Lobbying Across Arenas: Interest Group Involvement in the Legislative Process in Denmark

Interest groups may approach political decision makers in two phases of the legislative process: the pre‐parliamentary, administrative phase, in which bills are prepared by bureaucrats; and the parliamentary phase, in which bills are discussed and possibly revised by parliamentary committees. The article investigates the factors that lead groups to engage in these phases based on group proceedings for 225 bills presented to the Danish parliament in the 2009/2010 session. We conclude that resourceful groups are clearly more active in both arenas, but the parliamentary arena is also a venue for voicing discontent and defending gains achieved in the administrative arena.     

Lord Cooke of Thorndon (1926–2006): 51 Years in the Law

This article provides an in‐depth analysis of the landmark ‘cash for query’ judgment of the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court of India. The scope of parliamentary privileges in India, as well as in England and America, is examined, particularly with respect to the jurisdiction of the courts. The present position in the law of parliamentary privileges in India was laid down in the case of Raja Ram Pal v The Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, &; Ors. The Supreme Court of India has extensively dwelled on the matter and has delivered a judgment, which is by far the most comprehensive decision in this field of law. The author notes in the analysis that the difference between the English and Indian constitutional systems is of crucial significance. The conflicts between the judiciary and parliament in England arose because of the sovereignty of parliament, and the judiciary had to fight for every inch of its jurisdiction in England. The judiciary had to contend with Parliament not only as a legislative body, but also by virtue of being the ‘High Court of Parliament’, as a superior court. Because of these reasons, the case law from British constitutional history does not have strict applicability in India. The decision of the Supreme Court of India in Raja Ram Pal v The Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, &; Ors, is a clear expression of a very basic feature of the Indian constitutional mechanism: where the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and all governmental organs, which owe their origin to the Constitution and derive their powers from its provisions, must function within its framework.     

From a ‘peasant parliament’ to a ‘professional parliament'? Change in the Icelandic Althingi

The present article seeks to describe and analyse parliamentary change in the Icelandic Althingi, probably one of the least known of the west European legislatures. The first question asked is ‘Has there been a professionalisation of the Icelandic parliament?’ and, secondly, ‘Has there been a professionalisation of Icelandic legislators?’ The article is in three sections. The first gives a very brief overview of the main institutional features of the Althingi before 1991. The second focuses on changes in the legislative capacity of the Althingi, whilst the third explores possible changes in the legislative culture of the assembly. The study draws on three sources: official statistical material and other parliamentary documentation; discussions with senior parliamentary staff; and hour‐long interviews with three veteran Atlhingi members boasting a total of 80 years parliamentary experience between them.     

Wasting or saving time? How government and opposition parties use time during legislative debates. Evidence from the Italian case

The use of plenary time during legislative debates has consequences for the enhancement of party goals. Hence, parties have different preferences on how legislative time should be managed: while some parties would like time not to be ‘wasted’ on the floor, other parties may instead try to ‘consume’ as much time as possible. Speeches delivered in the plenary signal these preferences. Focusing on plenary debates on legislation, this paper proposes a theory for explaining party speech-making behaviour that takes into consideration parties’ preferences on the use of time and their incentives related to the divide between government and opposition. The theoretical argument also emphasises the role of issue salience and party cohesion, which interact with the incentives faced by government and opposition parties. Hypotheses are tested against data from over 21,000 speeches delivered in the Italian parliament. Results highlight the importance of considering the different incentives faced by government and opposition parties when analysing speech making in parliamentary settings, and suggest some interesting avenues for future enquiry.     

Is the Japanese diet consensual?

The institutional design of the Japanese Diet is commonly believed to necessitate interparty accommodation and to make the legislative process more ‘viscous’ than it appears. This common belief about the Diet is challenged by examining the Constitution, the Diet Law, the House Rules, and parliamentary practices with special attention to agenda setting procedures. It is argued that the ‘unanimity norm’ is less binding than commonly recognised. By applying the criteria proposed by Döring, this paper compares the Diet with western European parliaments, and shows that it ranks relatively high in terms of the ruling majority's ability to control the legislative agenda. Although the post‐war Diet is modelled on the legislative process in the US Congress, it is critically important to keep in mind that the constitutional principle of the Diet follows the fusion of power in the British parliament. The picture that emerges from the analysis is in strong contrast to the traditional image of the Japanese Diet and sheds new light on the majoritarian foundation of the Diet.     

