Agenda Control and Majority Rule in Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

This panel focuses on the origins and consequences of the procedural rules governing plenary agenda-setting in parliamentary democracies. We know much about the procedural advantages that majority parties and governments enjoy when it comes to setting the plenary agenda in the US Congress (Cox & McCubbins 1993, 2005), Western Europe (Doering 1995; Rasch & Tsebelis 2011), and East-Central Europe (Zubek 2011). But we know less about the origins and consequences of cross-country and cross-temporal variations in such institutional configurations. Why do national legislatures differ in the extent to which majority parties and governments control the plenary agenda? What are the consequences of such variation for party discipline, legislative output or democratic accountability? The panel is aimed at researchers who are currently conducting comparative research on agenda control in parliamentary democracies.

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