Negative Agenda Control and Executive–Legislative Relations in East Central Europe, 1997–2008

Abstract

The article studies the patterns of executive–legislative relations in east-central Europe. In contrast to much of the existing research, it focuses on negative – rather than positive – agenda control to examine the dominant mode of interaction between parliaments and executives. Based on an original review of legislative rules in six east central European states, it shows that the opportunities for governing parties to exclude opposition initiatives from floor deliberations vary with party system concentration. In states with concentrated party systems, such as Hungary and Poland, governing majorities have extensive procedural opportunities to block opposition initiatives from reaching the floor. In countries with more fragmented party systems, such as Estonia and Slovakia, opportunities for negative agenda control are the scarcest.

Keywords:

• agenda control
• legislative rules
• parliaments
• Europe

Acknowledgements

The financial support from Ernst & Young Better Government programme is gratefully acknowledged. The author would like to thank Irena Baclija, Matyas Bencze, Agnieszka Cielen, Krisztina Jager, Riho Kangur, Marian Kisdurka, Vlastimil Necas, Stepan Pechacek and Katarina Staronova who have provided invaluable research support. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the PSA Annual Conference in Edinburgh, 29 March–1 April 2010. Many thanks to the participants of this conference for their useful criticisms, particularly to Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Petra Guasti, Phil Larkin and Gwendolyn Sasse. Special thanks to David Olson and Gabriella Ilonszki for offering critical comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Notes

In December 2006, the so-called ‘preliminary legislative referendum’ (called before the adoption of a law) was abolished. The provisions for the ‘subsequent legislative referendum’ were retained (see Fink-Hafner 2007).

The interviews included: 11 interviews in Budapest (March 2008); four interviews in Tallinn (March 2008); six interviews in Warsaw (March 2008); seven interviews in Prague (May 2008); seven interviews in Ljubljana (June 2008); 11 interviews in Bratislava (October 2008).

Such gate-keeping powers may also be assigned directly to the executive, but this was not the case in any of the six legislatures studied here, with the exception of recognition rules.

The blocking opportunities represent the number of stages (as identified in Table 4) at which procedural mechanisms of negative agenda control exist. In Estonia, two mechanisms that were available only for a part of the 1999–2003 period were counted as existing at one level and hence the overall score for that term stands at 5.0. In Slovenia, due to a reform of the standing orders in the middle of the 2000–2004 term, the score for that term is 5.5 – an average of the two configurations. The other scores are as follows: Hungary – 9.0; Poland – 7.0; Estonia (2003–7) – 2.0; Czech Republic – 5.0; Slovakia – 4.0; Slovenia (2004–8) – 6.0. The effective number of parties is given for the two parliamentary terms covered by the analysis of legislative rules. The alternative would be to use ENP values for the term in which the original agenda rules were adopted. Both methods generate similar results.

Dispersion is measured based on data from Table 3 as follows: Slovakia and Estonia = 0.5; Hungary and Czech Republic =1.5; Poland = 2; Slovenia = 2.5.