Suchergebnisse

The legislative studies literature suggests that speakers may exercise significant power over political outcomes if they can set the agenda of a parliament that lacks a stable majority. This article examines whether speaker power varies once the generic conditions for its exercise exist. This question is central to a better understanding of the decision-making capabilities of a whole class of (often transitional) assemblies that use speakers to structure their proceedings. The article addresses this question through a case study of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies that draws on new evidence from the stenographic records & voting data. This evidence suggests that the degree of political fragmentation of a parliament & the number of issues negotiated impact on the ability of speakers to structure the assembly's business. The implications of this finding for the work of speaker-dominated legislatures are explored. 5 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix. Adapted from the source document.

Executive–legislative relations in the UK are undergoing a process of transformation, and the confidence relationship is part of that change. The confidence relationship not only ensures that the executive is responsible to the legislature, but it also structures bargaining between government and the legislature via the parliament-initiated vote of no confidence and the executive-invoked vote of confidence. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 changes this relationship by removing from the prime minister the power to call an early election should confidence be lost, and by introducing one formal way of wording no-confidence and confidence motions. We place these changes in comparative context, showing that they strengthen parliament vis-à-vis the government, and discuss their implications against the background of contemporary constitutional practice in developed parliamentary democracies, medium-term electoral and political trends in the UK, and the 2019 Brexit deadlock.

Can fixing the parliamentary term be expected to reduce electoral incumbency advantages? The United Kingdom's 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act aims to prevent incumbents from scheduling early elections for political benefit. Yet, the view that flexible election timing gives incumbents an unfair advantage remains contested. The literature on opportunistic election calling—including the signalling effects of this strategy and the competence of governments that select it—lends support to both sides in the debate. This article examines how far the divergent arguments apply in the United Kingdom. Using observed outcomes and a potential outcomes approach, we investigate to what effect incumbents have used election timing. Our results suggest that governments can improve their re-election chances when they have discretion to time elections to favourable circumstances instead of facing voters at set intervals when conditions may not be advantageous. Fixed parliamentary terms are likely to reduce that incumbency advantage significantly.

Why do repeated elections often fail to curb governmental corruption, even in full democracies? While much of the comparative literature on corruption focuses on the institutional features of democracies, this article argues that party system institutionalization is an additional and neglected factor in explaining why corruption may persist in the context of democratic elections. Under-institutionalized party systems impede accountability. They compromise the capacity of voters to attribute responsibility and undermine electoral co-ordination to punish incumbents for corruption. These expectations are tested by combining a controlled comparative study of eighty democracies around the world with an examination of the causal process in a case study of Panama. The findings suggest that party system institutionalization powerfully shapes the scope for governmental corruption.