Strategic Reforms of Parliamentary Rules and Procedures

Coalition governments face constraints both from the legislative branch and within the cabinet. To govern smoothly, formal contracts such as coalition agreements are often seen as effective tools for setting the policy agenda and procedural rules. This paper shifts the focus to legislative rules that affect government parties’ pursuit of their policy goals. I argue that government parties strategically introduce reforms to parliamentary rules and procedures in order to strengthen the government’s agenda control relative to the opposition. Using an original dataset on parliamentary rule reforms in nine Western European countries since the postwar period, along with data on government bills, I show that successful reforms were typically initiated by coalitions involving government parties. In addition, the adopted reforms tend to strengthen the power of the proposer and the coalition supporting the reform, as reflected in the frequency of bill initiations in the subsequent legislative periods. These findings contribute to the understanding of the political dynamics of procedural rule changes in advanced democracies.