Legislative Decision-making Process Research Articles

EX-POST ANALYSIS AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE LEGISLATIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

The paper presents the theoretical arguments and practical benefits of developing a system of ex-post evaluation of regulatory impact by studying the actual effects of the decisions of legislative decision-making bodies. The individual issues under consideration involve: the analysis of general assumptions of the decision-making approach in legal studies and its application to the problems of a law-making policy; presentation of the stages of the legislative decision-making process, with a particular emphasis placed on the effects of such decisions; and discussion of the conditions of a contemporary law-making policy, from both the theoretical and practical points of view, based on a distinction of several dimensions of legislative decision-making (instrumental, axiological, power game, social conflict, discursive, social normative system, economic, and temporal). For each dimension, ex-post evaluation criteria are proposed.

Information Infrastructures for Black-Interest Advocacy in Congress

Information is one of the most prized commodities in the legislative decision-making process. However, gaining access to high quality information through traditional institutional means in decreasing, and institutional and interpersonal marginalization puts Black lawmakers at a distinct disadvantage. This article explains how Black lawmakers rely on extra-party institutions to fulfill the desire for information when the institution falls short. In fulfilling this responsibility as the key source of information on conditions that plague the Black community, the organization has developed an information infrastructure—a combination of internal and external mechanisms designed to improve their research and informational capacity. To highlight the utility of the information infrastructure, we examine Special Order Hour Speeches delivered from the 113th through the 115th Congress (2013–2018). We find, the CBC information infrastructure provides its members access to highly specialized information without having to sacrifice the quality of sources to account for information search costs.

PUBLIC INITIATIVES AND PUBLIC HEARINGS IN UKRAINE AT THE CURRENT STAGE

One of the key and most common tools for interaction between government and citizens is public initiatives and hearings. The author emphasizes that the latest democratic tendencies of local governance play a huge role in solving problems of local significance and determining the vectors of local development. The article analyzes the problems of cooperation of public authorities with various non-governmental organizations of civil society and identifies ways and directions of its activation.
 The authors note that public hearings are one of the mechanisms for reconciling the interests of different groups, showing an interest in solving a particular problem of public interest. In many democracies of the world, public hearings are a particular form of community involvement in the legislative decision-making process required by law. Public hearings are a very common mechanism of democracy at the local level in most democratic countries - it is a dialogue between the local government and the community itself. The study focuses on the role of civil society in the formation of new principles of cooperation between public authorities and civil society.
 Creating conditions for socio-political dialogue of all groups and sectors of society that have different interests, comprehensive support for the idea of civil peace should be the basis for further development of Ukrainian statehood, development of an extensive system of interaction with civil society and various non-governmental organizations. In the context of effective involvement of citizens in the policy implementation process, the activity of public initiatives and public hearings is of key importance.

Benthic Foraminiferal Indices and Environmental Quality Assessment of Transitional Waters: A Review of Current Challenges and Future Research Perspectives

Transitional waters straddle the interface between marine and terrestrial biomes and, among others, include fjords, bays, lagoons, and estuaries. These coastal systems are essential for transport and manufacturing industries and suffer extensive anthropogenic exploitation of their ecosystem services for aquaculture and recreational activities. These activities can have negative effects on the local biota, necessitating investigation and regulation. As a result of this, EcoQS (ecological quality status) assessment has garnered great attention as an essential aspect of governmental bodies’ legislative decision-making process. Assessing EcoQS in transitional water ecosystems is problematic because these systems experience high natural variability and organic enrichment and often lack information about their pre-human impact, baseline, or “pristine” reference conditions, knowledge of which is essential to many commonly used assessment methods. Here, foraminifera can be used as environmental sentinels, providing ecological data such as diversity and sensitivity, which can be used as the basis for EcoQS assessment indices. Fossil shells of foraminifera can also provide a temporal aspect to ecosystem assessment, making it possible to obtain reference conditions from the study site itself. These foraminifera-based indices have been shown to correlate not only with various environmental stressors but also with the most common macrofaunal-based indices currently employed by bodies such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD). In this review, we firstly discuss the development of various foraminifera-based indices and address the challenge of how best to implement these synergistically to understand and regulate human environmental impact, particularly in transitional waters, which have historically suffered disproportionate levels of human impact or are difficult to assess with standard EcoQS methods. Further, we present some case studies to exemplify key issues and discuss potential solutions for those. Such key issues include, for example, the disparate performance of multiple indices applied to the same site and a proper assignment of EcoQS class boundaries (threshold values) for each index. Disparate aptitudes of indices to specific geomorphologic and hydrological regimes can be leveraged via the development of a site characteristics catalogue, which would enable the identification of the most appropriate index to apply, and the integration of multiple indices resulting in more representative EcoQS assessment in heterogenous transitional environments. In addition, the difficulty in assigning threshold values to systems without analogous unimpacted reference sites (a common issue among many transitional waters) can be overcome by recording EcoQS as an ecological quality ratio (EQR). Lastly, we evaluate the current status and future potential of an emerging field, genetic biomonitoring, focusing on how these new techniques can be used to increase the accuracy of EcoQS assessment in transitional systems by supplementing more established morphology-based methods.

