Abstract
Although democratic governance imposes temporal constraints, the timing of government policy making activities such as bill initiation is still poorly understood. This holds especially under coalition governments, in which government bills need to find approval by a partner party in parliament. We propose a dynamic temporal perspective in which ministers do not know whether they face a cooperative or competitive partner at the beginning of a term, but they learn this over time and use their agenda control to time further bill initiation in response. A circular regression analysis using data on more than 25,000 government bills from 11 parliamentary democracies over 30 years supports this temporal perspective, showing that ministers initiate bills later in the term when their previous bills have experienced greater scrutiny. Ministers further delay bill initiation when coalition parties’ incentives to deviate from compromise increase and when they have less power to constrain their bills’ scrutiny.
Highlights
Government pro tempore is an essential characteristic of democratic governance, which establishes temporal limits on office holding and policy making (Linz 1998)
Where multiple parties pursue individual policy positions for electoral competition. While such adaptation might follow more complex dynamics—due to election closeness, external events, parliamentary workload, or other experiences—we provide a new account for the temporal dimension of democratic governance that considers the influence of learning on the timing of bill initiation in parliamentary democracies
As our explanandum is defined by the relative temporal location of bill initiation within a term, we investigate the agenda control of ministers over the immediate or late initiation of government bills
Summary
Government pro tempore is an essential characteristic of democratic governance, which establishes temporal limits on office holding and policy making (Linz 1998) It is still poorly understood whether and how governments’ limited term in office affects the timing of their activities. At the start of their term, office holders attempt to respond to their constituencies in a policy-making environment they are not familiar with yet Over time, they can update their beliefs and consider whether the incentives of potential challengers (due to policy divergence) require activity adaptation. Where multiple parties pursue individual policy positions for electoral competition While such adaptation might follow more complex dynamics—due to election closeness, external events, parliamentary workload, or other experiences—we provide a new account for the temporal dimension of democratic governance that considers the influence of learning on the timing of bill initiation in parliamentary democracies
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