Mid-semester exam; Executive oversight - IBP Union does not automatically guarantee a level of...

Bachelor of Science in International Business and Politics Mid-semester examination assignment in Political Science

A cross-national discussion of democratic legislatures’ control and oversight of the executive branches.

‘Signature’ Karl Magnus Møller CPR: XXXXXX-XXXX 26th of October 2015 10 pages and 22377 characters Copenhagen Business School 2015

Political Science – Autumn 2015 – Mid-semester assignment (exam) Karl Møller – 19th to 26th of October 2015

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Contents an Issue At The Centre Of Democracy ......................................................................................... 2

Formal-Legal Mechanisms Of Oversight And Their Applications ............................................... 3

Political Structures, Norms And The Role Of Parties ................................................................... 6

Wider Perspectives On This Discussion ........................................................................................ 8

Conclusions .................................................................................................................................. 10

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 11 I have chosen question two. It reads:

“Few if any national legislatures can control or even restrain the executive branch of gov-

ernment.” Discuss.


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An issue at the centre of democracy

Democracy is the rule of the people, and at the heart of democracy is the people’s ability

to have its rights safeguarded and their voices heard. In representative democracy, the

democratic system of today, the citizens delegate power and authority to the legislature

and (directly or indirectly) to the executive through the chain of delegation (Bergman &

Strøm, 2011: 6). In such a system, inter- and intra-institutional scrutiny is central in

achieving accountability both as ‘processes of control’ and as ‘policy outcomes’ (Bergman

et al., 2003: 109). This is to prevent agency loss between citizens and legislature and the

executive resulting in the people’s loss of its de facto democratic representation (Bergman

& Strøm, 2011: 8). Therefore, the discussion of the legislature’s ability to restrain or con-

trol the executive is a central part of an absolutely essential democratic challenge. Fur-

thermore, this is a very significant discussion in light of the rise of ‘antipolitics’ and general

discontent and disillusionment with politics and politicians (Heywood, 2011: 41). From

this point of view legislatures should be the strong representation of the people in the

chain of governance not a powerless ‘talking-shop’ of weakly legitimized political parties.

The following discussion aims to challenge and nuance the powerlessness of legislatures

and their ability to scrutinize executives. In particular legislatures of democratic states do

still, albeit to varying degrees, posses the ability to scrutinize and restrain executives

through the application of an array of formal-legal rules, although they are limited by

certain political structures, norms and political parties.

One very central distinction must be drawn right away to obtain the most clarity possible:

the difference between presidential and parliamentary government also known as separa-

tion-of-powers and fused-powers systems. Just how essential this distinction is, is best

shown by observing the systems’ respective chains of delegation (Bergman & Strøm, 2011:

7; Heywood, 2013: 290, 311). In the former system the citizens delegate their sovereignty

directly to both the legislature and the executive through elections (multiple-chain dele-

gation). Thereby the citizens obtain a degree of direct accountability with the executive.

Thus, in separation-of-powers systems the legislature’s ability to control the executive is,

in a way, horizontal: a matter of ‘checks and balances’. Arguably then, the assembly’s

strength and oversight of a parliamentary executive is the more fragile yet crucial of the two,


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because the citizens do not posses a direct link of delegation and accountability to their

prime minister and her cabinet. On this basis, this discussion will focus primarily on ex-

ecutive oversight in fused-powers systems, although measures of scrutiny in presidential

and semi-presidential government will be included throughout.

The discussion will start by looking at the larger institutional factors that facilitate and

influence the level of control and scrutiny that legislatures are able to have over executive

branches of government. Subsequently I will turn to a more detail-oriented look at specific

measures of scrutiny like committees, parliamentary Q&A’s and the effectiveness of these

measures. The second leg of this examination of legislatures’ ability to scrutinize execu-

tives will focus on political culture – including Lijphart’s definition of majoritarian and

consensus democracies – norms and particularly the role of parties and party discipline in

restraining the executive. Then I attempt to imply the possibility of broadening the ap-

proach of this discussion by looking at more regime types and widening the understanding

of scrutiny of the executive, although I also underline the importance of this perspective

in shedding light on the power and influence of legislatures in modern representative de-

mocracies. Lastly, I will sum up the most important findings of this comparative study of

legislatures’ ability to restrain or control executive branches.

