Transcript Cabinet Governance - Dipartimento di Scienze sociali e

Meeting the Challenges of Representation
and Accountability in Multi-party
Governments
Wolfgang C. Müller and Thomas M. Meyer
Anna Marta Zaremba
A plan of the presentation
1.
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Introduction
Delegation and decision process within coalitions
Control mechanisms and their relative strength
Effects of the control in a spatial model
Costs and constraints
How can coalitions hold their
ministers accountable?
Delegation
 Lupia defines delegation as ‘an act where one person or
group, called a principal, relies on another person or
group, called an agent, to act on the principal’s behalf’
 The ‘chain of delegation’
voters
parliament
cabinet
specific
ministers
civil servants
Delegation within the coalition
government
Parties playing as principals delegate to party leaders
and MP’s (agents) who are supposed to pursue the
goals of their parties in government and parliament.
2. The coalition delegates to the cabinet which is
supposed to follow the objectives of the coalition.
1.
DELEGATON AND DECISION
PROCESSES WITHIN COALITIONS
Control mechanisms
1. Ex ante:
 Screening
 Contract design
2. Ex post:
 Monitoring
 Institutional checks
Screening
 A mechanism which scans potential candidates for
ministerial office
Joint selection of the candidates for the sensitive
departments like a justice.
Parties are free to choose a candidate but the second
party has a possibility to veto him/her
Contract design
 The more detailed the policy agreement is, the lower
the probability of ministers pursuing policies that are
not acceptable by the coalition partners.
 Coalitional discipline
 Election rule- parties agree to call new elections if the
coalition fails
Monitoring
 Committees, including MP’s inspect legislative
proposals and in that way find out which ministers
deviate from the coalition line.
 Reduction of hidden action problem
Institutional checks
 More or less permanent bodies including the
representatives from all the coalition parties which are
allowed to make institutional checks on ministers and
veto or change ministerial proposal.
 ‘Watchdog’ junior minister- control the activity of a
minister and report a deviation of the common policy
line to their own party.
Policy positions of three parties in a twodimensional policy space including winsets
Ex ante control in a coalition
Ex post coalition control
mechanisms
Constraints and Costs (1)
Due to learning effect, the use of control
mechanisms increase over time
2. Control mechanisms are more likely to be used if:
the cabinet controls the majority of the seats in
parliament and there is considerable time until the
next election.
3. Coalition uses control mechanisms if the parties’
policy preferences are different and the
parliamentary median party is a member of the
cabinet.
1.
Constraints and Costs (2)
Institutional prerogatives of the prime minister lead
to more often use of control mechanisms.
2. Existence of external veto players makes ex ante
agreements between parties less likely.
3. If the coalition players agree on common program,
external veto players lead coalition to use control
mechanisms more often.
1.
Constraints and Costs (3)
Control mechanism are used more often by the coalition
if:
1. The previous cabinets broke up due to the policy
conflicts
2. There is high electoral volatility
3. Critical events terminated former cabinets