Keeping tabs on partners The logic of delegation in Coalition Governments Michael F. Thies

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Keeping tabs on partnersThe logic of delegation
in Coalition GovernmentsMichael F. Thies

• Governments require delegation
• PARLIAMENT GOVERNMENT
• In multiparty coalitions, parties dont enjoy
  full control over ministers from other parties

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Governments and delegation

• Governments require delegation
• PARLIAMENT GOVERNMENT
• In multiparty coalitions, parties dont enjoy
  full control over ministers from other parties.
• Multiparty governments face greater delegation
  problems than single-party government for at
  least 2 reasons
• Divergence of preferences
• Difficulty of sanctions

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Two options to adress delegation problems

• MINISTERIAL GOVERNMENT
• Each minister enjoys virtual dictatorship over
  his/her peculiar jurisdiction (or at least the
  right to propose policies in that area see Laver
  Shepsle coalition theory).
• MANAGED DELEGATION
• Delegation without abdication
• Monitoring what agents are doing
• Check the ability of each agent to act

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Ministerial government disadvantages

• Risks due to uncertainty
• Misperceived ideal points
• Unforeseen issues
• Change of the relevance of an issue
• In these circumstances the net cost of having
  ceded competence to another party rises
• Opportunity costs why instead of abdication a
  mutual deference and a compromise?
• Compromises are unstable

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Managed delegation

• If Delegation can be managed at relatively low
  cost to the coalition parties, then the coalition
  might be able to implement the compromise package
  making all coalition parties better off.
• EX POST CHECKS
• They are insufficient, since ministers might be
  able to deceive their cabinet colleagues into
  accepting proposals that make their colleagues
  worse off.
• EX ANTE CHECKS
• Interministerial committees
• Overlapping jurisdictions
• Junior ministers

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HYPOTHESES

• General hypothesis
• Mechanisms of control are used more extensively
  where the risks and opportunity costs of
  abdication are higher.
• H1 Parties are more likely to monitor each
  others ministers the less contrained ministers
  are by other institutional checks (federal
  systems, asymmetric bicameralism, role of the
  Prime Minister).
• H2 Parties are more likely to monitor partner
  parties ministers who hold portfolios of greater
  salience.
• H3 Parties are more likely to monitor partner
  parties ministers whose preferences are more
  extreme.
• H4 Parties are more likely to monitor each
  others ministers when uncertainty is greater.

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When the general salience is low, namely when
each party cares much more about the jurisdiction
it controls and much less about the jurisdiction
controlled by its partners there is not much
difference between an issue by issue compromise
(x) and a ministerial government.
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Empirical analysis

• Dependent variable appointment of Junior
  Ministers (JM)
• Only 2 hypotheses are tested
• H1 Parties are more likely to monitor each
  others ministers the less contrained ministers
  are by other institutional checks (federal
  systems, asymmetric bicameralism, role of the
  Prime Minister).
• H2 Parties are more likely to monitor partner
  parties ministers who hold portfolios of greater
  salience.
• Five cases
• Italy 1970-1989
• Germany 1966-1990
• Netherlands 1971-1994
• Japan 1993-1996
• Japan 1965-1990

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H1 monitoring vs institutional checks

• Less monitoring through hostile JM when Ministers
  are otherwise constrained.
• EXPECTATIONS
• Germany less monitoring as
• Strong prime minister (chancellor democracy)
• Federal system
• Inconguent bicameralism
• Strong legislative committees
• Italy, Netherlands, Japan more monitoring as
• Weaker prime ministers
• Unitary states
• All bicameralism but incongruent only in Japan
• Weak committes in Japan, slightly stronger in the
  Netherlands, strong in Italy but with weak
  oversight powers

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• Evidence
• N. of ministers who have an hostile JM
• N. of JM allocate to an hostile minister
• Chances taken to allocate an hostile JM
• Wasted JM
• If a party in the coalition has few JM to
  allocate, it cant cover all the hostile
  ministries, so we have to look at the chances
  taken.