Government,Parliament and Law-making in Poland

This paper examines the process of law-making in Poland during the 1997–2001 and 2001–2005 legislative terms. The analysis focuses on the initiation, amendment and finalisation stages of the legislative process within both the government and parliament and considers the boundary, content, temporal and information rules that shape this process. Within government, the preparation of, and decision-making on bills to be submitted to parliament are characterised by a dominance of ministerial law-making strategies, with a very limited coordinating capacity for the core executive (that is, the cabinet, the prime minister and the institutions that serve them). Within parliament, the government possesses weak agenda control and few formal means of defending its legislation against rival bills and amendments. There is some evidence to suggest that this decentralised legislative setting is one of the key drivers behind legislative growth and instability.     

Are There Methods of Reasoning on ‘Meta‐Legislation’? The Interpretation of Legislative Competence Norms within the Methodology of European Constitutional Law

Legislative competence norms are paradigmatic elements of European constitutional law and the supranational, post‐federal era. The article aims to address legislative competence norms from the viewpoint of methodology by considering significant features of reasoning on European legislative competence norms. The discussion will be based on understanding legislative competences as ‘meta‐legislation’. That concept encompasses a substantive rather than formalistic, and a politically informed rather than strictly positivist account of legislative competences and their methodology. Against that background, the interpretation of competence norms is assessed. Subsequently, the process of interpretation is discussed according to judicial practice, constitutional theory and general legal methodology. A consideration of the significance of the—usually vast—wording of competence norms completes that discussion. Finally, consequences about the political inclusiveness of interpreting competence norms and the issue of ‘clarity’ are drawn. A conclusion summarises the results.     

Constructing a New Scottish parliament for the ‘Europe of regions’: Can institutional engineering assure subsidiarity?

The creation of an elected parliament in Scotland raises questions for legislative scholars, among them how a parliamentary body representing a stateless nation within a member state of the European Union can influence and implement European legislation. One version of the ‘principle of subsidiarity’ states that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen, encouraging assemblies throughout the EU to articulate and implement their own preferences in key policy areas. Reporting findings from a survey of the Scottish parliament's first cohort of legislators, this article identifies conflicting perceptions of subsidiarity, charts how best to pursue it, and evaluates the institutional norms, rules and procedures put in place to help secure it. Data demonstrate that preferences vary by level of MSP knowledge about European policy, by party membership and by method of election. Low levels of legislator knowledge combined with internal divisiveness constitute barriers to institutional strength in the pursuit of subsidiarity.     

Transferability of parliamentary experience: The Russian example

The article looks at the development of parliamentary institutions and procedures in Russia and the extent to which Russian politicians have been interested in learning from ‘mature’ democracies.

There are few examples of parliamentary practices being transplanted without significant adaptation. The debate in Russia on the role of parliament indicates that the idea of imitating foreign models has to compete with the powerful notion of rediscovering a national democratic tradition and both are used rhetorically to support particular interests. Parliamentary rules and practices are organically linked with party organisation, with the balance of parties at any given time, with electoral law, and with the relationship of the executive to the legislative branch. Changes in political habits take time.

International contacts are valuable because they lend confidence and authority to those who are working to build on democratic habits, but it is more important that parliamentarians and officials should find solutions which are internally consistent, which work with the grain of their own slowly evolving political culture and which reflect the most positive of their own traditions, than that they should assemble best practice from around the world.     