The politics of climate policy innovation: the case of the Argentine carbon tax

ABSTRACT This contribution analyzes the policymaking process of the carbon tax in Argentina based on the multiple streams approach (MSA). The study shows how policy entrepreneurs took advantage of a general tax reform bill to promote the idea of a carbon tax. Mainly driven by international emulation and reputational gains concerns, the carbon tax proposal successfully advanced through the government´s internal drafting process of the Tax Reform Bill, however, it faced strong opposition during the legislative decision-making process, which resulted in the adoption of a weaker carbon tax. From a climate politics perspective, the Argentine carbon tax case suggests the political limitations of an over-reliance on international reputation arguments to advance climate policy innovation. In relation to the MSA, the study highlights how policy windows can shape processes of policy innovation and the analytical convenience of differentiating the coupling processes between the agenda-setting and decision-making stages.

The adoption of ecological fiscal transfers: An empirical analysis

The ecological fiscal transfers (EFT) from states to municipalities were adopted by 16 of the 26 Brazilian states since 1990s to stimulate and compensate districts for achieving some environmental goals. This study aims to understand the adoption of this economic-policy instrument by Brazilian states and argues that the vertical relations between the federal and state governments increase the EFT adoption. The hypotheses are derived from the transaction-costs politics and the institutional collective action frameworks, namely built in legislative decision-making costs and commitment costs, and are empirically tested using event history analysis for the period of 1990–2015. The conclusions point to the idea that the adoption rate increases in non-electoral years, suggesting that politicians tend to avoid conflicts during electoral years. They tend to minimize the costs related to the legislative decision-making process. Also, the coordination of the central government has the potential for facilitating the adoption of EFT. More broadly, the transaction cost-politics framework and the institutional collective action framework can explain EFT adoption partially.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЯ ПЕРСОНАЛЬНОГО ПРИБУТКОВОГО ОПОДАТКУВАННЯ В УКРАЇНІ

У статті досліджено детермінанти трансформації персонального прибуткового оподаткування в Україні. Визначено, що, незважаючи на обраний Україною шлях фіскальної децентралізації, у частині розподілу надходжень від податку на доходи фізичних осіб відбуваються процеси у напрямі централізації. Визначено перспективні напрями удосконалення персонального прибуткового оподаткування з метою підвищення рівня дотримання податкового законодавства.

L'eurosceptisme au sein du Parlement européen. Stratégies d'une opposition anti‐système au coeur des institutionsBrack, NathalieWindhof, Promoculture‐Larcier (2014), 341p., ISBN 978‐2‐87974‐604‐3

L'eurosceptisme au sein du Parlement européen. Stratégies d'une opposition anti‐système au coeur des institutionsBrack, NathalieWindhof, Promoculture‐Larcier (2014), 341p., ISBN 978‐2‐87974‐604‐3

Towards Participatory Democracy, or Not: The Reasonableness Approach in Public Involvement Cases

Sections 59(1)(a), 72(1)(a) and 118(1)(a) of the Constitution require the national and provincial legislative bodies to facilitate public involvement in their legislative and other processes. This article considers the jurisprudence developed by the Constitutional Court thus far in the five cases concerning the facilitation of public involvement in legislative decision-making processes. The court adopted a reasonableness standard of review for purposes of determining whether, in each case, the constitutional obligation to facilitate public involvement has been met. Drawing on literature and a comparison with work in the field of socio-economic rights, I argue that to be meaningful and effective, a reasonableness enquiry requires a substantive engagement with the purposes underlying the relevant provision[s] in the Constitution. In the first two public involvement cases, I contend that the court’s development of the reasonableness enquiry was promising, as it sought to engage substantively with the understanding of democracy that is envisaged in the Constitution. The court developed an approach to the use of reasonableness, as a standard of review, in a manner that achieves participatory democracy, as an element of South Africa’s deep vision of democracy envisaged in the Constitution. However, unfortunately, the last three public involvement cases tend to show the court as working with a compliance- or process-oriented reasonableness enquiry. The court here evinces a weak engagement with the purposes and values which the constitutional obligation to facilitate public involvement seeks to achieve. I argue that, for the future development of jurisprudence and our constitutional democracy, the court should revert to its earlier coherent and constitutionally principled approach.