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H2 salience of ministries vs hostile JMs

• Parties are more likely to monitor partner
  parties ministers who hold portfolios of greater
  salience.
• SALIENCE
• Laver and Hunt 1992
• Issue dimensions
• Top, middle, bottom tiers

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Italy 1970-1989
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Japan 1965-1990
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Alternative explanations about Germany ?

• Two party coalition as a rule in Germany
• A big party with a smaller ally
• The major party doesnt need to control the small
  one, which have few powers
• The small is not interested in monitoring the
  other, being then unable to act.
• Unsatisfying reasons
• Why the SPD didnt try to monitor the FDP?
• The bargainig power doesnt correspond to the
  partys parliamentary representation.

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Conclusions

• Presidential systems and multiparty governments
  are much in commonthe conflict built into a
  multiparty coalition is very similar to the one
  inherent in a separation of powers.
• Once one recognizes the centrality of cross party
  compromise and managed delegation, multiparty
  parliamentarism emerges as distinct regime type
  from its single party cousin

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Coalition Policymaking and Legislative Review

• Martin and Vanberg
• 2005

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• Focus on legislatures in parliamentary
  democracies policymaking in periods of coalition
  government
• Formal model of the interactions between
  coalition parties
• Multiparty governments involve delegation to
  cabinet ministers
• Delegation creates agency problems
• Agency problems increase in severity on issues
  that divide the coalition
• Legislative review to overcome these tensions
• Empirical evaluation original dataset on 336
  government bills from two parliamentary
  democracies
• Results legislatures play a more important role
  in parliamentary democracies than is usually
  appreciated

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LITERATURE REVIEW

• Agency problems inherent to modern democratic
  government
• citizens/government officials (Lupia and
  McCubbins 2000 Strøm 2000)
• elected official/bureaucrats (Huber and Shipan
  2002)
• parties in a coalition
• Cabinet-level institutions as a solution (Müller
  and Strøm 2000 Thies 2001)
• Legislative-level institutions as a solution
• They strenghten opposition parties (Powell 2000
  Saalfeld 2000 Strøm 1990)
• They strenghten government parties

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Principal-agent framework

• Two problematic features of policymaking by
  coalition governments
• Divergent preferences policy and position-taking
  incentives of coalition parties continually put
  them in competition with one another
• Delegation to the cabinet provides considerable
  discretion to ministers in drafting legislation
• Incentives for ministerial position-taking
• Ministers, acting as agents of the cabinet as a
  whole, may not work fully in the interests of all
  their principals ? need for ex post oversight and
  correction (legislative scrutiny)

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Modeling coalition policymaking

• Coalition composed of two parties (A and B) in a
  one-dimensional policy space
• As ideal point 0 Bs ideal point X gt
  0

Policy divergence
A
B
X/t
Xgt0
0
Coalition compromise at X/t, where t 1
X/t is exogenously defined because M.V.are not
interested in the bargaining process inside the
government
As X increases, the policy divergence between the
two parties increases
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Modeling coalition policymaking
Other elements affecting A and Bs Utility
(different from policy outcomes) c resource
and opportunity costs in challenging the
ministerial draft
d opportunity costs of drafting a proposal that
ultimately does not become a law audience costs
for the drafting minister for appearing unable to
implement the original version of the bill a gt 0
the importance of the position taking for the
ministers party. As a increases party A is
punished more severly for making proposal far
from As ideal point.
A
B
X/t
0
Xgt0
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Coalition policymaking game

1. A minister belonging to A introduces a policy
   proposal w ? ?

w
accept
2. In response, B can a) accept As proposal b)
amend As proposal at the cost c gt 0 in order to
have X/t implemented
Choose w ?(?)
A
B
Amend at cost c
X/t

• 3. The final policy p is
• a) p w if B accepts
• b) p X/t if B amends. In this case A pays a
  cost d 0

