The Legitimate Secret: The Institutionalisation of Parliamentary Agenda Control in the United Kingdom and in Germany

Control of the parliamentary agenda can be regarded as a necessary condition for exercising political power. This contribution challenges the assumption that party system properties determine the degree to which the parliamentary agenda is centralized. As party systems and parliaments are co-evolving in democratizing polities, it suggests to focus on the abstract rationales actors follow in parliamentary reforms. Three such rationales can be differentiated and operationalized in a typological theory: First, maintaining parliamentary efficiency, which is a necessary condition for all regimes of agenda control. The two other rationales serve as sufficient conditions and explain why agenda control is decentralized or centralized. While the aim to increase parliamentary legitimacy forbids attempts to privilege simple majorities with respect to setting the parliamentary agenda, a stress on parliamentary effectiveness allows for exactly this. This is demonstrated in a process tracing of attempts to reform the parliamentary agenda in two pathway cases, the United Kingdom and Germany, during the initial phase of democratization in the late 19th century. Establishing parliamentary legitimacy needs to precede (and hence is a sufficient condition for) any centralization of the parliamentary agenda. Consequently, a ‘legitimate secret’ explains why a closure of debates could be introduced in the United Kingdom, whereas sustained emphasis on the discussion of bills prevented any centralization of the parliamentary agenda in Germany. This finding illustrates the need to pay more attention to the temporalities underlying processes of democratization.