Podcast - Coalition Bargaining and Legislative Institutions

Previous work shows that robust legislative oversight institutions strengthen the ability of multi-party governments to enforce policy agreements. This raises the question of whether coalitions choose such institutions strategically. In a joint article, Tom Fleming (UCL) and Radoslaw Zubek introduce a formal bargaining model in which parties negotiate over legislative procedures as well as policy compromises and the allocation of ministerial posts. This model suggests that coalition partners' incentives for creating strong oversight institutions are shaped by the relative priority they place on policy and office benefits, their relative bargaining power, and the existence of outside options during coalition formation. We provide initial evidence of the model's empirical plausibility by analyzing the evolution of committee oversight procedures in the Irish parliament (Dail Eireann) over more than 100 years. These findings open interesting avenues for future work on how parties shape legislative institutions in parliamentary democracies.

Radoslaw Zubek is an Associate Professor of European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on coalition politics, legislative committees, and institutional change in European parliamentary democracies. He has published his work among others in American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, West European Politics, and the European Journal of Political Research. His is a co-leader of the ParlRulesData.org project: parlrulesdata.org/