A
B
X/t
Xgt0
0
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Coalition policymaking game
Which are the Payoffs of A and B in each outcome ?
A
B
X/t
w
Xgt0
0
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Coalition policymaking game
Which are the Payoffs of A and B in each outcome ?
A
B
X/t
w
Xgt0
0
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Coalition policymaking game
What Party B will decide to do ?
Amendment threshold
Because rewriting the proposal made by party A is
costly (c), B is willing to accept some deviation
from the coalition compromise policy (X/t). As
long as As proposal lies above this threshold, B
is willing to accept it.
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Coalition policymaking game
What Party A will decide to do ?
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Coalition policymaking game
What Party A will decide to do ?
Position taking threshold
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Equilibrium strategies
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Expectation

• If the coalition is sufficiently divided,
  ministers face strong incentives to deviate from
  coalition compromises to take a position, thus
  triggering attempts by other coalition members to
  challenge and amend draft legislation to bring it
  in line with the coalition compromise

Main Hypothesis
The incidence of amendmends to ministerial
drafts should become more pronounced as the level
of policy disagreement between parties increases
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Why legislative review

• Coalition partners possess resources that allow
  them to challenge and amend the draft legislation
  introduced by ministers
• Resources
• Cabinet-level institutions
• Thies 2001 JMs
• Müller and Strøm 2000 JMs, cabinet commitees and
  inner cabinets
• Legislative-level institutions legislative
  review
• Cost of monitoring from within the cabinet
• Formal rules regarding policymaking
• Systems of strong standing committees

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THE DATA

• Original dataset all the modifications made to
  government-sponsored legislation between
  introduction and final resolution in the lower
  chambers of Germany (1983-1994) and Netherlands
  (1982-1994)

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THE DATA

• Germany and Netherlands (control by design
  strategy)
• Policy differences between coalition parties
• Similar coalition-specific features
• Governed by MW coalitions
• Similar institutional rules
• Nonmajoritarian democracies with proportional
  electoral system
• Legislative institutions that strenghten the role
  of legislators in policymaking
• Large number of specialized committees
  (composition, jurisdiction)
• Agenda for debate determined by (a committee of)
  the chamber
• Committee powers not restricted by a prior
  decision of the plenary
• Similar voting procedure at the final voting
  stage (simple majority, quorum, successive
  voting method)
• Representative of other European parliamentary
  democracies (institutional features and
  coalition-specific features MWC)
• Drawback unable to assess the impact of
  alternative institutional arrangements and
  coalition features on the extent of bill
  modification
• Advantages of the time frame chosen
• Relatively small number of years ? less prone to
  unmeasured temporal effect
• Recent expert survey (Laver and Hunt 1992)

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• Unit of analysis government bill
• Excluded bills
• budget bills, budgetary adjustment bills,
  constitutional bills
• Bills non classifiable into Laver and Hunts
  eight policy dimensions
• 336 government bills

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• Delegation to cabinet ministers poses a
  principal-agent problem for coalition governments
• This problem is particularly pronounced on issues
  that divide the coalition internally
• Parties will take advantage of the opportunities
  presented by the legislative process (legislative
  review) to counteract the negative effect of
  delegation to ministers
• Implication we should see more such corrective
  activity on bills that divide the coalition

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OPERATIONALIZATIONthe dependent variable

• How to measure the degree to which ministerial
  drafts of government bills are changed in the
  course of legislative review?
• (ideally) Policy impact of changes ? But hard to
  determine for both legislators and political
  scientists
• Number of articles changes
• Number of articles altered (or deleted) in the
  draft version of bill Number of new articles
  added to the draft version of bill
• From 0 to
• Advantages of this measure
• Articles are the logical policy subunits of a
  bill (the substantial impact of changes is
  captured)
• Reliably coded by other researchers

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Dependent and independent variables descriptives
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The independent variables

