‘Going institutional’ to overcome obstruction: Explaining the suppression of minority rights in Western European parliaments, 1945−2010

When and why do parliamentary majorities in Europe suppress parliamentary minority rights? This article argues that such reforms are driven by substantive policy conflict in interaction with existing minority rights. Government parties curb minority rights if they fear minority obstruction due to increased policy conflict and a minority-friendly institutional status quo. Empirical support is found for this claim using comparative data on all reforms in 13 Western European parliaments since 1945. A curbing of minority rights is significantly more likely under conditions of heightened policy conflict and these effects are stronger the more the institutional status quo favours opposition parties. Contrary to frequent claims of consensual rule changes from single-country studies in Europe, these findings demonstrate the importance of competitive strategies in explaining institutional reform in European parliaments. The conditional impact of the status quo provides interesting theoretical links to historical institutionalist arguments on path dependence.     

Parliamentary questions as strategic party tools

This article shifts the analysis of parliamentary oversight tools to the level of the political party, asking how political parties make use of written parliamentary questions. It theorises that the use of parliamentary questions is related to the ideological and electoral competition between political parties, borrowing from theories on issue competition and negative campaigning. It provides an empirical test, using data on written questions from the lower house in the Netherlands (1994–2014). The analysis shows that parties tend to put questions to ministers whose portfolios are salient to them, in line with issue ownership theories. Moreover they ask questions of both ministers from parties that are ideologically distant and those with whom they have considerable electoral overlap in line with studies of negative campaigning.     

Political Parallelism in Media and Political Agenda-Setting

This article investigates whether agenda-setting relations between newspapers and political parties are influenced by political parallelism. Our case is the Netherlands, a country characterized by high levels of journalistic professionalization and independent media. We focus on newspaper coverage and oral parliamentary questions and use time series analysis to inspect influence both of parliament on newspapers and of newspapers on parliament. The results show that parties respond only to issues raised in newspapers their voters read, and that newspapers only respond to the agenda of parties their readers vote for. This demonstrates that even in mediatized, professionalized media contexts, parallelism is still of importance to understand the relationship between media and politics.     

The role of personal parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament

The article scrutinises the behaviour of the personal staff of MEPs, using newly collected survey data. The personal staff known as accredited parliamentary assistants (APAs) have long been in the shadow of staff in parliamentary groups and staff in the European Parliament’s (EP) central Secretariat. In the 2010s, MEPs’ allowance for personal staff increased and a statute for APAs was adopted. Against the background of these reforms, this article hypothesises that APAs are a frequent source of assistance for MEPs in comparison to the other EP staff. It assumes that the significance of APAs’ involvement depends on their characteristics as direct employees of MEPs. Results show that APAs frequently assist MEPs in activities relevant for the internal life of the EP, but that they are less frequently involved in inter-institutional relations. The article shows that MEPs seek support which is political, but also that is tailored towards them personally.     

When and why politicians do not keep their welfare promises

Although the welfare state is a core theme in most national elections in Western democracies, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the causes of welfare state pledge‐breaking. This article presents an argument that explains when governments do not do what they promised and tests it using an innovative research design with data covering four decades and 18 countries. The argument is able to account for several important but, until now, undescribed phenomena. First, nowadays, governments, on average, deliver less welfare than they promised, whereas in the 1970s they used to deliver more than promised. Second, the pledge‐breaking of governments has become highly dependent on the parliamentary opposition's position on the welfare issue. When the opposition favours fiscal and economic responsibility, governments’ tendency to deliver less welfare than promised is amplified. In contrast, when the opposition emphasises the positive benefits of generous welfare, such as equality and social justice, governments become more prone to keep their promises. Third, this conditional effect of the opposition is a recent occurrence that only emerged after the number of potential swing voters increased as class‐based voting gradually declined from the 1970s onwards.     

