Executive-legislative Relations Research Articles

Relations between local councillors and executive boards: conceptualisations, explanations and empirical evidence from the Netherlands

ABSTRACT This paper nuances the dualism between local councils and local executives and distinguishes distinct patterns of interactions between councillors and executive members based on Anthony King's modes of executive–legislative relations. Several hypotheses explaining council–executive relations were tested using original survey data on Dutch local councillors. The interparty mode (coalition vs opposition) was found to be the most dominant relative to the non-party mode (council vs executive board) and the crossparty mode (policy specialists vs policy specialists). Councillors operate less frequently in the interparty mode when the governing coalition is oversized, and female councillors operate less often in the interparty mode than male councillors. Furthermore, an analysis of councillors shifting between modes suggests that councillors operate in the interparty mode when politically salient issues are at stake, in the non-party mode when the position of the council is at stake, and in the crossparty mode when dealing with technocratic issues.

A ‘flawless’ constitutional engineering project in Turkey: regime transformation through constitutional amendments of 2007, 2010, and 2017

ABSTRACT A functional legislature is very vital for democratisation. During the time of democratic consolidation, parliament changes from its primary roles of oversight, representation and legislation into ‘important public arenas of partisan dispute, of encounters with social topics, of negotiations and of important decision-making’. Populist leaders in parliamentary systems like Turkey recently either led to sui generis presidential systems or transformed them into illiberal democracies by expanding the executive branch's power to amend the constitution, which contradicts the favourable conditions of the third wave of democratisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. By streamlining legislative processes, the Turkish Constitution of 1982 envisaged an empowered executive that would subordinate the parliament. The three constitutional modifications passed after 2007 resulted in de-democratisation, de-parliamentarisation and eventually, a regime change from democratic consolidation to autocracy. The parliamentary debates on these constitutional amendments, which included popular presidential election, judicial reform and the so-called 'Turkish style' presidential governance system, failed to reach a consensus and were marked by an adversarial rather than deliberative approach. Have constitutional reforms made in the name of re-democratisation resulted in de-democratisation, with the legislature entirely crippled, the judiciary reliant and the executive exercising sole authority? This study aims to analyse the impact of three consequential constitutional amendments on democratic backsliding in Turkey, with special reference to the decline of parliament. Parliamentary minutes on the relevant constitutional amendments, procedural changes disabling the parliament from performing its legislative and oversight functions and the actual outcomes of these amendments in terms of executive-legislative relations will be discussed. In conclusion, potentials for strengthening parliament, checks and balances, and re-democratisation will be presented.

Domestic Debate and International Office: Sweden in the UN Security Council 2017–18

Abstract Through an explanation of the domestic political controversy that surrounded the most recent Swedish candidature and subsequent membership of the UN Security Council 2017–18, this article contributes to our understanding of the domestic–foreign policy nexus in two respects. First, it conceptualizes a domain of foreign policy priorities. Issues within this domain are likelier to deviate from a consensual pattern of foreign policy by sparking conflict, as they provoke competing national role conceptions among the foreign policy elite. Second, it refines results from previous study on the executive–legislative relationship in foreign policy. It confirms the association between party conflict on substantive foreign policy and a higher level of parliamentary control on the government. The conflict on substance leads to a decline in trust among members of parliament in opposition, which may motivate the continuation of parliamentary control through available instruments also after the conflict on substance is settled. The analysis is conducted in three descriptive steps: (1) the domestic-institutional context of decision-making, (2) partisan divides, and (3) the executive–legislative relationship. It utilizes a variety of sources, including parliamentary debates, governmental and parliamentary assessments, and interviews with diplomats and senior officials.