Formal-legal mechanisms of oversight and their applications

An important aspect in the assessment of executive oversight is the formal or institution-

alized mechanisms that are in place to facilitate scrutiny. To reach any meaningful con-

clusion this assessment must regard both the measures in their formal sense and how they

are actually deployed and to what effect (Bergman et al., 2003: 113). I shall structure this

examination by initially looking at sanctioned mechanisms of control that are rarely ap-

plied but might encompass the effect of ‘anticipated reaction’. Then the assessment will

move on to regard unsanctioned control mechanisms – questions and committees – and

their roles and applications. Finally, in a summarizing discussion I will argue more specif-

ically on the difference in formal-legal status and actual employment and effect of these

different mechanisms.


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At the centre of executive accountability in parliamentary democracy is the investiture

and no-confidence votes, which, mainly by implicit control or ‘anticipated reaction’

(Damgaard, 2003: 110-11), work as strong control mechanisms. Investiture votes have

failed many times in Italy, and more rarely in a number of other countries (Bergman et

al., 2003: 164), demonstrating the direct ex ante control of this mechanism. However,

maybe more importantly its rare but significant use might imply the deterring implicit

control that it possesses – it is very real, but the fear of it makes it a rare occurrence. In all

European countries except the UK, Switzerland and Cyprus the government must resign

if it losses a vote of no confidence (Gallagher et al. 2011: 415) which in itself implies the

‘de jure’ or formal importance of this mechanism. Arguably though, as votes of no confi-

dence are rarely used to overturn executives, its power can similarly be viewed as mostly

a deterring or disciplining effect or a de facto implicit mechanism of control. A further

application of the no-confidence vote is found in Finland. Here, an interpellation has be-

come synonymous with a vote of no confidence and though this mechanism rarely leads

to the expulsion of a minister or a government, it instead is applied – by the opposition –

as a measure to raise important debates (Raunio & Wiberg, 2011: 127). This provides an

example of how legislatures can shape the norms and applicability of these formal-legal

mechanisms to scrutinize the executives.

Committees and questions also play important roles in many legislatures’ ability to attain

information from, oversee, and influence executives. Committees have become more in-

fluential over time, especially linked to the spread of specialized standing committees.

They are seen as essential in allowing the parliament to play a decisive role in the policy-

making process in for example both consensus-oriented, parliamentary Denmark (Dam-

gaard & Jensen, 2009: 91) and the two-party, presidential United States (Heywood, 2013:

316). As for the many different forms of questions, they serve an ex post purpose of con-

tinuous scrutiny and information extraction as well as an important measure of scrutiny

when specific suspicion arises (which it can certainly do because of the more general scru-

tiny of the committees). Arguably, because these often institutionalized measures are still

‘unsanctioned’ their effectiveness depends on the democratic traditions under which they

are applied. C. F. Juberias’ review of the young Spanish democracy points toward a very


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limited actual use of these mechanisms (Juberias, 2003: 583). However, in the consensus-

oriented Norway a specific committee is assessed as having: “vigorously scrutinized a

string of executive ‘scandals’” (Strøm & Narud, 2003: 538) and likewise parliamentary

questions “have long played an important role” (ibid.).

It is if vital importance to note that the fact that most parliamentary and semi-presidential

democratic countries have in place many or all of the formal-legal mechanisms discussed

above does not automatically guarantee a level of scrutiny that would be assessed as sat-

isfactory from a normative ‘democratic accountability’-standpoint. In fact, parliamentary

democracy tends to secure efficient policy-making, but at the cost of efficient scrutiny

(Heywood, 2013: 311) – a trait also attributed to the simplicity of its democratic delegation

(Bergman & Strøm, 2011: 7). In various analyses of European democracies, a general

pattern is to conclude that the powerful, sanctioned mechanisms of oversight and scrutiny

are rarely applied and that the questions, committees, ombudsmen and so forth are lim-

ited by their lack of sanctioning power (Bergman & Strøm, 2011: chapters 3-7; Bergman

et. al, 2003: chapters 5-21)1. Some might regard this as a result of the almighty executives

‘allowing’ only the latter form of scrutiny, but in reality we must realise that 1) it is pri-

marily because sanctioned measures naturally rely on majority support – which can be

difficult to obtain against the incumbent executive – whereas questions and committees

are much more pluralist and uncontrollable and 2) no-confidence votes are actually some-

times successful and holds implicit control. The conclusion that can be drawn from the

many analyses referenced above is, that this apparatus of measures does de facto have a

serious, significant effect on accountability and the legislatures possessing these can there-

fore, to somewhat varying extend, be classified as policy-influencing more so than execu-

tive-dominated.

