Does Government dominate the legislative process PhD final for submission 25 February (original) (raw)
Related papers
Literature Review – Comparative analysis of parliamentary impact in the legislative process
The purpose of this section of my prospective literature review was to consider how the literature has tackled some of the key questions posed by my PhD. How can we describe, measure and present the impact which parliaments have on legislation? The focus here has been on the key existing typologies of legislation – Polsby, Mezey, Norton and Blondel provide some high level comparative analysis tools which help distinguish different types of legislative influence. They establish spectrum and categories which help distinguish those parliaments who impact is minimal and those whose is significant, and for how those different types of interest might be expressed, at a very general level, in the legislative process. These typologies are not perfect – by necessity, they generalise, and in doing so they do not allow for the fine-grained analysis of legislative impact. They are also only as good as the data from which their conclusions can be drawn, and if this data is poor we should express some scepticism about what a typology will tell us about that data. They are, at some levels, also overly simplistic. The legislative process is not always (and in some cases is very seldom) about a government holding one position on legislation and the parliament holding a diametrically opposite view, with the parliament doing everything in its power to defeat or amend the government's legislation. So, while the value of these legislative typologies for anyone interested in the impact of parliaments in the legislative process should be obvious, they have their limits for those of us who want to understand the final detail of the legislative process. What of the variation across different pieces of legislation? What of the actual policy impact of parliament on what a piece of legislation does when it enters parliament and when it leaves? What of the precise nature of amendments which parliaments make to legislation? These are questions which require a look at some of the methodological approaches to the study of parliaments, and in particular the methodological approaches to the study of parliamentary impact.
Measuring parliamentary impact in the legislative process
This is an exploratory paper which sets out a strand of wider PhD research about how parliaments "make" the law or, more specifically, what happens to the legislation put before them by the executive. The intention is to address questions such as, whether parliaments change the legislation they scrutinise. If they change it, in what ways. The paper argues that in addressing these questions there is scope to move beyond the now common conclusion that "parliaments have an impact and it's more than we think", and deal more directly with the policy and technical impact of amendments. The paper sets out original reseach which shows, through analysis of the Gaelic Language Bill's passage through the Scottish Parliament, how detailed analysis of changes to the structure and policy content of Bills can be conducted on a case-study basis. It shows how amendments can be grouped into different categories, enabling a picture of common or uncommon forms of parliamentary impact to be identified if repeated across a range of Bills. Although the paper is focused on the Scottish Parliament and is limited to a single case-study at this point it has relevance to the ongoing debate about how best to identify and quantify parliamentary impact in the legislative process.
The Impact of the Scottish Parliament in Amending Executive Legislation
Political Studies, 2005
This paper provides the first systematic attempt to investigate the legislative impact of the Scottish Parliament on Executive legislation, by analysing the fate of all amendments to Executive bills from the Parliament's first session (1999–2003). Initial findings on the success of bill amendments show that the balance of power inclines strongly in favour of ministers. However, when we account for the type of amendment and initial authorship we find evidence that the Parliament (both coalition and opposition MSPs) actually makes more of an impact, particularly in terms of the level of success of substantive amendments to Executive bills. Our findings have implications for much of the current literature that is sceptical of the existence of power sharing between the Executive and the Parliament and within the Parliament.
Public Administration, 2004
The study of administrations and ministers and their relationships with UK Parliaments has tended to focus on the issues of accountability and responsibility, levels of legislative dissent or broad performance indicators supported by anecdotal examples. This paper addresses the lack of systematic analysis of executive/legislative relations in the policy-making process by examining the dominance of different administrations and ministers in the Scottish Parliament. Two questions are addressed. First, is there any variance in the legislative dominance of different administrations in the parliamentary arena? Second, do individual ministers make a difference to the degree of policy dominance? Controlling for both initial authorship and quality of amendments to Executive policy, we analyse the nature and extent of Executive dominance during the legislative process of the First Session of the Scottish Parliament. We find some evidence to suggest that Executive dominance varies both by administration and by individual minister. While the existing political science literature tends to classify ministers according to their roles (Headey 1974; Norton 1998; Marsh et al. 2000), there is scant attention to the roles of ministers vis-à-vis Parliament. David Marsh et al. do briefly discuss this role in broad terms of 'good' and 'poor' performances in the House of Commons. When attention does focus on Parliament, the emphasis is on issues of ministerial responsibility and accountability (see, for example, Marshall 1989; Woodhouse 1994, 2001) and legislative dissent studies (see, for example, Norton 1978; Cowley 2002). Despite the occasional ministerial resignation and government defeat, it is widely presumed that in the UK ministers successfully steer policy through Parliament. Little attention is given to how effective administrations and/or individual ministers are in doing this. One of the main reasons why exploration of this role is largely ignored is the widely accepted wisdom that Parliament does not matter that much in the policy-making process. At worst, Parliament is viewed as not much more than theatre for tourists (Jordan and Richardson 1987). At best,
The Policy Power of the Westminster Parliament: The “Parliamentary State” and the Empirical Evidence
Governance, 2015
Drawing on several large research projects, and using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, this article assesses the policy influence of the Westminster parliament. Frequently dismissed as powerless in both academic and more popular accounts, we instead show evidence of an institution with significant policy influence, at successive stages of the policy process. Conventional accounts have focused too much on the decision-making stage, to the exclusion of parliament's role at earlier and later policy stages. Critics have also focused disproportionately on visible influence, overlooking behind-the-scenes negotiations and the role of anticipated reactions. Based on analysis of over 6,000 parliamentary votes, 4,000 legislative amendments, 1,000 committee recommendations, and 500 interviews, we conclude that Westminster's influence is both substantial and probably rising.
