, few restrictions are expected to be imposed on the carrying out of debates, while the function of parliamentary control is inadequately organized. The opposed model of legislatures includes group-oriented parliaments. In this case, parties represent the core decisional unit. The legislative initiative and the power to amend (when guaranteed), are therefore expected to be subject to the discipline of the parliamentary group. The debates, moreover, are expected to be rigidly planned as far as their length and modalities of implementation are concerned. A wide range of intermediate cases combining the features of both minority and majority-oriented arenas can of course exist in the empirical reality. 2) The structure of the legislative process affects the capacities of the actors involved in it in their use of the procedural opportunities/resources at their disposal. The distribution of responsibilities between the assembly and the committees reflects the allotment of decisional competencies among the actors involved in the different stages of the legislative process. On this basis, different committee systems can be placed along a scale whose extreme poles refer to two diametrically opposed models. On the one side, there are systems marked by a highly centralised legislative process. There the parliamentary arena works as the core institution for decision-making. In this case, committees are expected to be subordinated to the assembly, to be weak and, in most cases, ad hoc. The other pole of the continuum represents the decentralised legislative process. The decision-making power is allocated among a plurality of small-scale cores able to limit the unity of action of the assembly. Within such a structure, committees are expected to be strong, permanent and endowed with a high degree of autonomy. As a result of this, a high level of legislative centralisation should correspond to an increase in the capabilities of the cabinet to impose its choice on the parliamentary arena. It is more difficult for the executive to carry out a leading role when the arenas are ‘polycentric’ [Cotta, 1979]. In this case, the decisional responsibilities corresponding to the different stages of the legislative process would be assumed by a plurality of units endowed with a certain degree of autonomy within the assembly. On the other hand, the more the legislative process is centralised, the easier the exertion of control over any single MP will be [Mattson and Strǿm, 1995]. The chances for these latter to act autonomously will be thus considerably reduced (and the parliamentary arena consequently transformed into a ‘negotiation arena’).

3

To apply the two above-presented assumptions to empirically verifiable cases of legislatures, it is necessary to support these hypotheses through a set of independent variables and corresponding indicators. To this respect, the following points have to be considered: 1) The capacity of a cabinet to rule over a disciplined parliamentary majority (and to contain the legislative influence of the opposition) is assumed to grow together with the degree of rationalization of procedural constraints. The organization of a constraints system establishing cabinet-oriented structure of resources is therefore the discriminating factor on the basis of which the institutional position of cabinets can be measured. Procedural constraints, then, cannot be thought about as simple configurations of rules in their technical aspect. On the contrary, the key-element is their capacity to influence institutional exercise of an effective decisional power [Zucchini, 1997]. It is possible to identify the majority or minority-oriented nature of legislatures by analysing these latter on the basis of two main procedural dimensions. I have chosen to label these dimensions as:

a) The overload of the legislative process; b) The delay of the legislative time.

a) When MPs overcharge the legislative arena, they make it extremely difficult for the cabinet to pass its own legislation. With regard to the concrete mechanisms on which the executive and its parliamentary majority can rely to this respect, the attention should be focused especially on the mechanisms rationalizing the unrestrained resort to legislative initiative and the uncontrolled introduction of amendments [Cox, 1987 and 2000]. As far as the first aspect is concerned, an efficient cabinet should dispose of:

• Some reserved policy areas. In particular, policies concerning key-issues such as budgetary and expenditure items are left, in majority-oriented legislature, to the initiative of the executive;

• Numerical restrictions on MPs’ legislative initiatives. Rationalized parliamentary rules tend either to establish a fixed maximum number of proponents or limit the power of initiative to parliamentary groups only. In these systems, individual legislative initiative is prevented from priority proceeding.

• Time restrictions on MPs’ legislative initiatives. These procedural constraints will limit the time devoted to the legislative initiative of individual MPs to a restricted number of sessions. The adoption of these mechanisms thus favours a cabinet-oriented distribution of the legislative time.

With regard to amendments, then, three aspects in particular have to be taken into

consideration:

• Restrictions on amendment initiative. An excessive resort to the legitimate prerogative granted to MPs to present amendments can have disruptive effects on the legislation of governmental origin. In a majority-oriented arena, the amendment initiative will tend to be a prerogative of parliamentary groups rather than of individual MPs [Ieraci, 2000].

• Closure motions. Majority-oriented systems will establish additional mechanisms to prevent the presentation and discussion of amendments from becoming an instrument that lengthens the legislative process. One of these devices is the a priori fixation of a maximum time allowed for the discussion of each amendment.

• Selection of amendments. To avoid the dispersion of the legislative time in the never-ending discussion of a massive number of amendments, then, a rationalized system will possibly entitle the President of the Chamber to order the discussion and the voting of the amendments introduced by grouping them according to their nature and topics dealt with.

4

b) The delay of the legislative time: the second dimension concerns the application of procedural mechanisms preventing the cabinet from obtaining the necessary parliamentary legislative time it needs to enact its policies [Cox and McCubbins, 1993]. To produce this effect, the most common instruments to which MPs can resort are the introduction of questions to the executive and the practice of filibustering. In these cases, the resources at the disposal of the cabinet will be:

• Restrictions on the introduction of questions. To this purpose, it is necessary to observe if parliamentary rules have resolved whether all questions are normally only entitled to a written answer, or if an oral answer is specifically required. The analysis of the procedural constraints applied to the organization of the Question Time contributes to the evaluation of the quality in the performance of the fundamental function of control within parliaments [Wiberg, 1994a].

• Restrictions on speech time [Ieraci, ibid.]. A second indicator is here suggested to measure the potential of an undisciplined parliament to significantly extend the legislative time. It consists in observing whether the debates (both on the floor of the House and at the committee level) are either regulated or shortened ad hoc, through the application of constraints such as the guillotine motion or other restrictions to the right of speech.

• Control over the agenda-setting. A dominant executive is expected to determine the legislative agenda of the Chamber. On the other hand, if the cabinet is weak and subordinated to the choices of MPs in the employment of the legislative time, the agenda of the Chamber will result from a consensual agreement among the different political forces represented in the assembly.

2) The structure of the relations between the plenary and the committees is the second hypothesis explaining the distribution of legislative prerogatives between the cabinet and the legislature [Longley and Davidson, 1998].1 The corresponding procedural dimension refers to: c) the degree of centralization of the legislative process. In order to interpret whether a given system configures its legislative process as either a polycentric or a unitary arena, the features of the committee system need therefore to be taken into account. [Lees and Shaw, 1979].

● Level of specialisation of the committees. Namely, the existence of permanent or just ad hoc committees. Ad hoc committees are established for limited periods of time with the purpose of dealing with particular issues. They expire once the aim for which they were created is fulfilled. On the contrary, permanent committees are perpetuated through legislatures. Their structure normally corresponds to the structure of ministries. This indicator allows to make some interesting observations on the type of role committees play within legislatures. It permits to distinguish between systems where committees play a marginal role and systems where, on the contrary, committees are highly articulated and specialized [Polsby, 1968]. This element turns out to be particularly relevant if one considers that committees are restricted decisional cores. A high level of autonomy of these bodies can potentially fragment the unity of action of a disciplined, majority-oriented parliament by transforming the legislative assembly in a polycentric arena. ● Procedural autonomy of the committees. This indicator highlights the position occupied by the committees vis-à-vis the plenary. Moreover, the exam of procedural autonomy allows to determine whether committee systems are majority-oriented or if they are meant to compete with the plenary for the organization of the activities of the Chamber. Accordingly, it is important to check whether the committee stage begins before or after the introduced legislation has been scrutinized by the plenary. Committees’ autonomy is also measured by observing the formula

1 The unicameral vs. bicameral structure of the assembly [Longley and Olson, 1991; Tsebelis and Money, 1997] is not here included among the units of measurement of the legislative centralisation of the process.

5

applied to allocate committee chairs, the possibility for the minorities to display their dissent, and the publicity of committee meetings. ● Existence of committees endowed with deliberative powers. This last indicator focuses on the right of committees to intervene in the proceeding of proposals and projects of law. This device is a potential means through which committees can become strong alternative decisional units. Committee deliberative powers can contribute to challenge the legislative authority of the majority in the plenary. However, there are different nuances in the application of these deliberative powers. At the lower level, committees can be entitled to redraft the proposed legislation. More authoritative committees, then, will intervene in the legislative process either by exerting the legislative initiative, or by being allowed to redraft the introduced legislation. Finally, the decentralization of the legislative power can be so extreme as to permit that the final voting on both parliamentary and governmental bills takes place on the floor of committees. In this case, committees will be endowed with the power to enact legislation.

