Comparative European Politics Lecture 7 PDF

EUS-495 COMPARATIVE EUROPEAN POLITICS LECTURE 7 PARLIAMENTS Dr. Yiannos Katsourides  PARLIAMENTS Introduction ❑ Parliaments (and parliamentarians) are much scrutinised today ❑ Which interests do parliamentarians serve? Some qu...

EUS-495 COMPARATIVE EUROPEAN POLITICS LECTURE 7 PARLIAMENTS Dr. Yiannos Katsourides  PARLIAMENTS Introduction ❑ Parliaments (and parliamentarians) are much scrutinised today ❑ Which interests do parliamentarians serve? Some question the degree to which parliamentarians have the interests of the public (rather than their own narrow interests) at heart ❑ Many wonder whether parliaments play any meaningful role in modern politics ❑ A widely discussed theme is the notion of executive dominance, i.e., the imbalance in the relative power of the executive and legislature where the unevenness favours the executive  PARLIAMENTS ❑ This narrative of course is not new: Ostrogorsky in 1902 and Bryce in 1921 wrote famously of the decline of parliaments ❑ The de facto dominance of the executive allows the cabinet to get the legislation they want, with little opportunity for real parliamentary oversight of the executive ❑ In EU countries, national parliaments have struggled to adapt, as decision-making and influence has shifted further to national executives and the European Parliament  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Yet, we have been perhaps too quick to dismiss the role of national parliament in a country’s political system ❑ National parliaments across Europe remain the cornerstone of representative democracy: they play central roles in representation, law-making, executive oversight, government formation, and determining how long the government stays in office ❑ Often parliaments in Europe are compared and contrasted to the powerful U.S. Congress ❑ But is it appropriate to compare parliament in a European country to the parliament of a federal and presidential system like that of the USA?  PARLIAMENTS Outline 1. Fundamental design ▪ Cameral structure; size; internal legislative organization 2. Roles and functions ▪ Law-making; government formation; oversight; representation 3. Strong parties, weak parliaments ▪ Party cohesion; party discipline; sticks and carrots  PARLIAMENTS 1. Fundamental design ❑ What does the typical parliament in Europe look like? ▪ This is difficult to answer because parliaments are diverse in design ❑ We compare and contrast parliaments based on: a. Cameral structure b. Chamber size c. Internal legislative organisation  PARLIAMENTS a. Cameral structure ❑ A parliament’s cameral structure describes the number of chambers in the parliament and, in the case of a parliament with two or more chambers, the similarity and differences between the chambers ❑ Unicameral parliaments have only one chamber ❑ Bicameralism means that the parliament has two chambers ❑ The defining characteristic of bicameral legislatures is the requirement that legislation be deliberated in two distinct assemblies  PARLIAMENTS Country Name of Cameral Name of lower Name of upper Parliament Structure chamber chamber Belgium Parlament federal Bicameral Chambre des Senat Represantants Cyprus House of Unicameral House of NA Representatives Representatives France Parlement Francais Bicameral Asemblee national Senat Germany Bundestag Bicameral Bundestag Bundesrat Greece House of the Unicameral House of the NA Greeks Greeks Italy Il Parliamento Bicameral Camera dei Senato della Deputati Repubblica Latvia Latvijas Unicameral Latvijas NA Republikas Saeima Republikas Saeima  PARLIAMENTS ❑ A strong bicameral system has two additional features beyond the mere presence of two chambers i. To be characterised as a strong bicameral system, the second chamber will have significant formal power in the law-making process, up to and including the power to veto proposed legislation ii. There is a differentiated membership base when the lower and second chamber are compared  PARLIAMENTS i. The formal power of the second chamber in the law- making process ❑ Sometimes referred to as an upper chamber or Senate, it may provide an extra check on the executive and on the lower chamber, thus allowing for better-considered and more reflective law-making ❑ Second chapters may have the power to veto proposed legislation or the much weaker power to delay (but not to stop) proposed legislation ❑ Requiring a second chamber to scrutinise proposed legislation makes it more likely that any flaws in a bill can be ironed out before it becomes law  PARLIAMENTS ❑ The British House of Lords is often considered a revising chamber, in that it typically takes draft legislation from the House of Commons and seeks to improve it ❑ The UK House of Lords has lost the ability to veto legislation today ❑ Second chambers thus serve as a limit or slowing influence on the ability of the majority in the first chamber to make changes ❑ The Bundesrat (Germany) is an important actor because it represents German states at the federal level ❑ The Italian Senate has some relatively unique features, including the fact that the Italian government is responsible too, and must be approved by, both the Senate and the lower chamber  PARLIAMENTS ii. Membership in second chambers ❑ All else equal, upper chambers will be most influential when the partisan composition and majority control differs across the chambers ❑ The second chamber has more de facto power when the lower-chamber majority does not have a majority in the upper chambers ❑ The level of similarity or difference between the chambers’ partisan composition depends on how the second chamber is selected, and how this differs from the lower chamber’s electoral mechanism ❑ Some upper chambers are elected, others are appointed and some comprise a mix of elected and unelected members ❑ Second chambers are either redundant (if they mirror the composition of the lower house) or elitist (if they are not democratically