Substance or Showbiz? Questioning of Ministers as a Part of the Legislative Process

Questioning of ministers is a central task for parliaments and can relate to several stages of the legislative process. Ministers may be questioned during the pre-legislative stage, in committees, and as part of post-legislative scrutiny. The manner and purpose of such questioning may have implications for parliamentary processes and their overall effectiveness. MPs’ questions to ministers have received considerable scholarly attention (Höhmann and Sieberer 2020; Bevan et al. 2023; Martin 2011). The predominant perspective in this literature is that parliamentary questions serve to hold the executive accountable and to gather information from the government. However, Wiberg (1995: 181) also identifies other motivations for MPs’ questions, such as “to test ministers in controversial areas of their policies”, “to attack ministers in difficult political situations”, and “to create elements of excitement and drama”. This suggests that, beyond information-gathering, questions to ministers may function as instruments of party-political competition, individual ministerial scrutiny, and MPs’ self-promotion. Such uses may, in turn, have consequences for the legislative process. Much previous research on parliamentary scrutiny has focused on questions to ministers that can be answered in writing, or has not distinguished between oral and written questions. In this paper, we specifically focus on questions that are answered in person by ministers in parliament and are subject to debate. These questions imply a higher level of scrutiny and are considerably more time-consuming for both ministers and MPs, which may consequently affect legislative processes. In this paper, we analyse the development of questions answered in person by ministers and examine under which conditions ministers are asked such questions by MPs. We test whether this relates to ministers’ legislative activity, their portfolio, party-related factors, or individual ministerial characteristics. We employ a dataset covering three different forms of questions from MPs to ministers in the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) that are answered orally and in person. These include questions in the plenary, interpellations in the plenary, and consultations in committees. Today, both the answers and the ensuing debates are publicly available. By combining three distinct forms of questioning and debate, each with different procedural features and formal purposes, this dataset is unique and allows us to explore previously underexamined aspects of legislative processes. References: Bevan, S., Borghetto, E., & Seeberg, H. (2023). Do different parties respond to different problems? A comparative study of parliamentary questions across multiple countries. Journal of European Public Policy, 1–23. Höhmann, D., & Sieberer, U. (2020). Parliamentary questions as a control mechanism in coalition governments. West European Politics, 43(1), 225–249. Martin, S. (2011). Parliamentary Questions, the Behaviour of Legislators, and the Function of Legislatures: An Introduction. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 17(3), 259–270. Wiberg, Matti (1995): ‘Parliamentary Questioning: Control by Communication?’ in: Döring, Herbert (ed.): Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, p. 179-222.