This project addresses a central question in the comparative study of democratic institutions: How do coalition governments, which are composed of multiple parties with often conflicting ideological goals, manage to make policy? Surprisingly, relatively few studies have examined this issue in a systematic cross-national fashion. Instead, most research on multiparty government has focused on the formation and termination of coalitions, largely neglecting the policymaking process between these events. In this project, the principal investigators address this question by examining lawmaking in two European parliamentary democracies. Specifically, the investigators propose to collect primary data on the committee and floor stages of the legislative process in Germany and the Netherlands. The theoretical model in the project focuses on a central principal-agent problem that coalition cabinets must solve if they are to govern successfully. Because expertise is needed to plan and implement public policy, governments in parliamentary democracies must delegate important policymaking powers to individual ministers who have control over relevant issue areas. In particular, cabinet ministers enjoy considerable autonomy in drafting government legislation within their jurisdiction. For coalition governments, such delegation creates the risk that ministers will use their autonomy to bias policy in favor of their own parties without adequately taking into account the interests of their coalition partners. The incentive to do so grows particularly strong on issues that greatly divide coalition members. The argument proposed here is that parliamentary oversight provides a key institutional mechanism that allows coalition parties to deal with this problem. While it is difficult to police ministers from within the cabinet, coalition members can make use of the legislative process to scrutinize and amend legislation introduced by hostile ministers. The researchers contend that this mechanism is particularly important where the coalition is internally divided. If correct, this argument challenges the common perception that parliaments in Western Europe are largely irrelevant institutions. Legislatures may play a crucial role as an intra-coalition conflict management tool that allows parties with divergent preferences to govern jointly. An empirical evaluation of this theory requires detailed data on the treatment of government bills in the legislative process. In particular, such an evaluation requires information on the extent to which coalition parties make use of the legislative process to scrutinize and amend policy proposals drafted by individual ministers. With support from their home institutions, the principal investigators have already collected relevant data on nearly three hundred government bills introduced in the Netherlands and Germany between 1982 and 1994. The existing dataset provides information on the ideological stance of coalition parties on the issues addressed by these bills as well as the length of delay these bills encounter in the legislative process. A preliminary analysis of the data has yielded results that are consistent with the theory. The financial support requested in this proposal enables the principal investigators to expand this dataset substantially and conduct a more direct test of the theory. The expanded dataset will consist of information on the exercise of parliamentary oversight as measured by changes made to government bills by coalition parties during the committee and floor stages of the legislative process.The proposed project has theoretical and empirical significance for scholars engaged in comparative legislative research. Most importantly, the project challenges the common assumption that legislatures in parliamentary systems are unimportant institutions. By suggesting that parliaments are significant primarily as mechanisms for managing intra-coalition conflict, the study encourages renewed theoretical and empirical efforts in understanding the role of legislatures. In addition, the project makes available cross-national legislative data consisting of detailed information on government bills in two major European countries. Currently, no comparable dataset on government bills and the legislative process is available to the scholarly community.