1 It seems to be almost paradoxical how the sanctioned mechanisms lack applicability and the regularly applied ones lack sanction power


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Political structures, norms and the role of parties

Moving on from the important discussion of formal-legal mechanisms of scrutiny, this

discussion can never hope to be accurate without regarding some more indirect or exter-

nal factors that greatly influence legislative influence and scrutiny. These are factors such

as the political culture and norms of different systems, voting systems and their effect on

party structure and lastly the role of political parties and party coalitions that Gallagher,

Laver and Mair conclude are essential in any assessment of legislatures (Gallagher et al.,

2011: 76). In the following, I shall start of assessing how variations of consensus and ma-

joritarian style democracies influence the legislature’s ability to restrain and influence the

executive. Then the discussion will turn specifically to the role of strong party cohesion

and provide relevant examples of the influence of majority based oversight and of cen-

tralized parties on especially intra-party scrutiny. Lastly I will examine how pluralist, con-

sensual norms and particularly minority government might counteract the effect of strong

parties.

Consensus-democratic traditions seem to enhance legislative influence on policy-making

– arguably a kind of scrutiny. According to Lijphart we can distinguish between consensus

and majoritarian democracies (Heywood, 2013: 274) with consensus democracies being

more pluralist, encompassing many political parties, a codified constitution and a PR-

voting system – much like what we observe in most of Europe, especially the Nordics.

This norm of opposition consultation, as observed in Denmark by how opposition input

results in amendments to bills throughout the legislative process in parliament (Bergman

& Strøm, 2011: 85), can in itself be regarded as a form of scrutiny. This is true because

the parties in (especially minority) governments chose to (or are in reality indirectly forced

to) let the legislature oversee and influence a large part of their work as legislators thus

reaching a somewhat deliberative compromise through negotiation. This point is ob-

served also when some parties, seen as policy- not office-seeking, will actively chose to be

in opposition to better influence policy-making (Gallagher et al., 2011: 425-26). This form

of scrutiny is quite different from a more formal-legal ‘watch-dog’ control, but is nonethe-

less a de facto mechanism for the legislature, in particular the opposition, to restrain gov-

ernment action.


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Majoritarian democratic traditions and adversary politics limit the possibility of delibera-

tive, pluralist oversight. However, they can, more so in presidential than in parliamentary

systems, facilitate other more confrontational, yet volatile, ways of scrutinizing the exec-

utive. The archetypical example of a strong scrutinizing legislature is the US Congress,

which, due to strong checks and balances and significant resources, has unique powers for

a modern legislature (Heywood, 2013: 323). However, changing between cohabitation

and not, the volatility of the executive-parliamentary relation becomes visible. When such

changes happen the US and France suffer from severe fluctuations in the degree of legis-

lative influence. That can be especially damaging for a parliament like the French which

has much less power to scrutinize than the US equivalent (Thiébault, 2013: 345). Fur-

thermore, the French committee system is tightly controlled by the parliamentary major-

ity (ibid.: 339), thus enhancing oversight volatility. And lastly, because these systems tend

to be characterized by adversary politics, a process of negotiation and compromise is

rarely present to secure an alternative process of influence. In parliamentary UK the leg-

islature has extremely limited influence due to a political culture of adversary politics,

majority single-party government (due to a simple majority voting system) and the ab-

sence of a codified constitution and of resources allocated to parliament (Heywood, 2013:

316).