The following Figure 1. and 2. summarize the entire set of institutional constraints on which the comparative analysis here presented is based:

Figure 1. The organization of the legislative process and time

1 Overload of the legislative process

Resources protecting the cabinet:

a) 1. reserved policy areas 2. numerical restriction on MPs 3. time restrictions on MPs b) 1. limitations to MPs initiative

2. closure motions 3. selection of amendments

a) legislative

initiative of MPs b) introduction of amendments

2 Delay of the legislative time

Resources protecting the cabinet:

a) 1. restrictions on the introduction of questions and on Question Time b) 1. guillotine motions and restrictions

on the duration of debates 2. control over the agenda-setting

a) extensive amount

of questions required to the government

b) filibustering

Source: adapted from Ieraci, 2000

6

Figure 2. The centralization of the legislative process

centralization < > decentralization

1 Specialization of the committees

a) permanent committees b) many small committees c) parallelism of jurisdiction with ministries d) subcommittees

a) permanent committees b) many small committees c) no parallelism of jurisdiction with ministries d) no subcommittees

2 Procedural autonomy of committees

a) prior plenary legislative evaluation b) majority allocation of committee chairs c) no minority reports d) public committee meetings

a) prior committee legislative evaluation b) minority allocation of committee chairs c) minority reports d) private committee meetings

3 Deliberative powers of committees

a) no power to enact legislation b) no right to initiate legislation c) no right to rewrite bills d) plenary control of the committee agenda

a) power to enact legislation b) right to initiate legislation c) right to rewrite bills d) committee controls its own agenda

Source: own elaboration

2. Comparing legislatures: the distribution of procedural constraints 2.1 The overload of the legislative process

In order to test the distribution of opportunities/resources across parliamentary arenas, the first aspect considered is the structure of the legislative initiative, or – to be more precise – the misuse of this power. Now, within all Western European parliaments, MPs have a right to initiate legislation Similarly, all Western European legislatures share with the executive the right of initiative. Together with the right to initiate legislation, the right to submit amendments is the other instrument capable to affect the modality through which the legislative process is performed. In most democratic regimes, this right is generally recognised as one of the fundamental prerogatives that MPs enjoy. Similarly to legislative initiative, though, amendment initiative can also be used to overload the legislative process [Lidderdale, 1958]. It is therefore important to ponder the weight of the restrictions applied to the introduction of amendments in the sample of democracies. Their different adoption of these mechanisms is reported in Table 1. the following page for fourteen West European parliamentary arenas. In the Table, each “X” corresponds to the existence of a certain constraint; each “0” stands for its absence2.

Most systems limit the individual right of legislative initiative via the establishment of reserved policy areas. These domains exclude certain matters from parliament’s competence. They normally include policies concerned with financial issues. There are cases in which only the Budget Bill is exempted from the assembly’s sphere of legislation. In other cases, individual MPs are never authorised to present any proposal of law that may affect the increase in expenditure or 2 The existence of procedural constraints in the fourteen parliamentary arenas has been determined through the evaluation of the text of the Constitution, Rules of Procedures and parliamentary practice of the parliaments considered.

7

the reduction in revenue [Laundy, 1989]. Among the possible combinations of resources in this specific field, the French position is certainly one of the most cabinet-oriented. Here, budgetary (and, more generally, financial) bills are affected by limits of both time and initiative. The discussion of the Budget Bill is in fact strictly rationalized, whereas individual MPs are excluded from initiating any bill proposing increases in expenditure or reductions in public funds. Restrictions on MPs initiative on financial issues are applied – with slight procedural variations – also in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

As a basic assumption of classic parliamentary doctrine, the power of legislative initiative represents, above all and in any system, a prerogative individually belonging to each member of a legislative assembly. Although the majority of parliaments authorise individual initiative, in some legislatures a collective initiative is required for a MP’s proposals to be taken into consideration. The meaning of such a limitation to individual initiative derives from a concern for the risks that an abusive proliferation of the legislation implies [Norton, 1993]. The constraining recourse to collective initiative leads to operate a selection among the proposals of law submitted for discussion to the floor of the committees and/or the assembly [Copeland and Patterson, 1994]. Among the fourteen arenas under exam, a few ones make use of some sort of numerical limitations to their MPs’ individual right of legislative initiative. Within these, Germany is the most constraining. Here parliamentary groups alone enjoy the right to introduce legislation. MPs can exert this power only if they manage to represent 5% of the whole membership of the Bundestag [Graf, 1991]. Similar numerical restrictions are likewise applied in other three parliamentary arenas. In Spain, single deputies can present legislative initiatives if and when their bills are supported by the signature of at least other fourteen MPs. The sole alternative to the fifteen proponents, for Spanish parliamentary proposals to be considered, is to be initiated by a whole parliamentary group. Austria and Ireland also adopt numerical constraints, although more circumscribed. These systems limit to five and seven MPs respectively the minimum number of proponents required to initiate a parliamentary proposal.

Table 1. The distribution of procedural constraints to parliamentary legislative initiative

Source: own elaboration

reserved

policy areas

numerical limits on

MPs’ activities

time limits on MPs’ activities

limits to MPs’ right to amendment

initiative

Closure Selection of amendment

Austria 0 X 0 X X 0 Belgium 0 0 0 X X 0 Denmark 0 0 0 0 X 0 Finland 0 0 0 0 0 0 France X 0 X X X X Germany X X 0 X X X Ireland X X X X X X Italy 0 0 0 0 X X Luxembourg 0 0 0 X X 0 The Netherlands X 0 0 0 X 0 Portugal X 0 0 X X X Spain X X 0 X X X Sweden 0 0 X 0 0 0 United Kingdom X 0 X X X X

8

The third indicator concerns the time allowed for the presentation of individual and/or collective initiatives. By limiting the time devoted to the proposals of parliamentary origin, the executive is once more enabled to avoid the risk of an overloading of the legislative process [Norton, 1990]. A rationalisation of the legislative time thus prevents a possible scenario of antagonism between the assembly and the executive – where the two decisional units would compete to gain possess of the accessible time available to devote it to their own bills. Such a situation would make it more difficult for cabinets to have their own proposed legislation debated and possibly passed [Mattson, 1995]. As resumed in Table 2., the time limitation to individual initiatives is a mechanism adopted by most of Western EU Member States. Out of the fourteen parliamentary arenas analysed, eight apply some sort of constraint to the amendment initiative of their MPs. Spain is the unique case in which both content and numerical limits are applied to individual amendment initiative. In this system, there are specific policy areas reserved to the executive (especially in the financial sphere) constraining MPs’ right to introduce amendments. Besides, MPs’ amendments have to be signed by the Whip of their proponent’s parliamentary group in order to be admissible. In some cases the amendment initiative is further restricted to parliamentary groups only.3 In most of the remaining legislatures where some form of rationalization to the introduction of amendments is applied, content limits are the constraints most commonly adopted. Thus, there are reserved policy areas that cannot be modified by MPs’ amendment in France, Ireland, Portugal and the UK. These areas are in most cases related to the financial and budgetary sectors. Moreover, a minimum number of proponents must be given for amendments to be admitted in Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. Numerical restrictions are, then, particularly rigid in the German Bundestag. Here, for amendments to be considered admissible, they have to be introduced either by an entire parliamentary group or by a number of MPs corresponding to at least 5% of the membership of the whole Chamber. Twelve arenas then adopt closure motions (or lighter forms of restrictions to debates) to limit the impact of amendments on the legislation they are processing. All the legislatures analysed, with the exception of Finland and Sweden, therefore entitle either their Speaker, or parliamentary groups, or even single MPs to ask for the closure of the debate on a given bill. This procedure can be so activated whenever this bill is deemed to have been sufficiently discussed. The legislative initiative in question can thus be directly put to vote since the curtailing of the debate obtained through the closure motion modifies the original agenda of the Chamber. The selection of amendments, on the contrary, is less diffused. Its application is limited to seven of the parliamentary arenas considered. Moreover, only in two countries it is fully applied, while in the remaining five amendments can be grouped. Accordingly, in the UK – where the constraint is more rigorous – an amendment has to be necessarily selected by the Speaker (or the committee Chairman) in order to be discussed, independently from its appearance on the order of business of the House. In its turn, the French Assemblée Nationale is characterized by a procedure known as “vote bloqué”. Thanks to this mechanism, the executive can ask the Assembly to decide through a single vote on the bills under discussion accompanied only by those amendments previously accepted by the cabinet. 2.2. The delay of the legislative time

Whenever only mild procedural/resources (or none) are conceived of to protect the cabinet from some forms of delay of the legislative time, the executive will find itself in a position to hardly get its business done –or to get them done only with consistent postponements [Norton, 2001]. If not sufficiently rationalized, the organization of the Question Time can potentially support a “viscous” legislature in taking advantage of a scarcely restrictive administration of the parliamentary time. A similar observation can be made with respect to the length of debates on 3 It is the case of those amendments rejecting the whole text to which they are addressed (the so-called enmiendas de devolución).

9

the legislation. An excessive delay of the legislative time will have similar effects to those obtained through the overload of the legislative process. The legitimate prerogatives of MPs can thus degenerate in an occupation, by a polycentric parliamentary arena, of all aspects of the legislative activity [Franklin and Norton, 1993]. The obstructive potentiality conveyed by the misuse of the function of control is here tested on one form of parliamentary questioning in particular: oral questions.4 As observed above, four indicators have been selected to detect the existence of similar rationalizing procedures. Filibustering, in turn, is also a clear indicator of the variable measuring the relative strength of cabinets in parliament to which I have chosen to refer in terms of delay of the legislative time. Being impracticable to mention here all the different aspects of obstruction, the following analysis focuses on one aspect only: the organisation of the debates on the legislative initiatives. The procedures for curtailing debates show in their turn a considerable variety of concrete application. Two of these mechanisms – the motion for closure and the selection of amendments – have already been discussed in the previous chapter, with reference to the restriction imposed on amendment initiative. Now the attention is shifted on the general organisation of debates. Through the restrictions on the duration of debates and through the control of the agenda-setting, it will be possible to observe whether the executive (directly, or through the majority supporting it in the assembly) is able to influence the order of the day, preventing a misuse of the legislative time by a hostile parliament.