Explaining the failure of legislative agency in patronal divided executives: deputy meaning making and its impact on legislative quality in Kyrgyzstan 2010–2020

ABSTRACT In divided-executive patronal systems, legislatures have been sites of resistance to the centralization of power in a single patronal pyramid. Kyrgyzstan is an anomaly among divided-executive patronal systems when between 2010 to 2020, the Kyrgyz parliament was neither a site of opposition nor did it demonstrate legislative agency vis-à-vis the executive. Instead, following another uprising in 2020, a unified single patronal pyramid was re-established. Adopting an approach rooted in the semiotics of meaning making and drawing on a dataset of interviews with parliamentary deputies and a range of documentary sources, this article complements existing institutional approaches to explaining weak legislative agency by revealing a series of dialogical relationships between deputy meaning making and broader institutional and cultural constraints which shaped the Kyrgyz’s parliament’s overall quality and strength. These relationships pertain to legislative initiative, the protection of private interests and representation, with the interplay between the ascribed meaning and its constitution within broader institutional and cultural context contributing to the diminishment of legislative agency vis-à-vis the presidency. Kyrgyzstan illustrates the value of meaning making as an approach to understanding legislative-executive relations in non-democratic contexts, and its impact in conjunction with cultural and institutional constraints in shaping legislative agency.

Executive-Legislative Relationship and National Development in Nigeria: Focus on the 8th National Assembly (2015-2019)

This study accessed the impact of executive-legislature relations on national development in Nigeria with special emphasis on the 8th National Assembly which ran its course from 2015 to 2019. The objective of the study is to determine the extent to which the relationship between the executive and the 8th National Assembly have impacted on national development in Nigeria within the period under review. This study anchored on structural-functional approach propounded by Gabriel Almond, ex-post facto research design, documentary method of data collection and qualitative descriptive method of data analysis. It discovered that the fragile relationship between the executive and the 8th National Assembly negatively impacted on national development in Nigeria, so it went further to recommend that the National Orientation Agency must take it as a paramount duty to conduct periodic seminars for our legislators and executives in order to tune their minds toward national development.

Introducing the International Treaty Ratification Votes Database

Abstract This research note introduces the International Treaty Ratification Votes Database, which covers more than 6,000 votes on the ratification of international treaties in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 1990 and 2019. In addition, the database presents data on the voting behavior of ninety parties in eight of these countries, resulting in more than 11,000 party observations. The research note presents the two datasets with their two units of analysis, the parliamentary and the party level, and describes the main variables, reaching from descriptive vote and cabinet data to issue areas, comparative party family classifications, and actual voting records. Furthermore, we suggest avenues for using the data for future research on the domestic politics of foreign policy: Our data can be used to study patterns in the politicization of international treaties and organizations, ratification delays, legislative–executive relations, the party politics of foreign policy making, and the crisis of the liberal international order.

Executive-Legislative Relations in Nigeria's Fourth Republic: Issues, Challenges and Prospects

This study examines the executive-legislative relations in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. The study's objective was to ascertain the extent to which Nigeria's democratic form of government was influenced by disagreements between the administration and the legislature. The study employed an ex-post facto design and also utilized qualitative methods and important information from literature research. Documentation was used to gather the majority of the data from secondary sources, and content analysis was used to give the information a complete and comprehensible explanation. Because of its ability to describe the pattern of relations between the legislative and executive branches in Nigeria's democratic system, Baron Montesquieu's theory of separation of powers, which was created in 1948, was chosen as the framework for examination. The study discovered that the relationships between the legislative and executive branches were unhealthy, antagonistic, conflictual, and dysfunctional during the study period, particularly from 2015 to 2022. Additionally, it is demonstrated that a variety of elements, including constitutional provisions, the capacity to pass laws, the administration of public funds, the perception of executive dominance, haughtiness, and a disregard for the law, among others, are to blame for the ongoing conflicts between the Legislative and Executive arms that have a detrimental effect on the development of democracy in Nigeria. Based on these findings, the study recommends that the connection between the executive and legislative arms of government be reinforced in order to promote a democracy that functions in Nigeria. Additionally, it is recommended that those in public office respect the law.

Institutional incentives and contentious politics in post-Neoliberal era in Latin America (1985–2010)

The article focuses on the supply-side of protest activity in Latin America in the post-neoliberal era. It argues that parties’ cohesive voting in Congress under different power constellations and parties’ linkage strategy to voters create institutional conditions of power collusion, inter-branch stalemate, or party erosion that delineates political terrain for social mobilization. First, the firm control of a single party or coalition over the executive and legislature with cohesive voting of party members in line with party leadership denotes power collusion and incites underrepresented actors to protest. Second, the dislocation in the executive-legislative relations (either with party members voting against the president’s proposals in a majority government or with cohesive opposition bloc(s) acting against the president’s will in a minority government) leads to policy immobilism and pushes legislative parties to ignite popular discontent. Third, more programmatic party linkages increase the degree of party institutionalization and predictability about policy commitment and mitigate struggles in extra-electoral arenas. The theoretical argument is tested with a battery of statistical tests that lends credence to the institutional explanations of mass mobilization and corroborated with empirical cases that show the plausibility of the statistical findings in particular contexts.

