Coalition Government and Committee Power

Recent research suggests that committees in parliamentary democracies may, at least partly, be endogenous to the prevalence of coalition government. In this article, I examine the conditions under which parliamentary majorities reform legislative rules to expand or reduce committee power. I expect that, ceteris paribus, the greater the conflict inside the governing coalition, the higher the probability that parties in government will adopt reforms expanding committee power and the lower the chance that they will implement changes reducing such power. These expectations are tested using original new data on the reforms of committee agenda powers undertaken in eight European states within 20 years from democratic transition. I find some evidence to support the endogeneity of committee power to the ideological heterogeneity of parliamentary government.     

A Committee of No Importance? Assessing the Relevance of the Committee of the Regions

As a result of its formal weakness, the Committee of the Regions is often presumed to be inconsequential in the development of European Union policy. This article draws on ongoing research to argue against this assumption. From an analysis of the Committee's output and an assessment of its impact on both Commission proposals and final legislation, it emerges that the Committee is already playing an important role in decision making. Moreover, the Committee has a strong and devoted protector in the Commission, enabling it further to escape the peripherality of the position it was assigned in the Maastricht Treaty.     

A Rural-Urban Divide? Reassessing Voting in Chinese Villagers’ Committee and Residents’ Committee Elections

Journal of Chinese Political Science - While Chinese scholars, media, and writers have long reported a noteworthy rural-urban difference in political participation, the meaning of this...     

Committee Assignment Politics in the Danish Folketing

Committees are the backbone of nearly every modern legislature. Yet there is relatively little knowledge about how committee assignment politics occur in the multiparty parliaments with minority coalition governments that so often are the case in many European countries. Is there a pattern to which MPs are assigned to which committees? In this article the Danish case is used to address this question. A dataset of all committee assignments in the Danish Folketing from the period 1994–2007 has been collected; added to this are data on each MP. The data are analysed using a quantitative approach, and drawing on the literature on committee assignments in the United States Congress and the European Parliament, complementing the vast qualitative studies, and updating the few quantitative studies, of the Danish parliamentary committees. The results show that which variables have an influence on committee assignments varies across parties and that no uniform pattern is found.     

Committee jurisdiction, congressional behavior and policy outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why (a) senior members, and junior members in safe seats, are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; (b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point for jurisdictional gains; (c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress.     

充分发挥人民政协民主监督的职能

一、关于民主监督的认识 民主监督,是政协必须履行的一项职能;同时,民主监督又是我国整个监督体系中的一个组成部分,对于推进社会主义民主政治建设有着不可替代的作用。 1.关于民主监督的性质、特点和优势 民主监督是政协三项主要职能之     

试析井冈山时期的士兵委员会制度

士兵委员会是井冈山斗争时期民主实践的一个重要创举。从对士兵委员会的分析可以看出,民主与集中存在一种相互依赖关系,其实际运作形式要根据具体情势而定,同时要对人本主义民主观的错误倾向保持清醒认识。     

A Nolan Committee for the German ethics infrastructure?

Abstract. An international trend towards establishing and conforming standards of ethical behaviour in the public sector has repeatedly been stated. Germany, however, remains surprisingly reluctant to adopt such recommendations. This article argues that the likelihood of German decision makers implementing new, and especially soft, ethics measures depends on the demand for such measures, on the one hand, and their supply, on the other. The analysis shows that contradictory forces have an impact on Germany. The demand for new ethics measures is relatively low as a high level of hard ethics measures incorporated in the longstanding formal legal system of rules and regulations make the implementation of new measures seem unnecessary. Also, the demand for soft ethics measures is less marked in Germany than in the United Kingdom. This comparatively weak pressure meets the natural inertia caused by cognitive and institutional path–dependency in institutional choices of political decision makers. On the other hand, external bodies (such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – OECD) provide blueprints for soft ethics measures and encourage the implementation of uniform standards across countries. Which of these forces will prevail in the long run, however, cannot be deduced from the present situation.     

Committee strength in parliamentary democracies: A new index

Much recent research on coalitions and policy-making in parliamentary democracies requires high-quality data on the strength of legislative institutions. In this article, I introduce a new index of committee policing strength which improves on existing measures in important ways. I specify key index parameters using a binary rooted tree model and engage human coders to score formal rules. I obtain a novel time series of committee policing strength in 17 western and eastern European democracies since 1945. I validate the new estimates through convergent validation and discuss ways in which the new index contributes to future work.     