The Brazilian Supreme Court and Subnational Legislative Decision-Making Process: An Exploratory Analysis

In comparative perspective, the control of constitutionality is one of the most apparent faces of the relations between judiciary - through Superior Courts - executive and legislative branches. In judicial review, Courts interact with parliaments and governments affecting decision-making and interfering in the development and implementation of policies. In Brazil, between 1988 and 2014, 65% of the Direct Actions of Unconstitutionality (ADI) challenged state rules, not federal ones. In the same period, approximately 25% of all cases were proposed by State Governors or State Legislatures. In spite of the recent improvement in the literature examining the relationship between judiciary and legislative branches in Brazil at the federal level, an empirical gap still exists when sub-national controversies are focused. How does the Brazilian Supreme Court decide cases about state rules? What are its impacts on sub-national policies? To discuss the first question, this paper empirically analyses all ADI cases proposed against state rules and their decision patterns compared to other classes of cases. Despite the need of further research, the central claim is that the existing differences on outcomes between state and federal issues places the Supreme Court as a potential veto point against state majorities forward the interests of the Union, and also as an actor that can bring informational gains to decision making, with impacts on the country’s federative organization.

Opposing the Government but Governing the Audience?

This article operationalizes the mediatization of politics by comparing the expressed preferences toward the mass media between different groups of members of parliament (MPs) in three conflicted legislative decision-making processes in Switzerland. Different from elections, MPs face a more pronounced tension between audience-oriented and policy-oriented activities in legislative decision-making processes. It is argued that MPs are “mediatized” when they express a preference for audience-oriented activities. Audience-oriented activities are aimed at resulting in coverage by the mass media outlets with the broadest reach and include (1) the preference for symbolic issues, (2) a negotiation strategy that is focused on tough bargaining, (3) image-oriented media activities, (4) symbolic interventions in parliament, and (5) a high use of staged media activities. It is hypothesized that MPs of the pole parties engage more in audience-oriented activities than MPs of the center-right parties, as this is an integral part of their quasi-opposition strategy. The quantitative results of face-to-face interviews with 50 high-ranking MPs of the parliamentary committees confirm the hypothesis. The operationalization of audience orientation in five dimensions diversifies the understanding of the concept of mediatization in the political realm. The article concludes that a potential populist challenge to democracy consists in the mutually beneficial symbiosis between audience-oriented political actors and commercially oriented media companies.

Comitology and Parliamentarisation: Strong Causality and Weak Interaction

The comitology procedures have been an integral part of the European Union legislative decision-making process. The negotiation of the legal framework of the comitology procedures, as well as the administrative practice of the European Commission in drafting implementing acts, is relevant to the legal research on the evolution of European integration. This article studies the dynamic relationship between the process of regulation and implementation of comitology procedures, and the process of parliamentarisation of the European Communities and later of the European Union. Two hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis claims that there is a clear causal link between the use of newly acquired budgetary and legislative powers of the European Parliament, and the limitation of control by Member States on the Commission by the comitology committees. The second hypothesis claims that a weak system interaction exists between the notion of parliamentarisation and the reform of the comitology system.

Politicising Council Decision-making: The Effect of European Parliament Empowerment

Research on the intra-institutional consequences of differences in the EU's inter-institutional rule configurations is rare. This study investigates the effect of the empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) on the active involvement of ministers in Council decision-making. The empowerment of the EP is likely to increase the incentives for bureaucrats in the Council's preparatory bodies to refer decisions on legislative dossiers to ministers. The empirical analysis examines this claim with data on about 6,000 legislative decision-making processes that were concluded between 1980 and the end of 2007. The analysis demonstrates a strong and robust association between the type of legislative procedure and different decision-making levels in the Council: a more powerful EP makes Council decision-making more politicised.

Threats to Democratic Rationality

This article examines trends that are impacting democratic rationality. It is found that the trends are almost uniformly negative. Viewed from within the legislative branch, trends are negatively impacting legislators’ time, complexifying problems, constraining options, and limiting the evaluation of options. Trends external to the legislative branch are reducing citizen participation and knowledge about public affairs, skewing the balance of power among the branches and states, and decreasing accountability of public officials. In combination, democratic rationality, the process of making good, efficient, and timely decisions to promote higher quality of life and the public good, is seriously threatened. Recommendations include public financing of campaigns, more structured legislative decision-making processes, simplification tests for all new legislation and regulations, and a major new initiative to foster public involvement in public decision making.