Reaching out to the people? Assessing the relationship between parliament and citizens in Finland

Despite the Open Government (Parliament) initiatives and notions of a ‘democratic parliament’, the relationship between legislatures and citizens remains seriously under-researched. This article introduces a comprehensive analytical framework, combining the normative principles of visibility, accessibility, and permeability with practical indicators (parliament as public space, sharing of information, contact with MPs, media and digital engagement, transparency of legislative process, and actual participation in legislative decision-making) for assessing the public engagement of parliaments. Applying this framework to the Finnish Eduskunta, the authors show that despite recent reforms that have partially ‘opened up’ parliamentary proceedings and attempted to connect citizens to democratic process, there remains scope for reforms and innovations. The Eduskunta should embrace a more positive approach towards new forms of civic participation, particularly regarding how its influential committees operate. The findings reflect the tensions between, or the difficulties in reconciling, traditional forms of representative democracy with alternative and more direct channels of political participation.     

Obstruction in parliaments: a cross-national perspective

ABSTRACT

In legislative institutions, disruptions to the agenda and delays in processing legislation can have a significant impact on the ability of legislative majorities to realise success. Few previous studies have systematically examined parliamentary obstruction in non-U.S. settings. In this article, I investigate the extent to which obstruction occurs in parliaments around the world. The evidence, drawn from a 2016 survey of members of the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments (ASGP) and supplemented with documentary evidence and interviews with parliamentary clerks and members of parliament in several countries demonstrates that obstructive behaviour occurs in a variety of types of national legislatures and across different political systems and institutional settings.     

Recurring bills and the legislative process in the US congress

Recurring bills may be interpreted in two very different ways. First, there is the ‘legislative loser’ perspective, which posits that legislators introduce bills repeatedly for symbolic reasons, not intending or expecting them to go very far. Alternatively, there is the ‘softening up’ perspective, which assumes that legislators introduce bills more than once for policy reasons. They first test the waters, making a second attempt more successful. In this research article, we test these assumptions by examining the legislative impact of recurring bill status at various stages in the US House and Senate: initial committee attention, committee passage, attachment to an omnibus package and enactment. The evidence is mixed for the first stage of the process, while the findings for subsequent stages support the softening up interpretation. We discuss the implications for representation and future research.     

Economic crisis and lawmaking. The impact of crisis on legislative agenda in Italy

Major economic crises are focal events that often drive changes in various aspects of political systems. Although extensive work has been done to investigate the effect of exogenous shocks on political phenomena such as government termination, public opinion and policy outcomes, the impact of major crises on the process of policymaking has so far received scarce attention. Building on existing literature on policy agendas and legislative organization, this paper explores how the Eurozone crisis has affected the legislative agenda of the Italian parliament. The data used include information on the 1,110 bills submitted to parliament during Legislature XVI (2008–2013). Our analysis shows that, with the worsening of the crisis, bill proposals related to macroeconomic issues become increasingly more likely to enter the legislative agenda, displacing legislation dealing with other topics. Our argument is corroborated by a comparison between Legislature XVI and a pre-crisis legislature (2001–2006), as in the latter term the legislative agenda follows different patterns.     

The wild mammals (protection) bill: A parliamentary white elephant?

Examining one unsuccessful private members’ bill (PMB) ‐ Kevin McNamara's Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill which would have prohibited hunting ‐ this case study examines many of the non‐legislative functions of the British Parliament. Even unsuccessful PMBs ‐ and this was a PMB whose failure was preordained ‐ have many consequences for both parliament and the wider political system of which it is an integral part. PMBs can perform an important ‘exit’ function, taking the decision away from a reluctant executive. They can help to set the agenda of political debate, generating publicity for parliament (as a body), the issue itself and the member promoting the bill. They generate correspondence between represented and representatives, helping to inform and educate. They can be used as a party‐political weapon and may have electoral consequences. They may also affect the legitimacy of the political system. PMBs are far from parliamentary white elephants.     