Q Methodology as a Tool for Committee Governance Research

The allegiance of national bureaucratic elites to European, national, institutional and policy-specific identities or associations is the subject of a growing body of European integration literature. Reviewing the methods employed by committee governance research, Q methodology is suggested as an alternative mechanism for measuring bureaucrat norms, beliefs and values. Its application to research on European committee governance could therefore increase the robustness of the qualitative element of existing mixed methods approaches. This would provide further insight into policy-making processes at the international level.     

Political Action Committee Spending and Senate roll call voting

This paper addresses how PAC spending affects the roll call voting behavior of U.S. Senators. Using a theoretical framework which draws broadly on the voting literature, we develop models that explain Senatorial voting behavior in a pre-PAC and post-PAC world. Testing both models we find weak support for a Downs-Black view of voting participation in the first model. The second model supports the alteration of voting incentives resulting from PAC spending. We find that PACs have a positive effect on voting participation. The conjecture remains whether PACs change voting outcomes, but it is clear that they buy voting participation.     

The All-Pay Auction When a Committee Awards the Prize

There is very little work on the equilibrium of the all-payauction when the prize is awarded by two or more people. Iconsider an all-pay auction under committee administrationwith caps on the bids of the contestants. I show that for anynumber of committee members and contestants, there exists apure-strategy equilibrium in which the contestants bid anamount equal to a suitably chosen cap. I argue that the cap isnot an artificial restriction on the game, given that thereare caps on political lobbying in the real world. I find thatcommittee administration could result in higher aggregateexpenditures, even if there is some probability that thecommittee will not award the prize. The intuition for thisresult is that the inclusion of additional administratorsrelaxes the effect of caps on lobbying. That is, caps onlobbying tend to be more effective the smaller is the size ofthe committee. Caps may also be a solution to the problem ofmajoritarian cycles in all-pay auctions under committeeadministration.     

The Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union Committee System

This article investigates both the operation and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union committee system. This vast but rarely studied system is an important site of European governance, exercising an increasing amount of policy responsibility while also providing the essential arenas necessary for supranational problem solving. Despite their contribution to the success of the “European project,” committees are increasingly coming under attack, notably for their lack of democratic credentials. The article employs original empirical research based on interviews and internal documentary evidence to answer a timely question: does the EU committee system strike an appropriate balance between the values of system effectiveness and democratic legitimacy? Following the application of a set of democratic principles to EU committees, the article finds that a poor balance has been struck between effectiveness and democracy. The article concludes with some operational suggestions for improving this balance in the short‐to‐medium term.     

大国干部调配:中国省级党委常委的来源

地方领导干部的来源不仅能够反映其本人的政治职业特征,也能够反映上级党委及政府选人用人的基本特征。以时下350名省级党委常委为观察对象,通过描述性统计分析发现:省级党委常委的来源类型包括本省选拔、外省调入和中央下派,且以前二者为主,后者为辅;不同来源类型的省级党委常委各自所担任的职务存在明显差异,外省调入和中央下派的常委大多担任更为重要的职务;不同来源类型的省级党委常委在不同地区所占的比例也存在差异,经济越发达或政府治理能力越高的地区,本省选拔的省级党委常委的平均比例也越高,反之,则外省调入的省级党委常委的平均比例越高;不同来源类型的省级党委常委的职务来源也并不相同。当前省级党委常委来源类型的整体分布与地域分布,显示了中央在搭建优势互补、更具政治整合性的省级党委常委领导班子上所做的努力。     

The Church Committee and a new era of intelligence oversight

Thirty years ago, the Church Committee completed what was and still is the most exhaustive look at any government's secret intelligence agencies. The Committee showed that in times of crisis, even constitutional democracies are likely to violate their laws and forget their values. In this reflection, the Committee's Chief Counsel states that by examining the full record over time, the Committee found that it was insufficient to blame abuses solely on intelligence agencies. Ultimate responsibility was properly fixed with the presidents, attorneys general, and other high executive branch officials. Seven general lessons, including the danger of excess secrecy, are drawn from his experience. These lessons are valuable for the present struggle with terrorism.