It is worth observing, moreover, that although the power to fix the agenda of a legislature is only indirectly a mechanism for the prevention of obstruction, its importance as a resource to rationalise the legislative time is undeniable [Laver and Shepsle, 1994]. Indeed, the establishment, in some parliamentary arenas, of what could be defined an executive priority (i.e. the provision for an agenda-setting corresponding to the prerogatives of the cabinet), represents an effective device in limiting any further delay of the already scarce legislative time that all parliaments have at their disposal [Bruyneel, 1978 and Döring, 1995b]. The application of the above-mentioned indicators within the fourteen parliamentary arenas are reported in the Table 2. in the following page. With respect to the first indicator, legislatures that are scarcely rationalized in terms of submission of questions will assume that all questions for which notice is given deserve to receive an oral answer. Considering the huge number of questions that are weekly produced in any democratic system, the possibility for all these latter to be answered orally certainly encumber (and thus delay) the parliamentary time devoted to the exercise of this particular form of the function of control [Damgaard, 1994; Griffith, Ryle et al., 1989 and Mattson, 1994]. The data presented in the Table show that only three out of the fourteen systems considered restrict the resort to oral questions in their Question Time. These systems are Ireland, Spain and the UK. In these three arenas, questioners have to make a specific request in order for their questions to be answered orally. If no explicit request is made, questioners will be automatically assumed to expect a written answer to their tabled questions [Erskine May, 1989]. In all the remaining systems, the inverse procedure prevails. All tabled questions tend therefore to be entitled to an oral answer, thus potentially coming to delay the parliamentary time, occupying a considerable portion of this latter in a long and charged Question Time.

France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK are the sole arenas rationalizing the order of business for the tabling of their oral questions. In particular, in Ireland and in the UK, the priority with which questions are tabled in each session of Question Time is fixed through a system of ballot (in Great Britain it is known as the 5 o’clock shuffle). The questions tabled are thus shuffled as it would be done in a lottery. They are drawn out one by one and numbered consecutively. In this order they will be put on the floor of the assembly. Both in the British and

4 Other types of parliamentary questioning obviously exist in all the parliamentary arenas under exam (for a detailed account of the forms of parliamentary questions established across European democracies, see Wiberg’s chapter [Wiberg, 1995] in Döring’s work on Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe [Döring, 1995: 188]) as well as Wiberg M. and Koura A, 1994.

10

in the Irish system, then, Ministers are questioned on the basis of a system of rotation (the so-called rota of Ministers’ answering) agreed between the executive and the opposition. In France and in Spain, the limitations on the order of questions derive from the role played by the respective Conference of Chairmen in determining the appearance of questions on the agenda, as well as the order in which they are tabled.

Table 2. The rationalization of the legislative time

Source: own elaboration

Some forms of rationalization in the procedures organizing the tabling of questions also exist

in Germany. Here the order of oral questions is determined by the Speaker of the House. In the practice, though, oral questions have always been ordered on the basis of the priority of ministerial responsibilities established by the executive itself. France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK also share a further mechanism of rationalization of their Question Times, namely: the establishment of numerical restrictions to the tabling of oral questions. This limitation is also present in Austria, Finland and in Luxembourg. Finally, most Western European democracies tend to limit the time allotted to the proceeding of oral questions to a few, short weekly sessions. Thus, in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, Question Time takes place on a weekly basis. The average time allotted to the debate of questions in these countries scarcely exceeds the two hours per session. In the UK, France (from 1994) and Germany, then, two weekly sessions are normally scheduled for oral questioning. None of them last more than one hour and a half. Finally, in Ireland and in Portugal oral questions answered three times a week for the same short period of time of the above-mentioned legislatures. Only Austria and Italy enjoy a diary Question Time.

With respect to the adoption of mechanisms preventing filibustering, a complete mechanism of guillotine exists only in the UK and in Ireland. However, in Austria, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain the total speaking time normally available for each MP and parliamentary group in the different readings of a bill can be ordered and reduced before the opening of the debates [IPU, 1985]. The new distribution of time is based on the relative strength of parliamentary groups and on the nature of the legislative initiative it concerns. In terms of

introduction of oral

questions

order of oral questions

numerical limits oral questions

relevance of Question

Time

guillotine/ restrictions on speech

control of the agenda-setting

Austria 0 0 X 0 X 0 Belgium 0 0 0 X 0 0 Denmark 0 0 0 X 0 0 Finland 0 0 X X 0 0 France 0 X X X X X Germany 0 X X X 0 0 Ireland X X X X X X Italy 0 0 0 0 X 0 Luxembourg 0 0 X X 0 X The Netherlands 0 0 0 X X 0 Portugal 0 X X X X X Spain X X X X X X Sweden 0 0 0 X 0 0 United Kingdom X X X X X X

11

rationalization of the agenda, three countries outshine for their extremely cabinet-oriented organization of the order of the day. These countries are the France, Ireland and the UK. In the UK, the cabinet business always have precedence on all other business of the Chamber at every given sitting of this latter, with the exclusion of the opposition days. In Ireland, a similar approach is followed, and the Prime Minister can determine the order in which governmental business appears on the agenda. In France, then, the executive enjoys the so-called ordre du jour prioritaire. By virtue of this priority, the cabinet determines which texts are going to be included in the agenda and it also fixes the order for their discussion [Avril and Giquel, 1996]. Finally, in Luxembourg, Portugal and in Spain, the order of the day of the plenary is fixed by the Conference of Chairmen of the respective parliamentary groups. 2.3 The centralization of the legislative process

One of the proposed hypotheses assumes that the distribution of policy-making powers among institutional actors affects the fruition of the procedural opportunities/resources at the disposal of the actors involved in the legislative process. On the basis of this, one can legitimately expect to find a correspondence between the strength of the committee system and the effectiveness of the governmental influence on the legislative output [Mezey, 1995]. Accordingly, whenever the committee system is constrained, the legislative process should be executive-dominated [Di Palma, 1977]. On the other hand, in a polycentric arena (where committees dispose of a certain degree of procedural and decisional autonomy vis-à-vis the plenary) any single legislator is offered the opportunity to play an autonomous role in the legislative process. Table 3., 4. and 5. respectively resumes the three dimensions used to compare the degree of legislative centralization of fourteen parliamentary arenas. Again, a value “0” is attributed to all those cases tending towards the decentralization.5 Centralized legislatures are on the contrary indicated with a “X”. What emerges in terms of specialization 6 (Table 3.) is that only two of the fourteen legislature, i.e. United Kingdom and Ireland, have scarcely specialised committees system. In the Westminster model, the leader of the parliamentary majority is the leader of the cabinet, whom wields a significant control over the legislature [Campion, 1947 and Budge, 1996]. The consideration of public bills and of delegated legislation is left to committees that have a life-span of only a few weeks. Subcommittees, on the other hand, receive no formal treatment by the British and Irish standing orders. Moreover, there is no direct correspondence between the British and Irish committees and the jurisdiction of governmental departments. The remaining twelve legislatures all rely on permanent committees. All systems are formed by a considerable number of committees. Most systems allow then for the establishment of subcommittees. The jurisdiction of their committees tends to correspond to the distribution of governmental responsibilities across governmental departments. Of all the legislatures considered, the most peculiar case is France. Although based on permanent committees, the French system shares some significant features with the more centralized British and Irish cases. In the National Assembly permanent committees are only six. The logic behind this extremely limited number of committees obliges each of the 577 members of the Assemblée Nationale to form part of only one permanent committee. These occurrence dramatically reduces the probability to have a specialised committee system [Ameller, 1964].

5 Namely, where permanent committees exist and/or they exist in a high number and relatively small size, and/or where there is parallelism of committees jurisdiction with the governmental departments, and/or where sub-committees are employed. 6 Based on ad hoc legislative committees, and/or disposing of a small number of permanent committees, and/or sharing no parallelism of jurisdiction with ministries, and/or prohibiting sub-committees.

12

Table 3. The specialization of the committee systems Source: own elaboration

The legislatures considered largely rely on committees endowed with a certain degree of

procedural autonomy. In most arenas, the committee scrutiny precedes the plenary deliberations (Table 4.). Only four out of fourteen parliament open a first reading on bills before these bills are referred to the relevant committees. In Denmark, Ireland, Spain and in the UK, the potential impact of the committee stage in the legislative process is strongly constrained by the priority enjoyed by floor deliberations. From this point of view, the less autonomous committee systems are the British and the Irish ones. Coherently with the scarce specialization of their committees (mainly of which ad hoc), British and Irish committees are subject to a rigid centralization of procedures. The allocation of committee chairs is the second sub-indicators employed to test the degree of procedural autonomy of the arenas considered. Table 4. shows that six out of fourteen arenas resort, at the committee level, to a majority-oriented allotment of chairmanships: Austria, France, Ireland, Italy and the UK. In the UK, the allocation of chairs is formally based on seniority. In the practice, though, most committee chairmen tend to be members of the majority party groups. In Ireland, the committee chairmanship depends on a system of patronage; if chairs tend to be attributed as a form of compensation to the MPs of the majority who had unsuccessfully concurred to some ministerial post. The same plenary-oriented attitude is adopted in France. The remaining legislatures allocate committee chairmanships accordingly to a pure proportional criterion. In terms of minority reports, then, only five parliamentary arenas out of fourteen exclude this form of recognition of the opposition. Thus, in Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Ireland, and in the UK, the opposition cannot express on the floor of the plenary its dissenting position on the results of the committee scrutiny. Finally, in the case of committee meetings, seven parliamentary arenas adopt some forms of publicity. They are Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

permanent vs. ad hoc

number / size of committees

parallelism of jurisdiction

existence of sub-committees

Austria 0 0 0 0 Belgium 0 0 0 0 Denmark 0 0 0 X Finland 0 0 0 X France 0 X X 0 Germany 0 0 0 0 Ireland X X X 0 Italy 0 0 0 0 Luxembourg 0 0 0 0 The Netherlands 0 0 0 0 Portugal 0 0 0 0 Spain 0 0 0 0 Sweden 0 0 0 X United Kingdom X X X 0