Loyal Allies or Stubborn Establishment?

To what extent was U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s populist foreign policy agenda supported by the Republican Party (GOP) in Congress? A bourgeoning literature on Congress and U.S. foreign policy has identified increasing partisan disagreement on international issues. Trump’s “America First” policy may have further incited division and ideological controversies. At the same time, the 45th U.S. president’s foreign and security policies were, to a large degree, at odds with traditional GOP policy positions. To understand executive–legislative relations on foreign and security policy during the Trump administration, and in particular the role of the GOP, this paper first investigates voting records in Congress during the Obama and Trump presidencies. The analysis reveals that the reaction to Trump’s “America First” doctrine was not uniform and that parts of the GOP asserted themselves against the president. To explain the sources of this variance, the article focuses on two policy areas with varied GOP positioning: arms control (pro Trump) and foreign aid (contra Trump). In sum, the analysis reveals that some Republicans with traditionalist views (the so-called GOP establishment) opposed some of Trump’s anti-internationalist policies, in particular those that contradicted long-standing GOP preferences regarding vital U.S. security interests. At the same time, Republicans supported Trump on issues where the GOP could continue its policy preference, on arms control in particular.

The Implementation of Executive Toolbox during Jokowi-JK Administration in the Post-2014 Presidential Election

This research will look at the dynamics that happened post-presidential election of 2014 in Indonesia, which indicated a divided government in the parliament which caused a deadlock at the beginning of the chosen presidential candidates, Jokowi-Jusuf Kalla, for the 2014 - 2019 period. This was the aftermath of the combination between the presidential system and a multiparty system, which showed the executive-legislative relationship in a multiparty presidential system. It could also reveal the inability of the government and the opposition to reach common ground multiple times. However, the case in Indonesia is quite different and interesting to explore how the government aimed to reach a balance and run their administration. The executives were using the executive Toolbox to offer politically strategic positions for the opposition to join the governmental coalition and to intervene in the internal works of political parties. The approach used for this research was a qualitative design. The concept of divided government which was put forward by Hughes & Carlson (2015), was chosen to be the theoretical framework to analyze the dynamic factors of the case. And the theory of executive toolbox usage by Raile et al. (2011) was used by the writer to analysis the presence of executive power in suppressing the dynamics that happened. The results of the research showed that the usage of the executive Toolbox was part of a response from the regime of Jokowi to create stability in facing the dynamics that happened and to gain the support of the opposite parties in the parliament to join the governmental coalition of 2014-2019’s Jokowi-Jusuf Kalla period. This indicates that the government under Jokowi, which combined a multiparty system and the presidential system, can be considered a success, especially in terms of gaining support from the coalition through the usage of the executive Toolbox.

Political ambition and opposition legislative review: Bill scrutiny as an intra‐party signalling device

AbstractRecent research on executive–legislative relations in parliamentary democracies has shown that members of majority parties submit amendments to government bills to police the coalition compromise and to distinguish themselves from their coalition partners. It is poorly understood, however, what motivates members of the opposition to engage in the resource‐intensive work of proposing changes to government bills. Not only are amendment proposals by the opposition often unsuccessful (lack of policy motivation), they are largely invisible to the electorate (lack of vote motivation). We argue that amendments by the opposition are best understood as reflecting office motivations of legislators. Ambitious legislators draft amendments to signal skill and expertise to their party peers, which is rewarded with promotions to higher office. We confirm our argument with original data from a German state parliament. The findings further our understanding of legislative review, individual legislative efforts and career trajectories.

