Legislatures and Governments in Assembly Confidence Democracies

This section brings together European scholars who work in the field of legislative studies. We are interested in attracting scholars who study the relations of legislatures and governments in all their aspects. We are interested in papers discussing informal and formal institutions of parliamentary democracies and their developments over time in all regions of the world. In particular are we aiming at examining the (1) origins, (2) variations in and (3) consequences of institutions of parliamentarism. The number of democracies in the world today is higher than in any other time. The majority of these democracies adopt a parliamentary constitution, that is, one that is based on assembly confidence. Assembly confidence regimes are those in which governments, in order to come to and stay in power, must be at least tolerated by a legislative majority. They can be divided into cases of negative and positive parliamentarism. Positive parliamentarism – in which parliamentary confidence must be explicitly expressed, rather than assumed – is characterised by a variety of instruments related to both the making and breaking of governments (investiture and no confidence votes) and their governing capacity (confidence vote, parliamentary dissolution, decree powers and legislative agenda setting powers), but very little is known about them. The distinction between negative and positive parliamentarism is not new. Yet the research literature on the evolution and consequences of the two forms of parliamentarism is sparse and rudimentary. The section is endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments.