Questioning in European Parliaments

Abstract

Although parliamentary questions (PQs) are a feature of most legislatures, no two legislatures share exactly identical questioning forms. This research provides an overview of forms of questioning in European parliaments, covering variation in the main institutional features, the processing of questions and the impact of political parties on questioning. Cross-national and temporal variation in the behavioural trends in questioning is identified using more in-depth analysis of patterns of questioning in the national parliaments of the United Kingdom, France and Spain. The accountability game is found to have a general structure based on the principal–agent relationship and the fact that government must answer questions posed by MPs. PQs are conceived as formal mechanisms to combat information asymmetries and moral hazard, especially when there is hidden information, and by means of them MPs can give orientation or indirizzo (direction) to the executive.