1,721,125 research outputs found
Replication Data for: Explaining the Evolving Role of National Parliaments under the European Semester
No full textreplication file for "Explaining the Evolving Role of National Parliaments under the European Semester.
Replication Data for: Explaining the Evolving Role of National Parliaments under the European Semester
No full textreplication file for "Explaining the Evolving Role of National Parliaments under the European Semester.
The Life and Times of Bills
No full textTime is one of the scarcest resources in modern parliaments. In parliamentary systems of government the control of time in the chamber is a significant power resource enjoyed – to varying degrees – by parliamentary majorities and the governments they support. Minorities may not be able to muster enough votes to stop bills, but they may have – varying degrees of – delaying powers enabling them to extract concessions from majorities attempting to get on with their overall legislative programme. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the dynamics of the legislative process in 17 West European parliaments from the formal initiation of bills to their promulgation. The ‘biographies’ of a sample of bills are examined using techniques of event-history analysis (a) charting the dynamics of the legislative process both across the life-times of individual bills and different political systems and (b) examining whether, and to what extent, parliamentary rules and some general regime attributes influence the dynamics of this process, speeding up or delaying the passage of legislation. Using a veto-points framework and transaction cost politics as a theoretical framework, the quantitative analyses suggest a number of counter-intuitive findings (e.g., the efficiency of powerful committees) and cast doubt on some of the claims made by Tsebelis in his veto-player model
The importance of domestic political institutions: Why and how Belgium and Italy qualified for EMU
Full text linkWhy and how did the two European Union countries with the worst debt levels and with yearly deficit levels double the Maastricht target in 1993 manage to get their financial affairs in shape to qualify for Economic and Monetary Union? This paper presents an explicitly institutional approach to the political economy of budget deficits. It discusses the role of one external actor, the European Union, in promoting tighter fiscal discipline in the two countries. The European Union provided an important stick for any failure not to make needed changes, namely exclusion from EMU. This stick alone, however, was not sufficient to promote change in both countries. Indeed, each state made fundamental institutional changes that put the fulfillment of the Maastricht criteria within reach. Consistent with their respective electoral systems and coalition structures, Italy delegated significant power on the making and the enforcement of the budget to a strong finance minister, while Belgium strengthened its High Council of Finance and resorted to budgetary targets in the form of fiscal contracts. --
Executive authority, the personal vote, and budget discipline in Latin American and Carribean countries
Full text linkRecent scholarship on the impact of fiscal institutions on budgeting outcomes in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries indicates that political institutions impact the level of budget discipline. BuiIding upon this previous research, we argue that the principle problem that must be addressed to insure strong fiscal discipline is the common pool resource (CPR) problem. The source of the problem, as well as its solution, differ in the government and in the legislature. At the cabinet level, the CPR problem arises because ministers consider the spending and tax implications of decisions on their ministries (only) instead of on the general population. As Hallerberg and von Hagen (1999) indicate, the appropriate solution at the cabinet level depends upon the coalition structure of the government. Given that all LAC countries have either presidential or oneparty parliamentary systems, a strong central player like the finance minister can reduce the CPR problem at the cabinet level. A similar strengthening of the executive vis-à-vis the legislature, in contrast, does not necessarily lead to tighter fiscal discipline. The level of the CPR problem in the legislature depends upon the type of electoral system. If states have open list proportional representation systems, then increases in district magnitude increase the problem, while under closed lists increases in district magnitude decrease the problem. Using a data set of LAC countries for the period 1988-97 and following Carey and Shugart (1995), we create an index for the incentives for the personal vote. We find that executive power in the budget process is most effective in reducing budget deficits when the personal vote is high in the legislature, while strengthening the president (or prime minister) in countries where the personal vote is low in the legislature has no statistically significant effect. This finding has practical implications for the design of fiscal institutions in LAC countries—granting the executive a privileged position vis-à-vis the legislature has beneficial effects on the budget balance only when the CPR problem in the legislature is large. Moreover, an alternative institutional change is to reform a country’s electoral system. The second option may be more feasible in countries where legislators are unlikely to give the president more power, or where dictatorial pasts make populations wary of granting the executive too much authority on any policy area. --
The rules of the game: an assessment of the budget decision process in Uruguay
Full text linkSe presenta un análisis del proceso de aprobación del Presupuesto Nacional desde la teoría de la elección pública, a partir de la lectura de las actas de sesiones de la Comisión de Hacienda de la Cámara de Representantes durante la discusión del Presupuesto 2015-2019. Se concluye que la discusión parlamentaria no propicia la mejora de la política fiscal, principalmente por restricciones técnicas y de dotación de tiempo. Se proponen innovaciones de jugadores y reglas para mejorar los resultados del proceso.Agencia Nacional de Investigación e InnovaciónDAA
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
"The common pool problem in European Parliaments: The interrelationship of electoral and legislative institutions"
Full text linkThe Treaty of Maastricht established debt and deficit limits which states should meet if they are to participate in a future monetary union. This paper considers the relationship between electoral and legislative institutions on the one hand, and the size of a given European country's budget deficit on the other. Plurality electoral systems have a "winner-take-all" rule where only the top vote-getter in each district wins a seat in Parliament. One way incumbent legislators can appeal for support is to bring home particularistic benefits, such as public works projects. Since her district pays only a small portion of the central government's tax revenues, however, she will ask for more spending when the central government pays for them when they have to be paid for with local taxes. In states with proportional representation, on the other hand, candidates do not have the same incentive to offer particularistic benefits to their electorates. Parliamentary rules which restrict or eliminate the ability of legislators to amend budgetary bills will consequently have the greatest effect in limiting spending in states with single member districts. One of the most effective restrictions is that legislators can only approve or disapprove the entire budget under a "closed rule." Such rules give the government near or complete agenda-setting power. Legislators cannot attach extra spending in their districts. This theoretical point stands in contrast to authors who would predict that a move to single member districts alone in a country like Italy would lead directly to lower budget deficits. I will argue that simple change in the electoral system could lead to higher deficits if legislators are not prevented from providing particularistic benefits to their districts. Similarly restrictive parliamentary rules found in France and the United Kingdom are needed in Italy, for instance, if spending is to be limited at the legislative stage
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