Strong party cohesion and centralized party organization can be a main limiting factor in

parliamentary scrutiny. K. Strøm argues that “the most important weakness of ex post

accountability under parliamentarism lies in political parties” (Strøm, 2003: 73). Strong

party leadership, whipping and patronage de-incentivizes scrutiny by ‘rank-and-file’ par-

liamentarians who, both from policy- and office-seeking motivation, will wish to please

the core executive of the party. In Belgium, MP’s are seen as ‘agents of their parties’ and

depend on ‘party research centres’ and therefore need approval from the party leadership

before introducing bills or even supporting another party’s legislative proposals (De Win-

ter & Dumont, 2003: 265-269). For these reasons strong parties are especially limiting in

systems where legislative scrutiny is more dependant on parliamentary majorities. This

can be observed in France where investigative committees can be prevented by a majority


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in parliament – in practice the government parties (Thiébault, 2003: 339), contrasting

Germany in which even small parties have a much more pluralist access to initiation of

ex post control mechanisms (Saalfeld, 2003: 361). And lastly, largely due to strong cohe-

sive parties the UK, famously denoted an ‘elective dictatorship’, has very limited parlia-

mentary scrutiny (Heywood, 2013: 311). But the UK is an extreme case from which al-

most all parliamentary – and certainly presidential – systems differ significantly.

Arguably, this ‘party effect’ is dependant on the voting system and the subsequent party

fragmentation. In multiparty parliamentarism the forming of coalition and indeed minor-

ity governments, characteristics of consensus democracy and PR-voting, can strongly limit

the importance of party discipline. Empirically we observe that coalition-forming and mi-

nority government limit government stability and duration (Gallagher et al., 2011), indi-

cating that the legislature’s ability to perform even fatal scrutiny increases with these two

variables and quite possibly with consensus democracy. Coalition governments are argu-

ably less dependent on intra-party scrutiny, because they encompass internal checks and

balances stemming from inter-party scrutiny (Heywood, 2013: 240) and include partisan

veto players (Strøm, 2003: 77). For countries with minority governments, party cohesion

can be said to be of little importance, but arguably, controlling a few cohesive coalition

and support parties is more manageable for an executive than handling party fragments

and individuals of sometimes pivotal importance – much like what is observed within the

two mayor – very loosely tied and fragmented – US parties (Heywood, 2013: 232). That

there seem to be a strong connection between powerful legislatures and weak parties in

general (Bergman & Strøm, 2011: 19) only accentuates this point.

Wider perspectives on this discussion

Arguably, this discussion applies a quite narrow perspective by primarily assessing the

European parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies, and it could be extended to

include a larger spectrum of polyarchies. The world consists of approximately 200 coun-

tries of which not even a fifth are European democracies. So how could this discussion

benefit from broadening its scope from only these and the United States? An assessment

of legislatures’ power and influence in transitioning and ‘managed’ democracies could


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provide valuable insight into the role of these assemblies in facilitating democracy. How-

ever, the reason why this narrower perspective is so vital is that European democracies’

parliamentary oversight of the executive is by far the most ambiguous, unclear and con-

tested. The world’s superpresidential states, like Russia, clearly have executive-domi-

nated, ‘rubber-stamp’ parliaments (Heywood, 2013: 313, 327) and in countries like Su-

dan, Belarus and Kazakhstan, systems of unlimited presidential executives, legislatures

are completely powerless (ibid.: 289). Therefore, to avoid the oversimplifying conclusion

that no parliaments have control over or even influence the executive, we must look to

democracies. I have specifically emphasised parliamentary systems of fused powers. That

might seem to further restrict the perspective of my conclusions, but as I have argued, the

discussion of executive scrutiny is so pivotal in fusion-of-powers systems, because they lack

the ex post checks and balances that lay at the core of separation-of-powers systems. Thus

in asking if legislatures can control or restrain executives, placing European (parliamen-

tary) democracies at the centre of the discussion is crucial.