13

Table 4. The procedural autonomy of the committee systems Source: own elaboration

In addition to what has been observed so far in terms of specialisation and autonomy of the committee system, a third indicator completes this analysis. It refers to the deliberative powers of committees, i.e. to the delegation to committees of the power to pass legislation without any final intervention on the side of the plenary. Again, the most constraining systems are France, Ireland and the UK. In these last two countries in particular, committees can neither introduce legislation, nor rewrite the initiatives submitted to them by the plenary. Consequently, the possibilities to decentralize the enactment of bills at the committee level is not conceived of. Similarly, in both countries the agenda-setting priorities of the committees are very limited. Their agenda is fixed at the plenary level. In Table 5. the sub-indicator for which legislatures tend to adopt the most decentralized tendencies is the re-drafting prerogatives of committees. Eight out of fourteen countries do not adopt any mechanism to rationalise this particular aspect of decentralization. Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden authorize their committees to rewrite the bills they scrutinize, independently from the origin of these bills. In most of these countries, the texts adopted by the committees in their final reports stand as a basis for the following debate and voting taking place on the floor of the plenary. In terms of autonomous setting of committees agenda, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy and Portugal formally allow their committees to fix the agenda under the responsibility of their own presidencies. In Portugal, this right is only partially constrained.7 In the remaining legislatures, committees shall sometimes adapt their order of the day to some general majority principle granting priority to governmental bills (Belgium, France, Ireland and the UK). In other cases, they have to implement an order of the day imposed by the plenary (Austria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden). With respect to the last sub-indicator, i.e. the possibility to enact laws in committee, almost all the arenas here considered adopt a centralized attitude. Italy

7 The order of the day is fixed by the Portuguese committees themselves. However, the order of the items presented in the agenda depend upon the agreement reached among the various parliamentary groups, according to their proportional numerical strength.

subordination of the committee

stage

allocation of committee chairs

existence of minority

reports

public vs. private committee meetings

Austria 0 X 0 0 Belgium 0 0 0 X Denmark X 0 X 0 Finland 0 0 0 0 France 0 X X 0 Germany 0 0 0 X Ireland X X X X Italy 0 X 0 0 Luxembourg 0 0 X 0 The Netherlands 0 0 0 X Portugal 0 0 0 X Spain X 0 0 X Sweden 0 0 0 0 United Kingdom X X X X

14

(entirely) and Spain (to a considerable extent) are the sole countries delegating the final vote on their legislative initiatives to the committees. Italy is the most widely known case where committees are endowed with the power to enact legislation. It certainly represents the clearest extreme case decentralization of the deliberative process.

Table 5. The distribution of deliberative powers in the committee systems Source: own elaboration

3. Towards a typology of legislatures 3.1 From observation to classification In the course of the previous section, the three main variables and corresponding indicators have been described. In order to arrive to a typology of legislatures based on the procedural mechanisms so far described, it is necessary to quantify these variables. The next step shall therefore concern the selection of the units of measurement, i.e. their coding. Figure 3. below reports the coding of all the indicators, subdivided by key-variable. A score “1” is assigned whenever a mechanism of constraint is applied. A score “0”, on the contrary, reflects the absence of any indicator. Now, the same method for scoring cannot be as plainly applied to all items. A further element needs to be taken into account: the possibility that the same constraints take different shapes within different parliamentary arenas. For instance, policy areas (item LI1 in Figure 4.) can be either restricted to the whole financial area, or they can concern the budget bill only, or else they can affect only very circumscribed legislative sectors. Similarly, the number of MPs allowed to initiate legislation and to present amendments (items LI2 and AI1) can be constrained at different levels (an entire parliamentary group, a much lower threshold of MPs, or the extreme solution of a complete freedom of individual initiative). On the basis of these considerations, and in order to arrive to a successful comparison grounded on a set of common indicators outstanding single-case specificities, the final scores assigned will be the result of an operation of partial re-interpretation of the values originally attributed to the indicators.

enactment of legislation

introduction of legislation

redrafting of legislation

committee agenda-setting

Austria X 0 0 X Belgium X X 0 X Denmark X X X 0 Finland X 0 0 0 France X X X X Germany X X 0 0 Ireland X X X X Italy 0 0 0 0 Luxembourg X 0 0 X The Netherlands X X X X Portugal 0 X X 0 Spain 0 X 0 X Sweden X 0 0 X United Kingdom X X X X

15

Consequently, the different possibilities of LI2 constraints8 have been joined for the purposes of the analysis. A score of “1” is therefore attributed to all those cases in which legislative initiatives are generically supported by at least more than one MP. Similarly, any form of time containment for legislative debates will be counted as a constraint preventing the overcharge of the legislative process. It will be therefore scored with a “1” – independently from the relative magnitude or length of this mechanism with respect to the main features of the legislative sessions. Table 6. resumes the direction of all the indicators. In the case of the third dimension linked to the degree of centralization, it is the absence of any power attributed to committees that is scored with a positive value. It is important therefore to bear clearly in mind the values attributed to “1” and “0” in terms of legislative autonomy of the executive. Table 6. Scoring the legislative autonomy of the executive: the direction of the indicators

OVERLOAD OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS “1” : non-overloaded process (i.e. presence of rationalizing mechanisms of constraints) “0” : overloaded process (i.e. absence of rationalizing mechanisms of constraints)

DELAY OF THE LEGISLATIVE TIME “1” : prompt legislative time (i.e. presence of rationalizing mechanisms of constraints) “0” : delayed legislative time (i.e. presence of rationalizing mechanisms of constraints)

CENTRALIZATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS “1” : centralized legislative process (weak committee system) “0” : decentralized legislative process (strong committee system) Source: own elaboration

Figure 4., 5. and 6., then, summarize the operational assumptions so far described. The scoring of items related to the delay of the legislative time presents less ambiguities or necessity for further interpretations if compared to the first group of indicators. In the case of parliamentary questioning, the range of scores attributed depends upon a ranking of the four components of the indicator previously individuated. These components respectively refer to the phase of the introduction of questions (QT1), the order of presentation of questions (QT2), the numeric limitations to the debate of questions (QT3), and the place occupied by Question Time in the activities of the Chamber (QT4). Accordingly, the existence or absence of any indicator positively correlated to these items will be dummy-scored by attributing a “1” to all those legislatures where an explicit request for oral questions is made, or where a rational order for the presentation of questions exists, where a threshold to the maximum number of questions is introduced, and/or where the Question Time occupies a relevant place in the parliamentary activities. Figure 4. Coding the indicators for the overload of the legislative process (OLP)

8 Namely: initiative limited to one parliamentary groups of a certain consistency only, to groups in general, or submitted to the approval of the party whip.

1. OVERLOAD OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS A) LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVE Reserved policy areas: LI1:1 reserved areas (fiscal, budgetary, others) 0 no restrictions Numerical restrictions on MPs legislative initiative:

16

B) AMENDMENT INITIATIVE Restriction on amendment initiative: AI1:1 introduction reserved to one group only, signed by the Whip of the group or by a certain number of MPs 0 no restrictions Closure: AI2:1 yes closure 0 no closure Selection of amendments: AI3:1 yes selection of amendments 0 no selection of amendments

Source: own elaboration Figure 5. Coding the indicators for the delay of the legislative time (DLT) 2. DELAY OF THE LEGISLATIVE TIME A) QUESTIONS AND QUESTION TIME Limits to oral questions: QT1:1 increased difficulty in introducing oral questions (written, explicit request) 0 no constraint to the introduction of oral questions Limits to the order of questions: QT2:1 mechanisms to fix order of presentation of questions (ballots, groups’ decisions, gov. priority...) 0 no mechanisms to fix order of presentation of questions Numerical restrictions to questions: QT3:1 limited maximum number of questions per MP or group (quotas) 0 no limits to number of questions per MP or group (quotas) Limits to Question Time: QT4:1 marginal place occupied by Question Time in the organisation of parliamentary work 0 relevant place occupied by Question Time in the organisation of parliamentary work B) FILIBUSTERING: Guillotine and speech restrictions: FIL1:1 yes guillotine 0 no guillotine Agenda-setting prerogatives: FIL2:1 executive control the legislature or majority decisions 0 consensual agreement searched of Chamber itself fixes the agenda Source: own elaboration

The most clear-cut application of scorings, however, concerns the third group of indicators, i.e. those measuring the degree of centralization of the legislative process. The empirical features analysed through the three indicators of specialization, procedural autonomy and deliberative powers are easily measured through a dichotomous score (1-0). This score gives evidence for the existence (1) or the absence (0) of the mechanisms that prevent the establishment of a polycentric

LI2:1 no MPs initiative: only groups or more that one MP 0 freedom of individual initiative Time restrictions on legislative initiative: LI3:1 reduced number of minority reserved sessions for MPs’ initiatives or fixed periods of the year for MPs’ initiatives 0 no restrictions

17

legislative arena. The value “1” is attributed to all systems centralizing their plenary-committees relations. Inversely, the value “0” corresponds to a decentralized approach to the organization of the legislative process. The more problematic items are possibly the second and third indicators of specialization, i.e. the items concerning the number of committees and their correspondence to the executive jurisdiction. 9

