The power of the loser: Evidence on an agenda‐setting model of opposition policy influence

In: European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, Band 62, Heft 2, S. 463-485

Abstract

AbstractThe policy influence of political parties is a classic subject of investigation in political science research. The typical conclusion is that parties influence policy only through government: The government controls the legislative process and has the parliamentary majority to legislate; the opposition is shut out. Yet the legislative process is merely the final part of a much longer policy process starting with an agenda‐setting phase that decides the issues of political conflict in the first place. This study proposes an agenda‐setting model of opposition policy influence which hypothesises sizable opposition policy influence through agenda‐setting: A government is likely to adopt legislation covering the opposition's position in order to silence opposition agenda‐setting. The model is tested on the manual coding of 316 Acts of Parliament adopted by the government and 26,533 Prime Minister's Questions from the Opposition across six issues in Britain (1979‒2015). The results have important implications for minority representation.