Assessing the policy impact of Parliament: Methodological challenges and possible future approaches
paper for the PSA Legislative Studies …, 2009
Both academic and public discourse tends to dismiss the British parliament as a relatively marginal policy actor. Whilst parliament is clearly highly visible, and in many ways central to politics, it has long been seen as weak. Indeed, given for example that government legislation is defeated rarely in the House of Commons (including only two occasions in the past 12 years), some view it as having practically no policy influence at all. There are two difficulties with this analysis, however. First, it was probably never true. Much of parliament's influence is subtle, largely invisible, and frequently even immeasurable. An analysis based on crude indicators is therefore likely to reach incorrect conclusions. Second, even if such allegations had some truth in the past, there are clear signs that parliament is becoming more assertive -for example through increased rebelliousness in the Commons and greater resistance from the Lords. The time is ripe, therefore, for a reassessment of parliament's role in the policy process. This paper is an exploratory piece, which it is hoped will be the first output from a major programme of research in this area. It asks what are the challenges to measuring parliament's impact on policy, and what approaches might be taken to conducting such an assessment. It is based on a wide literature review of parliamentary policy impact, both in Britain and in other settings. It defines parliamentary impact broadly, looking at the legislative process, committees of different kinds, and different parliamentary actors. It identifies a range of possible methods, but also a number of significant gaps. The paper's purpose is to spark discussion, and hopefully interest, in the proposed future project and how it should proceed.
The role and the decisions of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and of the Court of Session in relation to the Scottish Parliament have been discussed for a couple of years now. Without any doubt the role that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session fulfil today, in respect to Scotland, is not what it was in the beginning of the existence of the Scottish Parliament and perhaps not even what was strictly prescribed by section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998. This essay will present an analysis on the manner in which the check and balance mechanism has been implemented in Scotland within the scope of the fundamental UK constitutional principle : the Westminster Parliament supremacy. Secondly, this essay will seek to see if there are any limits for the UK Supreme Court and Court of Session in defining through case law, the powers of the Scottish Parliament. Lastly, there will also be an analysis on the impact of the decisions of the UK Supreme Court and the Scottish Court of Session in relation to the nature and extent of the Scottish Parliament legislative power.
Vetting Bills in the Scottish Parliament for Legislative Competence
Edinburgh Law Review, 2017
In this article, Christopher McCorkindale and Janet Hiebert present the first empirical examination of the process by which bills in the Scottish Parliament undergo vetting for legislative competence. Based on a series of interviews with officials in the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and UK Government the paper makes a two-fold argument. First, that – despite the susceptibility of Acts of the Scottish Parliament to strong-form judicial review – the statutory requirement that the responsible minister and the Presiding Officer report to parliament on the competence of every bill, and the discretion of the Scottish and UK Government Law Officers to refer any bill to the Supreme Court before Royal Assent, align the devolution scheme with an emerging family of systems that favour legislative to judicial constitutional review. Second, that the deference shown by political actors to the advice of officials on questions of competence at each stage supplants legislative review – a...
The constitutional entrenchment of the Scottish Parliament 2010-2015
Tracing through the Supreme Court’s judgments in Axa (2011), H v Lord Advocate (2012), and HS2 (2014), this article explores the evolution of the Scottish Parliament’s place within the UK’s uncodified constitution over the last five years. Ultimately it will be argued that the emergence of an increasingly autochthonous Scottish polity poses an increasing challenge to the orthodox interpretations of UK constitutional law at a key political turning point in British history.
2011
Institutions can affect the degree to which public opinion influences policy by determining the clarity of responsibility in decision-making. The sharing of power between national and devolved levels of government makes it difficult for the public to attribute responsibility for decisions. In the UK, this generates the prediction that the devolution of power to territorial units weakens the effect of public opinion on policy both for the UK and Scottish governments.