elected)  PARLIAMENTS b. Size ❑ By size we mean the number of parliamentarians ❑ There is a significant variation in the size of the national parliaments among the countries ❑ What determines the size of parliament? ▪ Usually, the relationship between the number of legislators and a country’s population: the largest the population, the larger the legislature  PARLIAMENTS Some data ❑ The UK has the most national legislators with a total of 1441 members (House of Commons and the House of Lords) ❑ The largest lower chamber is the German Bundestag (709) ❑ The smallest lower chamber is Bosnia- Herzegovina (42) ❑ The smallest Chamber of all is Bosnia- Herzegovina’s second chamber with just 15 members  PARLIAMENTS c. Internal legislative organization ❑ Parliaments vary significantly in how they are internally organised, including how authority and resources are allocated within the legislature ❑ How a legislature is organized in terms of rules, procedures, and how power and resources are allocated between members is of vital importance in determining where power actually lies ❑ In particular, internal organization may shape the degree to which party leaders’ control and influence individual members ❑ In some legislatures, power may rest with individual members owing to a highly decentralized organizational structure ❑ In other legislatures, power may rest with leaders and particularly party leaders  PARLIAMENTS ❑ The degree to which committees are influential in the day- to-day work of the parliament provides a good indication of where power really lies: with members or with their party leaders ❑ Committees are frequently cited as amongst the most important internal organizational features of a parliament ❑ The committees are entrusted with specific organizational tasks: for example, the German Bundestag has 23 substantive committees  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Benefits of the committee system ▪ Creating a system of committees within a parliament and delegating authority away from the main chamber allows for the effective and efficient use of members’ time ▪ It can enable members to specialize in particular policy areas, resulting in better legislative activities of benefit to the entire chamber ❑ However, a competing argument is that committees allow their members to distribute benefits to their constituents ▪ The more influence and power a committee has, the more its members can protect the specific interests of their constituents  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Committee systems differ across parliaments in their power and significance and the degree to which they are ultimately controlled by parliamentary party groups ❑ Features such as the number of committees, how members are appointed, the formal powers and capacities of committees in the legislative process and to undertake hearings and call witnesses, and the match between committee portfolios and government ministries, all determine the strength or weakness of parliaments committee system ❑ Examples: Scandinavian parliaments were considered to have strong committees, while the UK and Ireland in particular were considered to have weak committees  PARLIAMENTS 2. Roles and functions ❑ Four core roles a) Law-making b) Government formation c) Oversight d) Representation  PARLIAMENTS a) Law-making ❑ A central function of any parliament ❑ Most parliaments’ may be limited in what they can legislate for by the country’s constitution ❑ It is necessary to explore the degree to which parliaments influence the content of proposed and actual legislation or, alternatively, have become more rubber-stamps for the preferences and wishes of the executive ❑ With some notable exceptions, laws can only be formally changed by an act of law, passed by a parliament and signed into law (usually) by the head of state ❑ Thus, parliament is a real veto player in the legislative process  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Votes commonly take place in the plenary but can also occur in committees ❑ Parliamentarians may need to cast votes at multiple stages of the legislative process but actual decisions are typically made by a formal vote in a plenary session ❑ In many parliamentary systems, the executive dominates the law-making process by: ▪ Controlling the legislatures timetable ▪ Enjoying a near monopoly on drafting power and often has at its disposal rights to close debate ▪ Rejecting amendments  PARLIAMENTS ❑ In reality, however, the executive must remain sensitive to the interest and preferences of parliamentarians ❑ Rationally, an executive would not introduce a bill for which there is insufficient support ❑ Executives anticipate parliament’s reaction to a bill, and shape the bill accordingly ❑ Of course, executives do lose bills in parliament, arguably because of lack of information concerning the interests and preferences of parliamentarians needed to support the bill  PARLIAMENTS b) Government formation ❑ Voters in parliamentary systems do not elect the executive; instead, the executive is selected via the parliament ❑ Government formation is much simpler when a single political party wins a majority of seats in parliament ❑ The formal involvement of the legislature in government formation is often considered merely ceremonial in the presence of the majority party ❑ However, relatively few elections return a political party with a majority of seats in the parliament  PARLIAMENTS ❑ The study of government formation under parliamentarism is primarily focused on understanding and explaining which party (or parties) form the government in the absence of a majority party ❑ Which parties govern, and what type of cabinet (single party versus multiparty, and majority versus minority), shape public policy; for example, coalition government is often associated with government overspending and budget deficits ❑ To become the executive, or to remain the executive, the