A More Efficient and Accountable Federalism? An Analysis of the Consequences of Germany's 2006 Constitutional Reform

The German federal reform adopted in 2006 aims to enhance efficiency and accountability of governance by disentangling the intertwined levels of government and by reducing the veto rights of the Bundesrat, Germany's strong second chamber. In this article, we assess the degree to which reform in these areas has been fulfilled. In particular we ask if the reform will i) accelerate the legislative decision-making process, ii) expand the freedom of political action of the federal government and iii) disentangle the competencies between the intertwined levels of German government. Our analysis shows a remarkable gap between the ambitious goals of reformers and the reality of the actual reform outcome.

Are political parties controlling legislative decision-making in the European Parliament? The case of the services directive

This case study analyses the efforts of the transnational party groups in controlling the legislative decision-making process inside the European Parliament. The case study focuses on one of the most important and contested pieces of European legislation: the services directive. The study addresses the choice of the rapporteurship for the legislative proposal through comparing the trade-offs between policy preferences, party loyalty and expertise in the nomination process. Further, the study analyses the party group internal conflict patterns, which emerged in the first reading of the proposal. The results show that party group voting loyalty and preference proximity to the party might have been a decisive factor in the nomination of the rapporteur for the services directive. The two largest party groups were also able to secure a compromise solution, which determined the final outcome of the intra-institutional decision-making process.

Built on quicksand? a decade of procedural spatial models on eu legislative decision-making

This article reviews a central strand of the literature on legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU): procedural spatial models. These models have gained increasing prominence during the last decade of scholarship on the EU and have considerably enhanced our understanding of the EU legislative decision-making process. However, the literature has not been without criticism and has reached a stage of theoretical stagnation. The intention of this article is twofold: first, it reviews the existing procedural spatial literature and critically discusses the lack of specification and justification of some of its key assumptions, especially those concerning actors' preferences and the characteristics of the decision-making process. In a second step, it will be argued that it is necessary to re-evaluate some of the central assumptions of procedural models. In particular, future research needs to study mechanisms of preference formation and decision-making, i.e. aggregation of preferences, within EU legislative bodies. 1. The order of the authors' names does not represent the individual input which went into the article. All authors would like to thank Berthold Rittberger and the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

Educational Policy Making in the State Legislature: Legislator as Policy Expert

This article examines the role of the legislator as an education policy expert in the legislative decision-making process. Louisiana legislators were asked to identify the sources of information that they typically rely on when considering educational policy legislation. These legislators were also asked about the relative influence of these sources and how this influence might change given a different policy context. The findings of an analysis of variance are presented to consider the degree of influence expert legislators may have in formulating educational policy given differences in policy types, sources of information, and legislators' work roles. The article concludes with a discussion of the empirical findings and of the implications of the results.

Drug Abuse Control and the Pharmacist's Role in the Legislative Decision-Making Process

A random sampling of Florida community pharmacy practitioners was taken to determine their preferences for proposed additional restrictions on the prescribing and dispensing of prescriptions for certain Schedule II controlled substances. In addition, they were asked the degree to which they would favor or disfavor: (A) enactment of a state law which would make invalid any prescription for a Schedule II substance after seven days from date of issue, and (B) several alternative proposals for restricting the prescribing and dispensing of certain classes of specifically named Schedule II substances such as a 48-hour waiting period, color coding of prescription blanks, numerical serialization, purchaser identification, etc., either alone or in combination.Of the 440 community pharmacists mailed questionnaires, 210 (47.7%) responded. Comments and suggestions provided by the respondents varied greatly according to their perceptions as to the necessity or desirability for further encumbering the processing of Schedule II drugs.

The Legislative Decision-Making Process

The Legislative Decision Making Process is an educational role play for graduate or undergraduate students concerning the political and pressure relationships involved in the political decision-making process. The role play reviews the implications of the decision-making processes upon the provision of services by governmental agencies.The role play engages from twenty to sixty students in a simulated budget-making and lobbying experience and utilizes this experience to teach students:1.The values and pressures considered by bureaucracies and the Legislature in decision-making;2.The relationships which exist between clients, community groups, administrators and politicians;3.The various techniques of Community Organization for lobbying and Legislative influence.The role play consists of various groups of students in roles which include legislators, administrators of three major state departments, two minor state departments, parent groups, Concerned Citizen groups, American Indians disabled individuals and ex-clients.