New Parties and Law-Making: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

New parties in government are a recurring phenomenon in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). They often direct their electoral strategies against mainstream parties and enter governments on the promise of ambitious reforms related to good governance, fighting corruption, and other pressing issues. While the electoral success and parliamentary survival of new parties in CEE has received considerable scholarly attention, we know comparatively less about how these parties affect coalition governance. This paper explores the parliamentary agenda-setting behavior and legislative success of cabinets with new parties. Specifically, it argues that new parties face a twofold challenge when entering a cabinet. First, due to low organizational capacity, weak parliamentary cohesion and relatively inexperienced personnel, new parties generally have lower policy-making and bargaining capacity compared to established parties. Second, entering a cabinet usually entails moderation of their policy stances, while at the same time, new parties need to maintain the status of an outsider to mainstream politics. These challenges are expected to affect the legislative agenda-setting and success of new parties and their coalition partners. Regarding the agenda-setting, ministers from new parties may therefore initiate their bills later in the term compared to ministers from established parties. After bill initiation, new parties may perform more rigorous scrutiny of coalition partners’ legislation, particularly on the issues salient in their electoral campaigns. The paper tests these expectations on the data set of government bills in Czech Republic and Slovenia between 2008 and 2018. The results of this study contribute to the debate on party system stability and policy innovation in CEE, and may motivate research into other governance strategies of new parties in the region and beyond.