government needs the support of the majority of the parliament ❑ Thus, government formation is a core function of parliaments in parliamentary systems  PARLIAMENTS ❑ In some political systems, parliaments must hold a formal ‘investiture’ vote, a vote in which they approve the choice of executive; in other systems this is not the case ❑ In Italy, for example, both the House and Senate must vote to confirm the president’s choice of Prime Minister ❑ Italy is a case of what we call ex post investiture: a government is appointed (in this case by the president of Italy), comes into office, and then a vote takes place in parliament to accept or reject the government already in place ❑ In contrast, in ex ante investiture systems, parliament votes to choose a government who is then appointed by a head the state ❑ In some parliaments (e.g., Norway), the government takes power without any investiture vote  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Just as a parliament can have more or less influence in selecting an executive, it can have more or less influence in removing an executive ❑ Three cases are common a. In most European countries, parliament can vote to remove the government via a vote of no confidence b. Some countries have what is termed a constructive no confidence procedure, where parliament can only remove the executive if it simultaneously appoints a new executive (e.g., in Germany a chancellor can only be removed if they are replaced) c. Finally, in some systems the parliament cannot remove the executive: this may be the case (but it’s not always) in semi-presidential systems  PARLIAMENTS c) Oversight ❑ Definition: the monitoring of executive agencies tasked with the implementation of policy decisions, and regular engagement with the political executive to ensure it is meeting its commitments to the public and adequately addressing the various policy needs of the country ❑ The government is an agent of the parliament and therefore, the latter, needs to monitor the activities of both the political executive and the wider bureaucracy ❑ Parliaments typically have a number of tools to enable them to oversee the executive ❑ Specific tools include: (i) parliamentary questions and interpellations; (ii) investigations and hearings; (iii) an audit committee or office; and (iv) powers to dismiss the executive or individual members of the executive  PARLIAMENTS i. Parliamentary questions and interpellations ❑ A procedure that permits parliamentarians to formally ask questions and receive answers from members of the executive ▪ A tool that enables access to information on the actions and operation of the executive ▪ They come in two fundamental forms: oral and written ❑ Interpellations are similar to parliamentary questions, but more extensive, and are analogous to a short debate on the activities of a particular member or part of the executive  PARLIAMENTS ii. Parliamentary investigation ❑ It refers to the ability of a parliament to undertake a detailed examination of some past event or current issue ❑ Investigations can last from weeks to years ❑ The power to conduct investigations of the government is one of the most valuable powers a legislative assembly can have ❑ For example, in 2017, the German parliament concluded a three-year investigation into alleged surveillance of Germans citizens and the governments of a number of allies by the German Federal Intelligence Service  PARLIAMENTS iii. Audit ❑ It refers to an ex-post review of government expenditure and income ❑ The aim is to explore value for money and good governance ❑ This public audits are an important mechanism to uncover corruption or other forms of maladministration iv. Dismissal of the executive ❑ They ultimate sanction available to a parliament is the power to dismiss the executive  PARLIAMENTS d) Representation ❑ Interest representation is an important function of most national parliaments - it is through parliament that the voice of the ordinary citizens is channeled ❑ In most European parliaments, legislators represent citizens in a particular geographical district (constituency) ❑ A country’s electoral system significantly impacts the degree to which legislators are representatives of the voters who elected them, or agents of the party to which they are affiliated ❑ In exploring the relationship between electoral systems and representation, we often talk about candidate-centred versus party-centred electoral systems  PARLIAMENTS ❑ In a candidate-centred electoral environment, voters vote for individuals and on the basis of candidates’ personal characteristics ❑ In party-centred electoral environment, voters vote for a party or on the basis of a candidate’s party affiliation ❑ All else equal, we expect to see more sensitivity by legislators to the interests and preferences of their constituents in countries with more candidate-centred electoral systems ❑ For example, legislators represented from rural and farming communities may spend relatively more time discussing agricultural policy and representing the interest of the farming agri-business sector ❑ In more party-centred systems, legislators may see themselves less the representative of individual constituents and more the agent of the party leadership  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Ideally, because the legislature has a representative function, it should reflect the make-up of the citizenry at large, at least with regard to salient ideological, political, and demographic characteristics. ❑ The ability of national parliaments to represent the interest of female citizens is a good example ❑ Substantive gender representation refers to the degree to which women’s interests are actively represented within parliament ❑ The reasoning is that women are best able to represent the interest of other women; thus, having women parliamentarians is a necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) condition for substantive