Introducing the parliamentary deployment votes database

The Parliamentary Deployment Votes Database provides data on the voting behaviour of 301 political parties in 1,022 parliamentary votes on military missions between 1990 and 2019 in 21 countries of the Global North. This special data feature introduces the database and presents descriptive statistics and basic patterns on some of its key variables: general, political, and regional characteristics of missions and votes themselves; the level of agreement; and party-political contestation. The number of deployment votes has increased over the course of the 1990s and then fluctuated around a stable annual average of 40 to 50 votes. At the same time, legislative–executive relations in security and defence policy and, as a consequence, the number of deployment votes, continue to differ substantially between countries. Whereas support for military missions has increased over time, the degree of contestation, as measured by an agreement index, differs considerably across the countries under study. Whether a political party supports a military mission depends not only on it being part of a governing coalition or in opposition but also on its political ideology: support is lowest among parties of the Radical Left, increases among green and social-democratic parties and peaks among liberal, conservative and Christian-democratic parties. Radical-right parties are less supportive than centrist parties but more supportive than radical-left parties. Regional peculiarities notwithstanding, this pattern can be found in Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia and North America. The database will be interesting for scholars of the democratic politics of military missions and particularly legislative–executive relations and political parties in security and defence policy, providing the foundations for a comparative analysis of different missions, the ideological foundations of contestation, government–opposition dynamics and legislative–executive relations in security and defence policy.

Crisis and Gender in Legislative-Executive Relations

The interaction of the legislative and executive is gendered in nature. Gender shapes what actors in these two institutions demand from each other. This pattern is visible, for instance, in the distinct policy priorities of women and men in parliament (e.g., Allen and Childs 2019; Bäck and Debus 2019; Lowande, Ritchie, and Lauterbach 2019) and in the ways that women engage and oversee related government initiatives. At the same time, gender influences the strengths and weaknesses that actors in the legislature and executive ascribe to each other and, hence, their mutual assessment. Members of parliament (MPs) and party gatekeepers, for instance, tend to favor men for the most influential and well-resourced portfolios, since they believe that masculine traits are necessary or suitable to succeed in governmental positions, and membership in men-dominated political networks remains an important route to qualify for ministerial office (see, e.g., Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet 2019; Krook and O’Brien 2012). Change in these dynamics is scarce or occurs only gradually, meaning that the ways in which executive-legislative interactions are gendered are usually stable.

The Comparative Politics of Cabinet Reshuffles

AbstractThis special collection is devoted to cabinet reshuffles, which are understood as personnel-related changes within the lifetime of a cabinet. Scholars agree that cabinet reshuffles matter in many respects. To begin, they may shape intra-governmental relations, by either intensifying or helping solve cabinet conflicts. Further, they are important instruments for party leaders to promote or demote party representatives, with far-reaching possible consequences for the party and beyond. Last but not least, reshuffles may be used to increase governmental efficiency and often trigger policy change. The ever-increasing personalization of politics has fuelled the public interest in any ministerial personnel-related issues, and turned cabinet reshuffles into events of undisputed political and scholarly relevance. Despite the apparent importance and ubiquity of reshuffles, the international literature displays at least two major flaws: first, a lack of systematic comparison across countries and regimes and second, a strong notional and empirical bias towards Westminster democracies. This collection seeks to overcome these weaknesses and their limiting effects on the knowledge and understanding of key aspects of executive politics and executive–legislative relations. With that aim, it gathers novel comparative research on the different types, causes and effects of cabinet reshuffles in a variety of democratic and authoritarian systems. The theoretical approaches and empirical findings of the six articles featured mark a major contribution to the scholarship on political executives and executive elites in the contemporary world. This introductory piece offers a succinct historical overview of cabinet reshuffles in different contexts, and the study thereof.

Joining International Organizations

This study examines how the United States affiliates with multipartite international organizations, not only by the treaty, but also the executive agreement process. It examines these processes as a legal/political feature of executive-legislative relations, involving nearly 150 international organizations with which the United States has been affiliated since 1945. With few exceptions, Congress has cooperated with the President in developing a variety of techniques for such affiliation, and such coaction is not a post-World War II phenomenon, but began in the 1860s.