法律案合宪性审查的程序、事项与方法

法律案的合宪性审查是立法机关在立法过程中对法律案是否符合宪法进行的自我、事前控制形式,是我国合宪性审查机制的重要组成部分。在不存在根本性制度障碍的前提下,先行激活法律案的合宪性审查对于提升宪法实施和宪法监督水平,维护宪法的权威性具有非常重要的实践意义。《立法法》设定的审议程序(包括“前置性”审议程序与正式审议程序)蕴含着对法律案进行合宪性审查的契机。立法机关可以根据我国宪法在内容构造上的特点,立足于本国立法的现实需要并借鉴其他国家的合宪性审查经验,将合宪性审查的对象锁定在法律草案在内容上最有可能涉及违宪的某些具体事项上,如此才能提高审查效率;针对较为具体的审查事项,立法机关需要创造性运用“抽象公益条款的禁止”“平等原则的过滤”以及“比例原则的审视”等方法,有效地排除法律草案中的违宪情形,稳健地推进与我国国情相适应的合宪性审查工作。     

Public policy inquiry and advice as an aspect of constitutional reform

This article presents for the first time an outline of a classified review of the many types (some 20) of public policy inquiry or review exercises used in British public affairs. They are mainly created by the government but are also increasingly promoted by private bodies hoping to influence government and the established specialist interests in a policy field by supplying free and authoritative information and recommendations. A brief commentary on each of these ‘decision advice processes’ (DAPs) draws out their changing profile and questions the democratic propriety of the executive itself now investigating or reviewing important public policy issues which were, until quite recently, unquestioningly given out by departments for external and (normally) independent‐minded commissions and committees of inquiry to study and recommend upon. The question of whether the current movement for constitutional reform should include the overall ‘decision advice process’ and place it on a more independent and authoritative basis is raised. A parliamentary, rather than (or as well as) an executive, basis for most official ‘DAPs’ is proposed, while the currently flourishing practice of charitable foundations, think‐tanks and established interest groups promoting unofficial DAPs for the information and guidance of the government, parliament and the public is endorsed.     

Democratic consolidation and parliamentary reform in Russia, 1990–93

It is a commonly held view that the Russian parliament, created in the late period of perestroika, possessed powers and structures that were incongruous with the process of democratic consolidation.’ It is a mistake, however, to suggest that parliamentary deputies failed to appreciate the problems that hampered both the parliament's work and its relationship with executive organs. Many deputies in both the All Union and Russian assemblies were committed to the creation of a ‘professional parliament’, and numerous reforms were put forward to resolve what some deputies called the ‘crisis of parliamentarism’ in Russia. These reforms, proposed by democrats and conservatives alike, raise new questions about the aims and objectives of deputies in Russia's first post‐Soviet parliament. What did deputies understand by the notion of a ‘professional parliament'? In what form did deputies envisage the new system of government? Were the many, often competing, proposals for parliamentary reform conducive to the achievement of democratic consolidation in Russia? This article will attempt to answer these questions by examining the proposals for parliamentary reform in the Russian parliament between 1990 and 1993.     

The Portuguese Parliament and Public Opinion: A Case for Reform?

During the past decade, the Portuguese political system has been under close scrutiny. As in other Western democracies, the topic of citizens' dissatisfaction with democratic institutions has been at the centre of a wide debate amongst public opinion and politicians. This debate has focused on parliament and parliamentary reform has often been seen as a way of enhancing parliament's image. However, as this note will show, there is no clear evidence that the Portuguese are dissatisfied with this institution. Indeed, this is still an under-researched area. Why is there an assumption that the Portuguese parliament has a negative image? And why should this have consequences for parliamentary reform? In the context of the creation of a Portuguese Election Study, this note aims to raise questions for future research on this topic. The note will look into the concept of legislative support, assess the evidence available on the Portuguese parliament's popularity and suggest indicators that would help to clarify the Portuguese views on this. It will also explore the connection between legislative support and the role of parliament, to enquire whether popularity indicators can make a case for parliamentary reform.     

论公共财政监督与控制——以宪法为视角

从各国宪法制度安排的角度探讨公共财政政策形成过程中的国家权力配置问题,有助于反思国家公共财政监督的制度建构。议会制度产生之初,议会通过控制财政来监控政府,系议会民主性的表现。随着社会发展,公共财政已由议会控制转向实质上由政府掌控,议会对财政控制转而通过立法等法治手段来监督,并不参与实质意义上的议决。在我国人民代表大会的民主功能、监督功能尚待完善的情形下,将公共财政监督制度化、法治化应成为首选途径。只有在此基础之上,公民或者社会组织才能真正有效地参与监督国家的公共财政开支。