women’s representation  PARLIAMENTS ❑ The logic of the argument that the demographic sub-group is best represented by someone from within that sub-group potentially applies to any demographic characteristic ❑ Despite the near-balanced rate of women to men in the general population, most democratic parliaments around the world have fewer women than men ▪ In Hungary only 13%, in Malta 15% and in Latvia 16% ▪ At the other end of the scale, 44% of Swedish parliamentarians are women, in Finland 42% and Norway 41% ▪ In some countries gender quotas require political parties to nominate a minimum percentage of female candidates  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Other demographic characteristics by which the legislature may be assessed include: ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and age profile ❑ A typical European parliamentarian is: ▪ Male ▪ Disproportionately white ▪ Heterosexual ▪ Non-disabled, and ▪ Much older in terms of members age compared with the general population  PARLIAMENTS 3. Strong parties, weak parliaments ❑ The evolution of parliamentary politics saw the dominance of the executive over the parliament ❑ This was not unrelated with the lack of efficiency in parliamentary politics: the volume of legislation increased ❑ The bottleneck arising from greater volumes for legislation necessitated the erosion of the legislative powers of individual MPs, including the right to introduce bills, control the debate agenda, and make speeches ❑ Such procedural prerogatives passed from individual MPs to party leaders and in particular the cabinet ❑ Strong parties led to the decline in importance of the individual parliamentarians, and ultimately the parliament itself  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Today, unified party group voting tends to be high or very high in most European Parliament ❑ Party voting unity can be defined as the extent to which parliamentarians from the same parliamentary party group vote the same way ❑ A prime minister with a parliamentary majority and high levels of parliamentary party group voting unity has de facto full control over the legislative process, and anything else parliament does or is supposed to do ❑ Party voting unity is the basis of a strong party parliament and has one of two fundamental sources: (a) parliamentary party cohesion; (b) parliamentary party discipline  PARLIAMENTS i. Parliamentary party cohesion ❑ A phenomenon where parliamentarians from the same party share the same set of policy preferences on all policy issues ❑ In a two-party system, it is less likely that the party can be cohesive across multiple policy areas; thus, we speak of parliamentary party groups in two-party systems as being ideologically heterogeneous, or ‘broad churches’ ❑ When it comes to voting on the floor of the chamber, observed voting unity may be caused by high levels of parliamentary party cohesion  PARLIAMENTS ii. Parliamentary party discipline ❑ An alternative source of party voting unity ❑ The ability of the party leadership to enforce a common voting position within the parliamentary party group, especially where it results in a member not voting in line with his/her own preferences ❑ In practical terms, it is some combination of leadership-induced discipline and ideological cohesion within parliamentary party groups ❑ Where does party discipline come from? Carrots and sticks  PARLIAMENTS ❑ The most important carrot available to the party leadership is the ability to control parliamentarians’ promotion to leadership positions within the party, parliament, and/or government - for example, committee chairs ❑ The more opportunities exist for promotion, the more parliamentarians will be inclined to obey the party leadership  PARLIAMENTS ❑ Various sticks may be equally, or even more, powerful tools in the hands of party leaders ❑ The strongest stick that may be available to party leader is the ability to suspend or expel parliamentarian from the parliamentary party group for voting against the party position ▪ Suspension does not mean that the parliamentarian loses their sit in parliament - only that they have been removed from membership of the parliamentary party ❑ De-selection as a candidate for the party at the next general election is another powerful tool that the party leadership may have available to discipline members ❑ The more control the party leader exercises over the ability of incumbent parliamentarians to be selected as a candidate for the party, the less likely individual parliamentarians will be to exercise autonomy from the party in how they vote in parliament  PARLIAMENTS ❑ One important source of party discipline is the vote of confidence procedure - an institutional prerogative that permits the government to attach the vote on a specific policy or program to an up or down vote on the government ❑ The consequences of this procedure are significant but simple: the government can threaten to dissolve the legislature unless the latter votes for the government policies ❑ And the legislature it’s tight directly to the fate of the cabinet’s bill if the cabinet so wishes ❑ Members of the government’s legislative coalition face significant choice: support the government or cause a general election, with all the personal collective costs and risks associated with this  PARLIAMENTS 4. Conclusions ❑ Developments external to the parliament itself may have the effect of making the executive more influential vis-à-vis the parliament in recent decades ❑ Public policy, being controlled by the executive in consultation with extra- parliamentary entities (e.g., trade unions, interest groups, etc.) leave little room for the parliament to influence decision-making and public policy ❑ Globalization, and in some instances regional economic and political integration (e.g., the EU) has further challenged the ability of national parliaments to influence the executive’s public policy agenda