Parliamentary Decision-Making and the Implementation of Policy

Abstract

One of the arguments this book makes is that political parties essentially comprise two separate organisations, the membership and the parliamentary party, which can often create ‘parallel lives’ in the realm of policy-making. Although party members may potentially participate in the formulation of party policy, subject to the constraints identified in the first part of this book, the actual application and transfer of this policy to the legislative arena faces a number of challenges. Even if we assume party policy is the product of membership participation, it has only limited relevance and application to the legislative arena. Chapter 9 highlighted the complexity of the representative duties that are undertaken by MPs, the fact that they are constituency and public, as well as party representatives, and some of the intervening factors that curtail the strict application of party policy and the membership’s views to the parliamentary chamber, such as parliamentarians’ duties to the public and the electorate, and matters of conscience. Although extra-parliamentary parties might like to control the actions of their elected representatives, Chapter 8 argued that this is a legally futile and often difficult exercise.