Abstract

Parliamentary elections often result in the formation of a coalition government. While the legislative process allows actors within a coalition government to monitor each other, little attention has focused on how opposition parties respond to coalition government. We argue that opposition parties have incentives to uncover and highlight differences and tensions within the governing coalition. A strategy by the opposition to use legislative tools to uncover policy conflicts and ministerial drift within the coalition increases intra-coalition tensions, potentially generating electoral costs for the governing parties, and potentially even hastening the coalition’s demise. To test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010–15 coalition. As expected, the main opposition party appears to strategically focus questions towards policy areas that uncover intra-coalition tensions. This research highlights the importance of opposition parties in parliamentary democracies.

Highlights

  • Parliamentary elections often result in the formation of a coalition government

  • Moving beyond a focus on the government formation stage, a growing body of research has highlighted the role of legislative institutions in helping parties in coalition government to keep tabs on each other – ensuring that ministers are not shirking from any policy compromises and positions agreed at the government formation stage (Andreet al., 2016; Hohmann and Sieberer 2020; Martin 2004; Martin and Whitaker 2019; Martin and Vanberg 2004, 2005, 2011; Zubek 2015)

  • By dynamics of coalition government we mean the potential for intra-coalition policy conflict and in particular the potential for individual ministers to drift from implementing agreed coalition policy (Thies 2001)

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Summary

Introduction

Parliamentary elections often result in the formation of a coalition government. While the legislative process allows actors within a coalition government to monitor each other, little attention has focused on how opposition parties respond to coalition government. Martin and Whitaker (2019) look beyond committees, suggesting that parties in coalition government use parliamentary questions to keep tabs on each other.

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