Figure 6. Scoring the indicators for the centralization of the legislative process (CLP) 3. CENTRALISATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS Specialisation: SP1:1 ad hoc committees 0 permanent committees SP2:1 low number of committees (<10 committees) 0 high number of committees (≥ 10 committees) SP3:1 scarce (or no) parallelism of jurisdiction 0 strong (absolute) parallelism of jurisdiction SP4:1 no subcommittees 0 yes subcommittees Procedural autonomy: PA1:1 comm. stage before plenary sitting 0 committee stage after plenary sitting PA2:1 allocation of chairs by majority rule 0 allocation of chairs by proportional rule PA3:1 no minority report 0 yes minority report PA4:1 public committee meeting 0 private committee meeting Deliberative powers: DP1:1 no power to enact legislation 0 yes power to enact legislation DP2:1 no right of legislative initiative 0 yes right of legislative initiative DP3:1 no right to redraft legislation 0 yes right to redraft legislation DP4:1 executive control of committee agenda 0 plenary control of committee agenda Source: own elaboration

9 France appears as an intermediate case since it relies on only six permanent committees. A certain interpretative effort has to be made in order for this intermediate case to fit the dichotomous assessment of the indicators. First of all, a threshold in SP2 is established between a high number of committees and a low number of these latter. Considering the average number of MPs in the various legislatures and the average number of committees in the same arenas, “10” is set as the minimum number of committees required in a legislature to be defined as an arena endowed with a high number of committees. Secondly, it can be observed with regard to item SP3 the scarce parallelism of jurisdiction makes France more similar to the arenas adopting ad hoc committees than to the systems characterised by a strong or practically absolute parallelism with Ministries. Accordingly, France is positively scored.

18

3.2 Pondering the indicators Before proceeding with the classification of legislatures, a final consideration needs to be made. The adoption of a single score “1” overestimates the impact of the indicators adopted in a large number of parliamentary arenas. On the other hand, it underestimates the impact of the constraints that, applied to a limited number of arenas, really make a difference. In other words, if – for instance – the place occupied by the Question Time in the ordinary distribution of the parliamentary time is an issue that has been similarly rationalized in almost all the legislatures concerned, other indicators will have to be considered as the decisive mechanisms affecting the possible overload of the legislative time. Likewise, if the indicators were not pondered, a country based on a system of ad hoc committees (i.e. the UK and the Republic of Ireland only) would be assimilated, in terms of centralization, to any country where the committees are not allowed to enact legislation (i.e. all the legislatures considered, apart from Italy and Spain). In order to avoid a biased country-coding, thus, all the indicators are here pondered by the frequency with which they are applied throughout the legislatures This technique of measurement allows to give to each indicator a different weight on the basis of the difficulty with which the procedural constraint it represents has been achieved by the parliamentary arenas under study.10 The results of this process are presented in Table 7. in the following page. In this Table, the twenty-four indicators have been ranked according to the frequency with which each of them gets a positive score in the fourteen legislatures. The scores attributed to the indicators of the third dimension, moreover, have been “re-proportioned” to the indicators of the other two dimensions in order not to over-represent this third dimension in the scale of legislative performance. Thus, the values attributed to the six indicators of the first and second institutional dimensions have been halved in the twelve indicators of the third dimension. This device permits to guarantee the respect of the proportion theoretically assumed among the three institutional key-dimensions. The final coding of the three groups of indicators, re-proportioned and pondered on the basis of the relative frequency11 is presented on Tables 8. and 9. Table 7. Institutional indicators ranked by frequency

10 This device is merely “technical”. In other words, it highlights only the technical variance in the application of procedural constraints. However, the weighting up of various procedural constraints on the basis of the frequency of their employ does not necessarily correspond to classifying them according to a scale of theoretical importance. 11 The frequency of application of each indicator has been calculated in percentage terms. The pondered scores have been obtained by grouping the frequencies in three weights, taking as maximum and minimum intervals of the scale the two extremes of the variance between the items belonging to the same dimension.

Overcharge of the Legislative Process Frequency (%) Weight AI2 – closure 85,7 1 AI1 – limits to amendments 64,3 2 LI1 – reserved policy areas 50 2 AI3 – selection of amendments 50 2 LI2 – numeric limits 28,6 3 LI3 – time limits 28,6 3

MEAN: 51.2 MAX. WEIGHT PER COUNTRY: 13

19

Table 8. Weighted compound scores for the overcharge of the legislative process and the delay of the legislative time INTRODUCTION OF BILLS AND AMENDMENTS QUESTIONS AND DEBATES

rese

rved

ar

eas

num

lim

its l

ex

time

limits

lex

limits

am

in

itiat

ive

clos

ure

sele

ct io

n am

end

TO

T

intr

od

oral

q

orde

r of

q

num

ber

of

q

plac

e q

time

guill

otin

e

cont

rol

agen

da

TO

T

A 0 3 0 2 1 0 6 0 0 1 0 2 0 3 B 0 0 0 2 1 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 DK 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 FL 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 F 2 0 3 2 1 2 10 0 2 1 1 2 2 8 D 2 3 0 2 1 2 10 0 2 1 1 0 0 4 IRL 2 3 3 2 1 2 13 3 2 1 1 2 2 11IT 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 LUX 0 0 0 2 1 0 3 0 0 1 1 0 2 4 NL 2 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 1 2 0 3 P 2 0 0 2 1 2 7 0 2 1 1 2 2 8 E 2 3 0 2 1 2 10 3 2 1 1 2 2 11SW 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 UK 2 0 3 2 1 2 10 3 2 1 1 2 2 11 Source: own elaboration

Delay of the Legislative Time QT4 – time limits 85,7 1 QT3 – numeric limits 64,3 1 FIL1 – guillotine 57,1 2 QT2 – order of questions 42,9 2 FIL2 – plenary agenda-setting 42,9 2 QT1 – introduction of questions 21,4 3

MEAN: 52,4 MAX. WEIGHT PER COUNTRY: 11 Centralization of the Legislative Process DP1 – enactment legislation 78,6 1 DP2 – introduction legislation 64,3 1 DP4 – committee agenda-setting 64,3 1 PA4 – meetings 50 2 DP3 – redrafting legislation 42,9 2 PA2 – allocation of chairs 35,7 2 PA3 – reports 35,7 2 PA1 – committee stage 28,6 3 SP2 – number committees 21,4 3 SP3 – jurisdiction 21,4 3 SP4 – subcommittees 21,4 3 SP1 – ad hoc vs. permanent 14,3 3

MEAN: 39,9 MAX. WEIGHT PER COUNTRY: 26

20

Table 9. Weighted compound scores for the centralization of the legislative process

SPECIALIZATION PROCEDURAL AUTONOMY DELIBERATIVE POWERS

perm

vs.

ad

hoc

com

m

num

com

m

para

llel

juri

sd

subc

omm

com

m st

age

allo

catio

n ch

airs

min

ority

re

port

publ

ic v

s. pr

ivat

e m

eetin

g

enac

t lex

intr

od le

x

redr

aft l

ex

com

m

agen

da

TO

T

A 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0,5 0 0 0,5 2 B 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0,5 0,5 0 0,5 2,5 DK 0 0 0 1,5 1,5 0 1 0 0,5 0,5 1 0 6 FL 0 0 0 1,5 0 0 0 0 0,5 0,5 0 0 2,5 F 0 1,5 1,5 0 0 1 1 0 0,5 0,5 1 0,5 7,5 D 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0,5 0,5 0 0 2 IRL 1,5 1,5 1,5 0 1,5 1 1 1 0,5 0,5 1 0,5 11,5 IT 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 LUX 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0,5 0 0 0,5 2 NL 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0,5 0,5 1 0 2 P 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0,5 1 0 3,5 E 0 0 0 0 1,5 0 0 1 0 0,5 0 0,5 3,5 SW 0 0 0 1,5 0 0 0 0 0,5 0 0 0 2 UK 1,5 1,5 1,5 0 1,5 1 1 1 0,5 0,5 1 0,5 11,5 Source: own elaboration 4.3 Towards a typology of parliamentary arenas

Arrived at this stage of the operationalization of the theoretical dimensions, it is at last possible to rank the fourteen legislatures according to their inclination towards the adoption of procedural constraints. Table 10. (supported by the graph reported on Figure 7.) presents the distribution of constraints by the three dimensions separately and cumulatively. Comparing legislatures on the basis of their structure of institutional constraints implies the following results. Firstly and unsurprisingly, Ireland and the UK occupy a leading position at the top of the list as the most “reactive” – to recall Mezey’s terminology – parliamentary arenas. They are therefore the systems in which the most constraining arrangements for the rationalization of the executive-legislative relations are established. They are the arenas where governmental priorities in the law-making process are expected to be higher. The constraining nature of the Irish and British distribution of resources/opportunities returns in all the three institutional dimensions. A majority, cabinet-oriented organization of these arenas clearly emerges with respect to: a) the procedures for legislative initiation and amending (i.e. mechanisms preventing the overcharge of the legislative process); b) the nature of debates and the exercise of the function of control (i.e. the procedures limiting the delay of the legislative time); and c) the centripetal distribution of legislative competences between the plenary and the committee system (the degree of centralization of the legislative process). Shortly behind Ireland and the UK, France is also at the top of the efficiency scale. This system also applies high level of constraints to all the institutional variables. In the other eleven parliamentary arenas, the adoption of procedural constraints is not so uniformly distributed. These relative disproportions among partial scores clearly emerge in the graph presented in Figure 7. Here each cluster refers to a peculiar parliamentary arena. It gives evidence for the distribution of any of the three groups of procedural constraints within each single legislature. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden are characterized by the smallest resort to institutional constraints. A disproportioned distribution of constraints is observable in Spain, Portugal and Germany. These

21

three systems tend to apply a consistent set of procedural mechanisms to prevent both the overcharge of their legislative process and the delay of their legislative time. However, their degree of centralization is proportionally very scarce, if compared to the amount of resources these countries invest in the other two institutional dimensions.

