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Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Hanna Bäck

Professor | Recognised Teaching Practitioner

Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Ministerial Autonomy, Parliamentary Scrutiny and Government Reform Output in Parliamentary Democracies

Author

  • Hanna Bäck
  • Wolfgang C. Müller
  • Mariyana Angelova
  • Daniel Strobl

Summary, in English

One of the most important decisions coalition partners make when forming a government is the division of ministries. Ministerial portfolios provide the party in charge with considerable informational and agenda-setting advantages, which parties can use to shape policies according to their preferences. Oversight mechanisms in parliaments play a central role in mitigating ministerial policy discretion, allowing coalition partners to control each other even though power has been delegated to individual ministers. However, we know relatively little about how such mechanisms influence the agenda-setting and gatekeeping powers of ministers and how much influence minister parties have on policy output relative to the government as a whole in different institutional settings. We fill this gap by analyzing original data on over 2000 important social and economic policy reform measures adopted in nine Western European countries over 20 years, based on a coding of more than 1200 country reports issued by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). We find that parliaments with strong oversight powers constrain the agenda-setting capacity of minister parties but have limited impact on their gatekeeping capacity. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of policy-making and democratic accountability.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2022

Language

English

Pages

254-286

Publication/Series

Comparative Political Studies

Volume

55

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Political Science

Keywords

  • cabinets
  • coalition governance
  • economic and social policy
  • ministerial government
  • parliamentary scrutiny

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0010-4140