• Key explanatory variable
• Government issue divisiveness
• Hypothesis as the coalition becomes more divided
  on policy, coalition partners are more likely to
  make use of the legislative process to correct
  government bills
• Control variables
• Opposition issue divisiveness
• Hypothesis if the opposition does possess
  significant influence over policymaking, we
  should expect more changes being made to those
  bills dealing with issues that greatly divide
  opposition parties from the party of the minister
  proposing them
• Junior minister from the partner party
• Hypothesis we expect the presence of a partner
  party in the ministry drafting a bill to reduce
  the number of changes made to the bill in the
  legislature
• Number of committee referrals
• Hypothesis we expect to see more changes made to
  bills, other things equal, the greater the number
  of committees involved in the review process (ie
  the greater the number of legislators from a
  party who are able to scrutinize a minitsers
  proposal)
• Number of articles in the draft bill (logged)
• Hypothesis we would expect a positive relation
  between the number of draft articles and the
  number of articles changed
• Expiration of bill before the plenary vote
• Hypothesis bills that do not reach the final
  voting stage are not changed as extensively as
  bills that receive a full review in the
  legislative process
• Country indicator variable
• Hypothesis since in Germany (but not in
  Netherlands) committees has redrafting authority,
  we expect more extensive changes being made in
  Germany
• Policy area indicators
• Bills dealing with certain types of issues might
  be always changed more or less extensively,
  regardless of the policy preferences of coalition
  partners

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METHODOLOGY

• Event count model
• Assumptions
• The events accumulating during the observation
  period are conditionally independent
• The rate of event occurrence is homogeneous
  across any given time period
• Violated positive contagion
• ? overdispersion
• Solution negative binomial analysis
• Allows the rate of event occurrence to vary
  across an observation period
• And allows for estimation of the degree of
  overdispersion as a parameter from the data

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RESULTS
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RESULTS

• Government issue divisiveness
• Hypothesis bills dealing with issues that are
  more divisive for the coalition government are
  changed more extensively in the legislative
  process ok
• Control variables
• Opposition issue divisiveness
• Hypothesis if the opposition does possess
  significant influence over policymaking, we
  should expect more changes being made to those
  bills dealing with issues that greatly divide
  opposition parties from the party of the minister
  proposing them not supported
• Junior minister from the partner party
• Hypothesis we expect the presence of a partner
  party in the ministry drafting a bill to reduce
  the number of chenges made to the bill in the
  legislature ok
• Number of committee referrals
• Hypothesis we expect to see more changes made to
  bills, other things equal, the greater the number
  of committees involved in the review process (ie
  the greater the number of legislators from a
  party who are able to scrutinize a minitsers
  proposal) ok
• Number of articles in the draft bill (logged)
• Hypothesis we would expect a positive relation
  between the number of draft articles and the
  number of articles changed ok
• Expiration of bill before the plenary vote
• Hypothesis bills that do not reach the final
  voting stage are not changed as extensively as
  bills that receive a full review in the
  legislative process ok
• Country indicator variable
• Hypothesis since in Germany (but not in
  Netherlands) committees has redrafting authority,
  we expect more extensive changes being made in
  Germany ok, but be careful
• Policy area indicators
• Bills dealing with certain types of issues might
  be always changed more or less extensively,
  regardless of the policy preferences of coalition
  partners not displayed

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Predictive results

• How do different levels of coalition policy
  divergence affect the predicted number of article
  changes in government bills?

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Predictive results
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CONCLUSION

• Role of legislatures in parliamentary democracies
  policymaking
• Central role of the legislative process in
  strenghtening government (not opposition) parties
• Delegation creates tensions between coalition
  parties that grow particularly strong on issues
  that sharply divide them
• Coalition partners attempt to manage these
  tensions trough both cabinet-level and
  legislative-level institutions
• Ministerial drafts are likely to be changed more
  extensively in the legislative process the
  greater the level of policy divisiveness among
  coalition partners
• Parliament as an arena in which coalition parties
  interact

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Possible extensions

• Minority governments
• Do the preferences of opposition parties matter?
  And to what degree?
• Multiparty governments in majoritarian systems
• Cabinetlevel institutions and/or ministerial
  autonomy