Table 10. Comparing legislatures: partial and cumulative scores of legislative efficiency Source : own elaboration Figure 7. The distribution of procedural constraints across parliamentary arenas

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

A B DK FL F D IRL IT LUX NL P E SW UK

overcharge legislative process delay legislative time centralization legislative process

Source: own elaboration

Overcharge Legislative Process:

Delay Legislative Time:

Centralization Legislative Process TOTAL:

Max.: 13 Max.: 11 Max.: 13 Max.: 37

13 IRL 11 IRL 11,5 IRL 36,5 IRL 10 F 11 E 11,5 UK 32,5 UK 10 D 11 UK 7,5 F 25,5 F 10 E 8 F 6 DK 24,5 E 10 UK 8 P 3,5 P 18,5 P

7 P 4 D 3,5 E 16 D 6 A 4 LUX 2,5 B 11 A 3 B 3 A 2,5 FL 9 LUX 3 IT 3 NL 2 A 8 DK 3 LUX 2 FL 2 D 8 NL 3 NL 2 IT 2 LUX 6,5 B 3 SW 1 B 2 NL 6 IT 1 DK 1 DK 2 SW 6 SW 0 FL 0 SW 1 IT 4,5 FL

+

-

22

On the basis of these observations, it seems plausible to compare the fourteen legislatures from a double perspective. First of all, it is possible to classify the legislatures according to their general, global resort to institutional constraints. Secondly, it is possible to compare the intra-parliamentary distribution of the three institutional dimensions on the basis of the proportions of procedural components adopted in each arena. As a result, a classification based on the coding, scoring and ranking proposed so far, can be further dissected so as to originate a typology of legislatures based on their orientation towards a particular dimension of constraints. To this purpose, a simple scatter plot (graphically enhanced by the 3-D selection of the axes) can successfully illustrate the correlation between the three variables. Figure 8. in the following page reports on its axes the three dimensions into which institutional constraints have been subdivided. The graph gives visual evidence for the distribution of the fourteen cases along the scale of legislative efficiency according to the proportion with which each dimension is applied within each legislature. As the graph illustrates, each of the plotted dimensions can be subdivided in two parts. There are a “highly constraining” area (going from the maximum score obtainable for a given dimension to the intermediate score)12 and a “lowly constraining” area (from the intermediate score to 0). All the cases necessarily fall within one of the areas resulting by this subdivision of the axes. At a closer glance, the scatter plot reveals the recurrence of certain combinations: three legislatures (UK, Ireland and France) share the highest levels of application of the indicators belonging to all the three institutional dimensions. Figure 8. 3-D scatter plot: models of institutional assets of opportunities/resources

IRLUK

1414

F

DLT

2

4

1212

6

8

D

1010

10

12 ESP

88

CLPOLP

P

A

DK

66

BSW

44

NLLUX

IT

22

FL

Source own elaboration

12 In the case of DLT the maximum score is 11 (see Table 4.1), so that the threshold between high and low values is 4.4. In OLP, the maximum score is 13 and the intermediate score 6.4. In CLP, the highest value is 13 and the threshold 6.4 (the indicators of this items have been halved). The partition line is indicated by the hatching.

23

Three other countries (Spain and Portugal and Germany) present a similar proportions of constraints: they are all characterised by high levels of constraints preventing the overcharge of the legislative process. However, all the three cases have obtained very low scores in terms of centralization of their plenary-committees relations (observable from the position they occupy in the bottom-left area on the floor of the plot). The remaining arenas, then, are characterized by very low values in all the three dimensions of legislative efficiency, particularly in terms of centralization. Most of them are placed on the bottom-right area of the plot.

At this point, it is possible to further subdivide the scale of legislative performance on the basis of the internal distribution of types of constraints within the various legislatures. First of all, it is worth considering that the indicators corresponding to the first two institutional dimensions tend to co-vary. In other words, the amount of procedural mechanisms applied to prevent the overcharge of the legislative process tend to correspond to the amount of constraints employed to rationalize the organization of the legislative time. Accordingly, all the mechanisms regulating the functioning of the legislative activity within the plenary have been aggregated. The degree of centralization of the legislative process has then been used as a second criterion in the definition of the typology. It is proposed in the following Table 11.:

Table 11. The typology of parliamentary arenas according to their distribution of institutional constraints

Source: own elaboration

high OLP/WLT

low OLP/WLT

high CLP

ADVERSATIVE EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS

▼ antagonist opposition

▼ COMPLIANT LEGISLATURE

UK / IRL / F

CENTRALIZED EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS

▼ supportive opposition

▼ MODERATELY RESILIENT

LEGISLATURE

---

low CLP

DECENTRALIZED EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS

▼ accommodating opposition

▼ MODERATELY COMPLIANT

LEGISLATURE

E / D / P

BARGAINING EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS

▼ dynamic opposition

▼ RESILIENT LEGISLATURE

A / B / LUX / NL/ DK / FL/ SW / IT

24

Four types of legislatures can be conceived of on the basis of their resort to institutional opportunities/resources. Starting from the less constraining arenas (low procedural constraints and low centralization) to the more rationalized ones (high procedural constraints and high centralization), the typology clusters legislatures as follows:

1) RESILIENT LEGISLATURES: these parliamentary arenas are characterised by a context of bargaining and negotiation in their executive-legislative relation. The nature of their opposition is therefore expected to be a dynamic one. It is ready to influence, modify and even substitute the policies of governmental origins, as a result of the absence (or scarcity) of institutional constraints to limits any attempt to overcharge the legislative process, delay the legislative time, or decentralize the legislative process. The majority of the countries examined in the course of this analysis fall within this category. Examples of this first type are Italy, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. 2) MODERATELY RESILIENT LEGISLATURES: less active legislatures than those belonging to the first type, these arena have a centralized structure but they only limitedly adopt procedural constraints rationalizing their legislative process and time. As a consequence, the executive-legislative relation that are established within them are certainly centralized, while their opposition can be reasonably expected to beat least a supportive, if not thoroughly dynamic counterpart of the majority. There is no example of this type of legislatures among the arenas considered. 3) MODERATELY COMPLIANT LEGISLATURES: more constraining against the opposition and the activities originated in the parliamentary than the legislatures belonging to other two types so far introduced. These arenas present the inverse situation with respect to the modality of compliant assemblies. Their executive-legislative relations are decentralized. The establishment of a strong committee system contrasts with the important role played within these systems by the mechanisms rationalizing the legislative process and time. Accordingly, these legislatures can rely on an accommodating opposition. A considerable freedom of action is guaranteed to this latter as a consequence of the polycentric nature of the legislative process. The opposition, however, is responsible and scarcely conflicting vis-à-vis the majority in power. Examples of these arenas are Germany, Portugal and Spain. 4) COMPLIANT LEGISLATURES: the fourth, strictly constraining type of legislatures, then, takes procedural constraints in such a high account that the emerging executive-legislative relations follow an adversative logic. Their parliamentary opposition is similarly forced to behave as an antagonist opposition, with little or no prerogatives left to exert an impact on the cabinet-oriented policy activity. Great Britain, Ireland, and to a lesser extent France, are the best example of this type of legislatures. The attribution of each single parliamentary arena to any specific class of the typology is the result of a process of interpretation of the data previously operationalized. This is particularly evident with respect to some intermediate cases (Austria and Denmark in particular). In order to cluster the legislatures it has in fact been necessary to establish a borderline between the four categories created by the typologies. This cutting edge depends upon the general scores obtainable by the different parliamentary arenas in any group of institutional constraints. This implies that a slightly different coding of each indicator could have lead to a partially different allocations of arenas within the typology – at least with respect to intermediate case. The present typology, thus, does not pretend to stand for a rigid, unchangeable categorization of legislatures into predetermined labels. It rather aims to individuate four tendencies corresponding to four

25

different patterns of legislative-executive relations in the carrying out of the parliamentary, legislative activity. A certain flexibility has therefore to be taken into account in the attribution of a legislature to a peculiar class of the typology. 3.4 The statistical validation of the cluster analysis

In order to test the validity of the general approach on which legislatures are here compared, a last element needs to be introduced. Statistically, the scale of legislative performance (and the inner differences across the units of observation within this scale) can be tested through the application of a particular technique: cluster analysis. This appears as the most appropriate technique to display the distance between the positions occupied by the different parliamentary arenas on the scale, and to group (i.e. cluster) these latter according to their proximity/distance to their neighbours [Everitt, 1993].13 The clusters are graphically represented by a dendrogram, reported on Figure 9. A first inspection to the dendrogram shows the existence of a gap along the horizontal axis between 20 and 25 clustering the parliamentary arenas into two groups. A second gap exists between approximately 5 and 15. It suggests the presence of three clusters. From this point of view, the agglomeration schedule is a key-instrument to validate the interpretation of the classification tree and to corroborate the rightness of the clustering process.