Political Power Shift in the House of Representative of North Sumatra Province, Indonesia: A Political Communication of Post-election

The results of the 2013 regional head election (Pilkada) in the context of the executive and 2014 legislative elections at the level of North Sumatra Province produced new leadership accompanied by a coalition posture of supporting parties. In the context of the legislative institution, it also resulted in changes in votes or seats. Normatively, in the context of executive-legislative relations, it will be more effective if a coalition of executive-supporting parties gets a majority in the legislature since it will facilitate political communication that is involved in the discussion of a regional regulation draft. This study attempts to depict the political power shift in the regional house of representatives of North Sumatra province (RHRNSP), Indonesia. This study employed a descriptive qualitative approach with a content analysis technique. The data were obtained through the documentation method. The results showed that there were obstacles from several factions outside the coalition party, specifically in discussing the regional regulation draft. However, these obstacles were still in the form of criticism and input from several factions against the draft regional regulation to be ratified. This is known through the ongoing political communication.

Ask me something I know: cabinet members in Question Time

ABSTRACT Question Time (QT) in parliamentary democracies allows parliamentarians (MPs) to publicly scrutinise the government and influence the policy agenda. This paper explores how the other side, the cabinet members, make use of the event. Prime Minister (PM) and other ministers have incentives to inform and persuade the public and might adjust their responses to oral questions accordingly. The paper tests this expectation on the responses of Croatian cabinet members in QT between 2003 and 2020. The analysis demonstrates that when ministers respond to the questions from co-partisan MPs, which are likely coordinated within the party, their responses include more numerical evidence. Moreover, both PMs and ministers respond to their co-partisan MPs with a more positive sentiment, which is driven by the positive sentiment of the respective questions. These findings have important implications for executive-legislative relations, the quality of parliamentary scrutiny and the public perception of parliament.

From Neoliberalism to Neodevelopmentalism: Indonesian’s Investment Policy on the Foreign Capital Post-new Order

This paper aims to describe two problems of investment policy during the New Order regime which leaned towards neoliberal elements or the Washington Consensus; However, after the New Order regime, it was more inclined to a neo-developmental strategy, and saw development strategies related to investment policies change due to internal factors including the presidential election, executive-legislative relations and competing technocrats vis vis nationalist economists and external factors such as the global commodity boom. of China’s high demand. The argument of this article is deliberately trying to provide new understanding and insight on investment policies under the administration of President Joko Widodo.

‘Congruent We Govern’: Cost of Governance in Multiparty Presidentialism

AbstractThe received wisdom on executive–legislative relations in multiparty presidential systems is that the size of the president's majority in Congress is the key factor explaining governance patterns, particularly the president's legislative success. However, in many cases presidents enjoying a nominal majority have been unable to pass legislation and have faced institutional instability. The article departs from a conventional definition of divided government and focuses on the preference incongruence between the governing coalition and the floor of Congress. It argues that the ideological distance between the floor and the coalition is a key factor explaining the president's cost of governing (which includes factors such as the distribution of cabinet portfolios and budgetary transfers to coalition partners). The article provides an empirical test with data from Brazil that find that the greater the ideological incongruence, the higher the cost of governing for the president.

The Tug-of-War over Drone Strike Oversight: Congress and the Politics of Drone Warfare during the Obama Presidency

Despite the increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in counter-terror operations, executive-legislative relations, intelligence oversight, and war powers regarding drone strikes have received scarce scholarly interest. Our article contributes to filling this gap and focuses on the politics of congressional oversight of drone warfare—in particular those operations conducted by the CIA (Title 50 operations) during the Obama administration. We apply the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to conduct an interpretive case study and shed light on our central research question: How can we explain the timing and limited extent of changes with regard to congressional oversight of drone strikes during the Obama presidency? While this policy area is traditionally depicted as one of executive dominance and legislative acquiescence, we analyze how congressional entrepreneurs used a policy window in the wake of John Brennan’s confirmation hearings for CIA Director in 2013 to set the agenda on congressional oversight of drone strikes, and thereby contest executive policy-making. Congress enacted limited changes to drone strike oversight and pressured President Obama to increase transparency. At the same time, further limitations, most notably to consolidate drone strike oversight by ending the CIA drone program, were defeated by senior leaders in Congress. Our study thus contends that congressional entrepreneurs played a key role for both change and continuity regarding drone warfare oversight.