1st Edition

Patterns of Parliamentary Behavior Passage of Legislation Across Western Europe

Edited By Mark Hallerberg, Herbert Döring Copyright 2004

    This volume begins where the first Döring book of 1995 finished by considering what effects the rules had on legislative output during the same period. It addresses four distinct yet complementary research topics: - the connection between a number of veto players and law production in West European parliamentary democracies - the impact of closed versus open rules - the effects of committee structure and organization on the degree of conflict or consensus on the procedure of passing legislation - the importance of agenda setting and agenda control for the prevention of cycling across issues and the distribution of particular benefits of shifting and transient majorities. Fundamental to this volume is the ability of the project group to fashion an original data set. As a consequence, this volume is able to ascertain the extent to which parliamentary procedures contributed to shaping policy output in this field during the 1980s.

    Contents: Introduction, Herbert Döring and Mark Hallerberg; Electoral laws, government and Parliament, Mark Hallerberg; Government declarations and law production, Lieven De Winter; The life and times of bills, Rolf Becker and Thomas Saalfeld; Committee effects on legislation, Ingvar Mattson and Kaare Strøm; Conflict and consensus in committees, Erik Damgaard and Ingvar Mattson; Controversy, time constraint and restrictive rules, Herbert Döring; Veto players and law production, George Tsebelis; Conclusion, Herbert Döring and Mark Hallerberg; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Herbert Döring, Mark Hallerberg

    ’This book represents the most significant effort ever undertaken to examine how legislative institutions shape legislative behavior across parliamentary democracies. The rich set of empirical findings demonstrate the exciting possibilities that exist for genuinely comparative research in a field that has previously been dominated by studies of single countries.’ Professor John D. Huber, Columbia University, New York, USA ’This excellent book is a landmark in Comparative Politics and a seminal contribution to the study of the effects of parliamentary institutions on legislative outcomes...Clear in arguments, straightforward in methods and accessible in style, "Patterns of Parliamentary Behaviour" fills a significant lacuna in the literature and deserves to be widely read.’ Professor Thomas König, University of Konstanz, Germany