Figure 9. Hierarchical cluster analysis: dendrogram (average linkage method) Rescaled Distance Cluster Combine C A S E 0 5 10 15 20 25 Label Num +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ DK 3 _________ FL 4 __| |____ SW 13 ___________| |____ B 2 ________________| |____ LUX 9 __| | | IT 8 ____________________ | | ____ NL 10 ______________| | |___________ A 1 _________________________ | | |_______________ P 11 _______________________________| | | D 6 ___________________________________________| | ESP 12 _________________________________| | IRL 7 ______________________ | UK 14 ______| |____________________________________| F 5 ______________________ | Source: own elaboration

13 Cluster analysis is still not frequently applied in political science; some well-known examples of the application of this technique can nonetheless be found, especially in application to the study of governmental coalitions [see among others: Laver, 1991; Laver and Budge,1992; Laver and Schofield, 1990]. In the hierarchical cluster analysis, the data undergo through a series partitions, running from a single cluster including all the units of observation, to arrive to a distinction (clusters) into finer groupings of cases [Laver and Schofield, ibid. and Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1990].

26

Figure 10. thus shows how, at the first stage, cases 3 and 4 (i.e. Denmark and Finland) are combined as the first pair of items. The cluster created by their joining next appears in stage 4, where the cluster created in stages 1 is integrated by Sweden (case number 13). The resulting cluster next appears at stage 6, and the process continues according to the same logic for the other pairs of cases successively clustered. A straightforward, unequivocal proof of a good cluster solution is given by a large sudden gap in the distance coefficient. As shown in the agglomeration schedule, the largest gaps in the coefficients column occur between stages between 11 and 12 (indicating a 3-cluster solution) and then between stages 12 and 13 (a last 2-cluster solution). These clusters are the same graphically represented in the dendrogram. Reading this latter, it is possible to observe how the splitting of the dendrogram forms two clusters. The cluster on the bottom includes an exclusive group of highly constraining arenas (Ireland and the UK, to which France is also further added). The other cluster on the top, contains the other, less constraining legislatures. It is however, in its turn, additionally subdivided into many smaller clusters. The Nordic countries, the Benelux countries, Italy and then Austria, thus join one by one the decentralized arenas. The last parliaments to adhere to it are Portugal first and then Germany and Spain. Accordingly, the cluster at the bottom of the dendrogram can be interpreted as the cluster grouping the compliant legislatures. The remaining legislatures on the top cluster can be temporarily individuated as resilient legislatures. They are Italy, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. Generally speaking, therefore, the results of the cluster analysis here proposed confirm the conclusions drawn through the exam of the cases reported in the typology. Figure 10. The agglomeration schedule: the numerical summary of the clusters solutions

Agglomeration Schedule

3 4 6,250 0 0 42 9 7,250 0 0 67 14 9,000 0 0 83 13 10,333 1 0 68 10 11,500 0 0 72 3 12,750 2 4 72 8 14,833 6 5 95 7 15,667 0 3 131 2 16,821 0 7 101 11 19,097 9 0 126 12 19,750 0 0 121 6 24,118 10 11 131 5 31,255 12 8 0

Stage12345678910111213

Cluster 1 Cluster 2Cluster Combined

Coefficients Cluster 1 Cluster 2

Stage Cluster FirstAppears

Next Stage

Source: own elaboration

27

5. Conclusion What can we learn from a comparison of legislatures based on their structure of procedural

constraints? In the paper, it has been possible to obtain the following results. To start with, the legislative performance of institutional actors has been identified through three key-hypotheses. They were the independent variables through which governmental and parliamentary legislative performance has been measured. These hypotheses corresponded to the organization of the procedural opportunities/resources among the institutional actors intervening in the decision-making process. The first two hypotheses were strictly connected. They covered two crucial, interrelated components of the procedural asset of any parliamentary arena. One concerned the organization of the legislative process. The other referred to the procedures defining the cabinet’s accountability vis-à-vis the assembly. The third variable took into account the level of centralization/decentralization of the parliamentary arena. It focused, in other words, on the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the committee system in a given legislature.

In the case of the first dimension, the choice of the indicators has been centred on one element in particular. The impact of the legislature on the governmental decisional performance has been examined from the point of view of the capacity of the parliamentary arena to overcharge the legislative process. The legislative overloading, in other words, has been employed as a technique that a very active parliament may oppose to obstruct the governmental legislative input. This technique can be applied through an uncontrolled resort to the right of legislative and amendment initiative. In other words, through the congestion of the legislative process, this fundamental aspect of the parliamentary sovereignty (the right of initiative) can be used to disturb the participation of the executive to the decisional function. The more a system is majority-oriented, the more its cabinet will rely on a set of procedural resources constraining the parliamentary arena from potentially misuse its prerogatives in terms of legislative initiation.

There is a second dimension where the structure of procedural constraints influences the executive-legislative relations within the parliamentary arena: the organization of the legislative time. This dimension implies the resort to a second set of procedural mechanisms to rationalize the sphere of governmental accountability. These mechanisms would prevent a dynamic parliament from making use of its other fundamental function, the function of control, to limit the range of decisional action of the executive. In this case, though, time is the key-element which can be potentially employed as an obstructing technique. Accordingly, a system adopting a rationalized structure of cabinet vs. parliament relations will prevent its MPs from delaying the legislative time through two practices. On the one side, the parliament can potentially interfere in the organization of the legislative time through the uncontrolled resort to parliamentary questioning. On the other side, the legislative time is affected by the length of speeches. This last aspect could degenerate into filibustering.

Finally, not only can the plenary as a whole inhibit the decisional activity of the executive. Committees as well can act as veto-players face to the legislation of governmental origin. In the course of this research, the structure of the legislative process has been treated separately from the other institutional dimensions where the executive and the legislature interact. A parliament endowed with a strong committee system is a parliament where a plurality of small-scale institutional actors (i.e. the committees) intervenes in the decisional process. Under similar circumstances, the majority vs. opposition dichotomy can degenerate. In highly decentralized legislative processes, it could evolve into a polycentric antagonism between a weakened cabinet and an autonomous parliament, where this latter is organized in strong micro cores of legislative power. This tendency is particularly evident in those systems where committees are endowed with the power to enact legislation. To this purpose, the third dimension analysed has concerned the individuation of mechanisms guaranteeing the control of the plenary over the committee systems. Both the members of the opposition and the MPs in general can defy the legislative power of the cabinet. A parliament will be thus much more resilient to the decisional prerogatives

28

of the executive when all its MPs (independently from the party discipline that subordinates them to their parties) are able to act as autonomous veto-players. In this case, the number of actors able to hinder – or at least lengthen – the carrying out of cabinet-initiated projects increases considerably. The parliamentary arena becomes a centre for negotiation and inter-party bargaining. MPs belonging to both the majority and the opposition end up by taking an active part in the decisional process. This course of action goes to the detriment of the executive and to the coherence and relevance of the policies that this latter may want to enact.

The procedural dimensions have been applied to fourteen cases of parliamentary (and semi-parliamentary) arenas. More concretely, the selected sample of legislatures has included all the national Low Chambers of the Western EU Member States. The three institutional dimensions were measured through three different sets of corresponding indicators. Three of them reported the existence/absence of mechanisms constraining the parliamentary right to initiate legislation on behalf of governmental initiatives. Other three took into account the structure of amendment initiative. Six indicators, then, have assessed the potential impact of an autonomous parliamentary arena vis-à-vis the delay of the legislative time. These indicators have focused on the regulation of parliamentary questioning and on the organization of parliamentary debates. They have aimed to identify the level of potential obstruction of the legislative time that the right to speech and the function of control contain in nuce. The remaining institutional dimension has been analysed through the assessment of twelve indicators. These latter have been further subdivided into three subgroups made of four indicators each. They are the specialization of the committee system, the procedural autonomy of this latter from the plenary, and the attribution of deliberative powers to committees. As the result, it has emerged that the largest majority of the arenas considered is based on a system of highly institutionalised, permanent committees. A significant group of these legislatures, moreover, tend to organize themselves quite autonomously vis-à-vis the plenary, and to attribute importance to the role of the opposition within them. Only a few legislatures, on the contrary, endow their committee with full legislative powers.

All the above-described indicators have been operationalized. The objective was to obtain a first classification of the selected countries grounded on their resort to procedural constraints. Through the coding and ranking of the different indicators, the distribution of constraints occurring within each parliamentary arena has emerged. This aspect has allowed to enhance the comparison among legislatures, transforming a simple classification of parliamentary arenas into a typology. The outcome has been a four-folded typology built upon the different proportions of mechanisms preventing the overload of the legislative process and the delay of the legislative time. These two dimensions, in its turn, have been combined with the degree of centralization of the legislative process. They have been labelled as follows: resilient legislatures are those parliamentary arenas characterised by executive-legislative relations based on bargaining and negotiation. Their opposition is dynamic; it tends to influence (modify and even substitute) governmental policies. Institutional constraints in these arenas are scarce. Moderately resilient legislatures, in their turn, are less active legislatures. They have a centralized structure, however, they only limitedly manage to rationalize the legislative process and time. Their opposition, moreover, tends to be supportive. Moderately compliant legislatures, then, present the inverse situation with respect to moderately resilient assemblies. Their executive-legislative relations are decentralized. They abundantly resort, however, to mechanisms rationalizing the legislative process and time. In addition, they have an accommodating opposition. In compliant legislatures, on the other hand, procedural constraints are taken in high account. Accordingly, the executive-legislative relations are oriented towards a strongly adversative logic. In these legislatures, the opposition behaves as an antagonist actor. It has however little or no prerogatives to exert any impact on the decisional activity of the cabinet.

