Do Governments Control Parliamentary Rules? Evidence from the UK House of Commons

To what extent do governments choose parliamentary procedures? Much recent work draws on the idea that parliaments have the formal power to set their own rules, but in practice cede this rule-making capacity to the executive. This could have important consequences, given the growing evidence that parliamentary procedures influence a wide range of political phenomena like policy-making, government accountability, and representation. However, this assumption has received relatively little systematic empirical scrutiny. Quantitative work on procedural choice in parliaments has tended to focus on explaining either the timing of reforms or cross-sectional institutional variation. Qualitative work has paid more detailed attention to the process by which procedures are changed, but typically focuses in on specific reforms. We thus lack direct systematic evidence about which actors dominate the process of procedural change. This paper makes an initial contribution by exploring the role of the executive in choosing parliamentary rules in the UK House of Commons. In particular, I analyse the passage of all reforms to the House of Commons’ ‘standing orders’ since the nineteenth-century, to provide new evidence regarding the extent and nature of government control. I also discuss a number of limits on government control, and highlight avenues for further research.