Comparative Political Institutions: Studying Government from Within

1. VI. Executives: Formation, Delegation, performance Luca Verzichelli / Alessandro Chiaramonte Comparative PoliticalInstitutions Academicyear 2016-2017

2. Studying the government from within • Formal institutional approach: degree of monocratic vs. collective command → debate on congressional government and distinction between Pure presidentialism vs. Pure Parliamentarism. Not that useful in empirical terms → development of comparative frameworks since the 1960s (i.e. Finer 1970; Rose/Suleiman 1980; Mackie/Hoogwood 1985) • Party government alternatives (Katz 1987) • The impact of coalition theories on the study of collective government in comparative perspective (es. Browne 1982) • The development of the study of Executive/Legislative relationships (ex. King 1976) • Recent approaches dealing with governmental performance and policy making. Core executives, governance, etc.

3. Internal working of governments (Mueller in Caramani) Constitutions normally silent about the internal working of government, leaving a remarkable degree of flexibility to political actors: • Presidential government: concentration of executive power / fixed term. Discussions about the effective degree of leadership • Parliamentary systems: broader range of decision modes - Cabinet government: Cabinet discusses and decides collectively, Prime minister as “primus inter pares”. - Prime ministerial government: More pronounced monocratic decision-making since the 1960s; presidentialization - Ministerial government: Dispersing power among individual members (ministers as policy dictators), mutual non-intervention. Problems of functionality. Transformation in the direction of a less polycentric system (rationalization)

4. The autonomy of government (Mueller ) • Modern democracies as party governments: Government actions are influenced by the values and policies of the government party or parties. • Three ideal types of party-government relations: 1) Dominance: One of the two dominates; 2) Autonomy: Coexistence without influencing each other; 3) Fusion: Party and government become politically indistinguishable • factors explaining the political party’s influence on government: 1. Party-programs; 2. Selection of cabinet members; 3. Duration of party’s control over the cabinet • Dynamics: - Individual executive-leaders tend to gain weight relative to the parties (presidentialization). - Governments more and more influenced by the bureaucracy: - party programmes unfit daily policy making (agenda-setting) - Limitation of political choices

5. Dynamics of 2-body image (Andeweg)Andeweg &Nijzink. Beyond the Two-Body Image: Relations Between Ministers and MPs (in Doering 1995) Several factors influence the “image” of Legislative-Executive relationship: • Type of ministerial recruitment • Parliamentary party articulations • Internal rules of procedure • Types of legislation /oversight Ex. Relationship between ministerial background and combination of positions

6. The analysis by Lijphart (1999) E/L relationship can be approached looking at three dichotomous variables by which to differentiate parliamentary and presidential systems: • Nature of head of government powers • Cabinet legitimation: Popular selection vs. selection by legislature. • Collective/collegial executive vs. one-person executive. Outcome: typology of 8 governmental types: pure presidential, pure parliamentary, and six hybrids

7. Parliamentary democracy and delegation (Strom 2003) • More typical and direct process of delegation in the parliamentary system • Behaviours are intended to be rational but information is limited • Delegation theory imposes a single rational principal for each single agent who is accountable (perfect delegation chain)

8. D&A under Parliamentary and presidential government Minister A Civil servants District Median Voter PM & cabinet MPs Minister B Civil servants PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT District Median Voter Civil servants President Secretary District Median Voter Civil servants Upper House Civil servants District Median Voter Secretary Lower House Civil servants PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT

9. Whatisworth in the D&AmodelStrom. 2000. Delegation and accountability in parliamentary democracies. European Journal of Political Research 37 (May): 261-289. • Nature of delegation from each Principal to each Agent (i.e. electoral system) • Presence of external contraints (i.e. external party actors, Heads of State) • Presence of full information on each agent’s behaviour (i.e. parliamentary screening over ministerial behaviour) • Presence of walk away values (i.e. incentives for MPs to rebel from parliamentary parties)

10. Control mechanisms in parliamentary governments Government formation is an act of delegation Parties may ex-ante negotiate the terms of the coalition (policy x) But the risk of ministerial drift remains CONTROL MECHANISMS: Government programs (credibility issue) Inter-ministerial committees Overlapping policy jurisdictions Undersecretaries Legislative review 10

11. The relevance of veto player theory in the study of government functionsGeorge Tsebelis, Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyis, BJPS, Vol. 25, 1995 Institutions matter (Weaver and Rockman). But how? Number of veto players as main drive of policy dynamics • Partisan veto players • Institutional veto players (president, chambers) the veto player framework enables predictions about government instability (in parliamentary systems) or regime instability (in presidential systems). Finding: presidential systems (with multiple institutional veto players) present characteristics of policy-making stability similar to coalition governments in parliamentary systems (with multiple partisan veto players). Extension of the framework to bureaucratic systems and Judiciary

12. Another classic: who gets what? The story of portfolio allocation in coalition governments • Outcomes from first generation of game theory studies: the parity norm (Gamson 1061) and the explanation of possible variations (Browne and Franklin 1973) • Bargaining set: why some parties are more oriented to negotiate more (or less) seats in government instead of having their “proportional quota”? Attention for the policy position (Laver and Schofield)

13. A simplified example of policy viable coalition theory With implication on portfolio allocation AC BC CC AA CA BA foreign policy AB BB CB economic policy Party B sensible to welfare spending C agrees but want to spend on defence A wants defence policy but agrees on reduction if B reduces welfare expenses Winset (BA) is empty (differently from the other) SO BA is stable government With a economic minister from party B and foreign policy minister from party A 13

14. New coalition theories and role of institutions (Verzichelli 2008) • Impact of institutional devices and policy orientations on degree of dis-proportionality of portfolio allocation • Other institutional possibility: increasing the number of slices, changing the delegations and impacting on the saliency of different offices • Keeping tabs on partners: putting watch-dog junior ministers from other parties to control what the minister does (in many consensus democracies) • Back, Debus and Dumont (2012) re-open the “party matters” question: “there is a link between the promises made by parties before the elections and their behaviour when they bargain in the process of coalition formation”.

15. Parliamentarism and Historical approach (Cheibub and others 2015) • Rationale: there must be a reason why parliamentary investiture vote has become increasingly common in parliamentary democracies. • Introduced when constitutions have been re-furbished • Constitutions that endow executives with strong legislative agenda powers also endow parliaments with strong mechanisms to select the executive • Constitution fathers’ choices can be seen in principal–agent terms: strong investiture rules constitute an ex ante mechanism of parliamentary control – that is, a mechanism to minimise adverse selection and reduce the risk of agency loss by parliament. • implications: - parliamentary systems do not rely exclusively on ex post control mechanisms such as the no confidence vote to minimise agency loss - parliamentary systems are the product of conscious constitutional design and not evolutionary adaptation (not only presidentialisms are “artificial”.