By intersecting procedural constraints with the degree of centralization of committee activity, the typology systematizes the potentiality of parliaments to act as veto-players. The

29

largest part of the literature applying this concept to the empirical analysis has tended to identify veto-players with the parties represented in the cabinet and in the parliamentary arena. Parties, in Tsebelis’ theory, are the main responsible for the characteristics of the approved legislation [Tsebelis 1995 and 1999]. This paper rearranges such an approach by restoring the primacy of the parliament as legitimate holder of the legislative function. To put it differently, the theoretical frame that has been here adopted in acknowledges the sovereignty of the parliament in the law-making, its character of ultimate authority in the decisional process of a State [Wiberg, 2002]. Cabinets are certainly nowadays the most active legislators. This occurrence, however, does not relieve the parliament from its responsibility in terms of performance of the legislative function. Some legislatures can be cooperative with the executive, while many others can be less inclined to support the executive, especially when no procedural constraints are contemplated to subordinate the parliamentary arena to the exigencies of the cabinet. While cabinets are the principal and most successful legislative actors, parliaments are the real veto-players, potentially enable to block the legislation introduced. The more the parliament is willing (and allowed) to exert its veto power prerogatives, the less the executive will be legislatively efficient.

The typology proposed in this paper might be certainly further defined and improved in future investigations, the indicators partially revised, intervening variables added and intermediate cases repositioned. As Walter Bagehot observed, “on all great subjects much remains to be said”. The main goal of this work was to give a modest contribution to the great subject of parliaments. If the theoretical framework applied and its empirical analysis have managed to plead the cause of the institutional approach to the study of executive-legislative relations, this paper will have reached its scope.

Bibliography: Ameller M., Les Questions Instrument du Contrôle Parlementaire, Paris, Librairie Générale du

Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1964 Andeweg R., A Model of the Cabinet System: The Dimension of Cabinet Decision-making Processes

in Blondel J. and Müller Rommel F. (eds.), Governing Together, London, Macmillian, 1993 Avril P. and Giquel J., Droit Parlementaire, Paris, Editions Montchrestien, 1996 (2nd edition) Blondel J. and Müller Rommel F. (eds.), Cabinets in Western Europe, London, Macmillian, 1988 Blondel J., “Legislative Behaviour: Some Steps towards a Cross-National Measurement”, in

Government and Opposition, 5, 1970 Blondel J., “Legislative Behaviour: Some Steps towards a Cross-National Measurement”, in

Government and Opposition, 5, 1970 Blondel J., Comparative Legislature, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Inc., 1973 Blondel J., Comparative Legislature, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Inc., 1973 Bruyneel G., “Interpellations, Questions and Analogous Procedures for the Control of Government

Actions and Challenging the Responsibility of the Government”, in Constitutional and Parliamentary Information, 115, 1978

Budge I., Great Britain and Ireland: Variations on Dominant Party Government, in Colomer J. M. (ed.), Political Institutions in Europe, London and New York, Routledge, 1996

Campion G., An Introduction to the Procedure of the House of Commons, London, McMillan, 1947 Copeland G. and Patterson S.C. (eds.), Parliaments in the Modern World. Changing Institutions,

Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1994 Cotta M. “Il Problema del Bicameralismo-Monocameralismo nel Quadro di un’Analisi Struttural-

Funzionale del Parlamento”, in Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 1, 1971 Cotta M., Classe Politica e Parlamento in Italia 1946-1979, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1979 Cox G. W. and McCubbins M.D., Legislative Leviathan. Party Government in the House, Berkley,

Los Angeles, Oxford, University of California Press, 1993 Cox G. W., “On the Effect of Legislative Rules”, in Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV, 2, 2000

30

Cox G. W., The Efficient Secret. The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987

Damgaard E., “Parliamentary Questions and Control in Denmark”, in Wiberg M. (ed.), Parliamentary Control in the Nordic Countries: Forms of Questioning and Behavioural Trends, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1994

De Winter L., The Links Between Cabinet and Parties and Cabinet Decision-Making, in Blondel J. and Müller Rommel F. (eds.), Governing Together, London, Macmillian, 1993

Di Palma G., Surviving without Governing, Berkley, University of California Press, 1977 Döring H. (ed.), Parliament and Majority Rule in Western Europe, New York, St.Martin’s Press,

1995 Döring H., “Time as a Scarce Resource: Government Control of the Agenda”, in Döring H.(ed.),

Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Frankfurt - New York, Campus Verlag, St. Martin’s Press, 1995b

Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, London, Butterworths, 1989

Everitt B.S., Cluster Analysis, London, Edward Arnold, 1993 Franklin M.N. and Norton P. (eds.), Parliamentary Questions, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993 Graf M., “Motion und Parlamentarische Initiative: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Handhabung und

politischen Funktion”, in Das Parlement: Oberste Gewalt des Bundes?, Bern – Stuttgart, Haupt, 1991

Griffith J.A.G., Ryle M. and Wheeler-Booth M.A.J., Parliament: Functions, Practice and Procedures, London, Sweet and Maxwell, 1989

Ieraci G. “Governo e Opposizione nelle Arene Parlamentari. Uno Schema Concettuale per lo Studio della Capacità del Governo nelle Democrazie Parlamentari”, in Quaderni di Scienza Politica, 2, 2000

IPU= Inter-Parliamentary Union, Parliaments of the World. A Comparative Reference Compendium, Aldershot, Gower House, 1985

Kaufman L. and Rousseeuw P.J., Finding Groups in Data, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1990 King A., Executives, in Greenstein F. and Polsby N. (eds.), Handbook of Political Science, Reading

(Mass.), Addison-Wesley vol. 5, 1975 Laundy P., Parliaments in the World, Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1989 Laver M. and Budge I.. (eds.), Party Policy and Government Coalitions, New York, St. Martin’s

Press, 1992 Laver M. and Schofield N., Multiparty Goverment: the Politics of Coalition in Europe, Oxford

Oxford University Press, 1990 Laver M. and Shepsle K.A. (eds.), Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 1994 Laver M. Using Cluster Analysis to Model Coalition Formation in Policy Spaces of High

Dimensionality, in Schofield N. (ed.), Coalition Theory and Coalition Government, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1991

Lees J. D. and Shaw M. (eds.), Committees in Legislatures: a Comparative Analysis, Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1979Lidderdale, 1958

Lidderdale D.W., “Amendments”, in Constitutional and Parliamentary Information, 36, 1958 Longley L. D. and Davidson R. H., “Parliamentary Committees: Changing Perspectives on

Changing Institutions”, in The Journal of Legislative Studies, 4-1, 1998 Longley L. D. and Olson D. M., The Politics and Processes of National Legislative Cameral

Change, in Longley L. D. and Olson D. M. (eds.), Two into One. The Politics and Process of National Legislative Cameral Change, Boulder and Oxford, Westview Press, 1991

Mattson I. and Strǿm K., Parliamentary Committes, in Döring H. (ed.), Parliament and Majority Rule in Western Europe, New York, St.Martin’s Press, 1995

Mattson I., “Parliamentary Questioning in the Swedish Riksdag”, in Wiberg M. (ed.), Parliamentary Control in the Nordic Countries: Forms of Questioning and Behavioural Trends, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1994

Mattson I., “Private Members’ Initiatives and Amendments”, in Döring H.(ed.), Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Frankfurt - New York, Campus Verlag, St. Martin’s Press, 1995

31

Mezey M., “New Perspectives on Parliamentary Systems: A Review Article”, in Legislative Studies Quarterly, 19, 1994

Mezey M., Comparative Legislatures, Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1979 Mezey M., Parliament in the New Europe, in Hayward J. and Page E. C. (eds.), Governing the New

Europe, Polity Press, 1995 Norton P. (ed.), Legislatures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992 Norton P., Does Parliament Matter?, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993 Norton P., “Parliaments: A Framework for Analysis”, in West European Politics, 13, 1990 Norton P., “Playing by the Rules : The Constraining Hand of Parliamentary Procedure”, in The

Journal of Legislative Studies, 7, 3, 2001 Norton P., The Legislative Powers of Parliament, in Flinterman C., Heringa A. W. and Waddington

L. (eds.) The Evolving Role of Parliament in Europe, Antwerp, Maklu, 1994 Polsby N.W., Legislatures, in Greenstein F.I. and Polsby N.W. (eds.), Handbook of Political

Science, Reading (Mass.), Addison-Wesley vol. 5, 1975 Polsby. N.W., “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives”, in American Political

Science Review, 58, 1968 Tsebelis G. and Money J., Bicameralism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997 Tsebelis G., “Decision-Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism,

Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism”, in British Journal of Political Science, 23, 1995

Tsebelis G., “Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: an Empirical Analysis”, in American Political Science Review, 93, 3, 1999

Wiberg M. (ed.), Parliamentary Control in the Nordic Countries: Forms of Questioning and Behavioural Trends, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1994a

Wiberg M. and Koura A., “The Logic of Parliamentary Questioning”, in Wiberg M. (ed.), Parliamentary Control in the Nordic Countries: Forms of Questioning and Behavioural Trends, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1994b

Wiberg M., “Parliamentary Questioning: Control by Communication?”, in Döring H.(ed.), Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Frankfurt - New York, Campus Verlag, St. Martin’s Press, 1995

Wiberg M., “Veto Players in the Legislative Game: Fake and Real” paper presented at ECPR Joint Session, Turin, Italy, 22-27 March 2002

Zucchini F., “L’Attivitá Legislativa del Parlamento Italiano: Consociativismo? Polarizzazione?”, in Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 3, 1997