In fact, the underlying assumption of this discussion – that overseeing the executive is

conducted by the legislature – can be broadened significantly by regarding the emergence

of modern external constraints. European integration and the EU play a central role in

setting up a framework for, sometimes even creating, legislative outcome. Even for Nor-

way, only an EEA-member, this is an important external constraint on government

(Strøm & Narud, 2003: 547). Likewise, constitutionalism and constitutional review, inde-

pendent central banks and state owned companies are in numerous countries strong lim-

iting factors on government. Quite like mass media continually scrutinizing the entire

chain of governance. All of these external constraints have a huge combined effect on

policy outcome and have stirred democratic oversight beyond Montesquieu’s separations

of power. It is not far stretched, then, to claim that they outperform most legislatures in

some respects. They are therefore significant when assessing democratic oversight in mod-

ern democracies. But they are all, in a way, limited by their externality from the chain of

governance. This has two consequences. Firstly, they do not posses the ‘internal’ formal-

legal mechanisms and the institutionalized access to policy-making and information ex-


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traction that the legislature does, which in turn must limit their direct influence on dele-

gation and accountability between legislature and executive. Secondly, and perhaps most

importantly, the external constraints lack basic democratic legitimacy. The only scruti-

nizing actor that is elected by the ‘demos’ and to whom citizens – the ultimate principal

– has delegated its authority, is the legislature. And that, first and foremost, is why this

discussion is of inherent importance to any democratic system.

Conclusions

The fundamental finding of this discussion is that the legislatures’ ability to control or

restrain the executives of modern day democracies is dependent on an array of variables.

Most important of those are 1) the application of all formal-legal mechanisms of scrutiny;

ex ante and ex post, sanctioned and unsanctioned 2) the degree to which a system is em-

bedded with consensus or majoritarian democratic culture and norms and 3) party struc-

ture and cohesion, ranging from pluralist, minority coalition governments and weak par-

ties to single-party majority government, adversary politics and strong centralized parties

exercising intra-party and –coalition control. In presidential and semi-presidential systems

specifically, scrutiny can be quite volatile due to the possibility of changes to and from

cohabitation. Examples from the UK, Denmark, the US, France, Norway and many

more countries have been applied to the discussion. These have confirmed that parlia-

mentary strength and influence can definitely be seen as a spectrum ranging from the

weak British House of Commons to the US Congress and mort importantly encompassing

an array of legislatures that are indeed capable of scrutinizing, restraining or in some cases

controlling the executive branches. We have observed how external constraints play an

important role in modern executive oversight, but critically do not posses the democratic

legitimacy of legislatures. Finally, what this discussion has aimed to show is not that legis-

latures are simply ‘strong and healthy’. The mere fact that answers to this discussion are

not at all obvious signifies that legislatures are under pressure. If they lose ground in the

future, this could become a defining concern for representative – particularly fused-pow-

ers – democracies.


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Bibliography BERGMAN, T. AND STRØM, K. (2011). The Madisonian turn. Ann Arbor: University of Mich-igan Press. BERGMAN, T., MÜLLER, W., STRØM, K. AND BLOMGREN, M. (2003). “Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-national Patterns”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Berg-man, eds., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press Inc., pp.109-220. DAMGAARD, E. (2003) Folkets styre. Mag tog ansvar i dansk politik. Århus: Aarhus Universitetsfor-lag DAMGAARD, E. & JENSEN, H. (2009) “Folketinget” in A. Binderkrantz, J. Christensen, J. Elklit, P. Christensen & H. Jensen, eds. Det Demokratiske System, 2nd edn. Århus: Academica, pp. 81-118 DE WINTER, L. & DUMONT, P. (2003). “Belgium: Delegation and Accountability under Partitocratic Rule”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.253-280. GALLAGHER, M., LAVER, M. & MAIR, P. (2011) Representative Government in Modern Europe, 5th edition. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Higher Education HEYWOOD, A. (2013) Politics. 4th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan JUBERIAS, C. (2003). “Spain: Delegation and Accountability in a Newly Established Democ-racy”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.573-593. RAUNIO, T. & WIBERG, M. (2003). “Finland: Polarized Pluralism in the Shadow of a Strong President”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parlia-mentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.301-324. SAALFELD, T. (2003) “Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Coordination, and Problems of Hidden Action”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.347-375. STRØM, K. (2003). “Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Ox-ford University Press Inc., pp.55-108. STRØM, K. & NARUD, H. (2003). “Norway: Virtual Parliamentarism”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.523-521. THIÉBAULT, J. (2003). “France: Delegation and Accountability in the Fifth Republic”. In: K. Strøm, W. Müller and T. Bergman, ed., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, 1st edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., pp.325-346.

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