Political parties and parliamentary oversight preferences

Parliamentary systems are known for institutionally weaker parliamentary oversight options but also for the strong role of political parties, which complicates the issue of parliamentary oversight further. Political parties dominate parliamentary activity, but MPs partisan role does not always leave very favorable incentives related to engaging in oversight activity, except for opposition parties´ partisan motivated oversight activity. Nevertheless, this paper explores the issue of political parties´ preferences for oversight activity in some more details by investigating political parties´ control committee preferences. The expectation is that factors like the party´s position in government or opposition, the party size, and party ideology influences parties´ preferences for oversight related committee positions. The investigation applies a most similar system design with the selection of the five Nordic state parliamentary cases that among other factors have a strong partisan logic in common, are known as strong “working” parliaments, but at the same time have variation in oversight related institutional characteristics and in majority verses minority coalition government systems.