Race,Context, and Privilege: White Adolescents’ Explanations of Racial-ethnic Centrality

This mixed-methods exploratory study examined the diverse content and situated context of White adolescents’ racial-ethnic identities. The sample consisted of 781 9th–12th grade White adolescents from three New England schools, which varied in racial and economic make-up. Open-ended responses provided a range of thematic categories regarding the importance of race-ethnicity to the adolescents’ identities, representing the diverse ideologies of White adolescents’ explanations, ranging from colorblind claims to ethnic pride. This study also found significant relationships between racial-ethnic identity importance (centrality) and parents’ education for White adolescents. These findings highlight the diversity of White adolescents’ understanding of their racial-ethnic identities and the importance of context in shaping racial-ethnic centrality.

Normes,débat et délibération dans la démocratie parlementaire : Max Weber et Jürgen Habermas

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the significance of the norm in the conceptions of Max Weber, sociologist and author of the classical work Economy and Society, and of Jürgen Habermas, philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt School. Both authors have in fact dedicated specific studies to the sociology of right and have conferred a central function on the norms in order to guarantee a correct functioning of parliamentary democracy. For Weber and Habermas, the norm exists in a constitutive tension between facticity and normativity, i.e. between its factual influence on society and its theoretical legitimacy. Weber distinguishes between the juridicial and the sociological meaning of the norm, which is respectively related to its normative value and to its effects on society. For Habermas, the norm is adhered to, but it also has to be legitimized, and this can only be reached as a consequence of a democratic debate that produces consensus. In the political sphere, Weber and Habermas stress the importance of an interaction between legality and political discussion, democratic procedures and their process of institutionalization, thus emphasizing the necessity of guaranteeing a political debate subject to rules. Nevertheless, their ideas of democracy partially differ. Weber conceives of a democracy based on a majority, whereas Habermas stresses the necessity of reaching an agreement. This article analyzes the different models of democracy articulated by Weber and Habermas, their significance, and the possibility of integration between them.     

Disentangling legislative duration in coalitional presidential systems

ABSTRACT

The speed and actions that bills face in legislatures vary immensely, but we do not have a comprehensive framework to analyse legislative durations. Moreover, the absence of data detailing legislative activities and durations in distinct stages of legislative processes hinders analysis. This article presents a framework for analysing legislative delay in coalitional presidential systems and examines unique data on durations, attributes, and parliamentary activities in legislative processes at the level of individual proposals. The empirical analysis investigates executive proposals considered by the Brazilian Congress and seeks to disentangle when duration means legislative activism, when it is due to political conflict, and when it only represents inertia. Our analysis indicates substantial activities in both content-influencing legislative activism and politically motivated obstructionism. Hence, political conflict is as important a source as policy disagreement in accounting for legislative delay. By examining a hitherto untapped area with rich data, this study opens up new venues for rigorous analyses of legislative durations and gridlock.     

MP Transparency,Communication Links and Social Media: A Comparative Assessment of 184 Parliamentary Websites

Parliamentary websites (PWs) can potentially enhance the quality of government by providing information and communication links that stimulate political awareness, deliberation and participation. This article focuses on two particular uses of PWs that can facilitate communication between constituents and their Members of Parliament: provision of MP contact and background information; and links to social media. Through a seminal empirical examination of all 184 functioning lower house and unicameral PWs around the world, this study found that although PWs in wealthy democracies generally provide more MP information, the majority of PWs are deficient in providing basic MP information to citizens and utilizing linkages to social media. By contrast, some non-democratic states and newly democratized countries, especially those with compulsory voting, display a relatively high level of MP transparency and social media connectivity.     

Seeking CSDP Accountability Through Interparliamentary Scrutiny

The EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) requires parliamentary accountability. At present, as CSDP-related decisions are increasingly taken in the framework of the UN or the EU, neither the European Parliament (EP) nor national parliaments are able to hold decision-makers accountable. Interparliamentary cooperation can provide added value in bringing about parliamentary scrutiny of CSDP. Nevertheless, despite an official agreement, the EP and national parliaments have different views on what such interparliamentary cooperation entails. There are five conditions – cooperation and complementarity among parliaments, conferential dialogues, coordinated agendas, and comprehensive and comparative scrutiny – that have to be fulfilled to create added value for interparliamentary cooperation on CSDP matters.