Agenda Power in Democratic Legislatures

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In this proposal, we describe research into the nature and consequences of agenda power in democratic legislatures. We focus in particular on two (sets of) questions. The first set asks: is agenda power a "natural monopoly" that one should expect routinely to see in the hands of the government or majority?; should we generally expect a group of legislators to act as a "legislative cartel" that concentrates agenda power in the hands of their chosen leaders and excludes those not in the group?; or do the positional advantages of the median legislator or group trump procedural powers, so that policy outcomes are centrist, regardless of which party or coalition is in government? The second set asks: what would the observable consequences be if agenda power is cartelized by a governing (government or majority) coalition?; how would agendas constructed by governing coalitions differ from agendas constructed directly on the floor by majority votes and what would be the effect on public policy? We believe that the cartelization of agenda power is generally to be expected in democracies around the world. We show that the consequences of cartelizing agenda power are far more striking on the negative side (keeping things off the legislative agenda) than they are on the positive side (pushing bills through to final passage). We expect little variation in governing coalitions' success at preventing bills that majorities of those coalitions dislike from appearing on the floor agenda, and we find little variation empirically in the cases that we survey. Homogeneous coalitions, heterogeneous coalitions, and in-between coalitions all compile near-perfect records in terms of negative agenda control. In contrast, the heterogeneity of the governing coalition should theoretically and does empirically seem to covary with the size of the coalitions' positive agenda: more homogeneous coalitions attempt to pass, and succeed in passing, more bills. To put this conclusion in another way, party governing is not "conditoinal" when it comes to negative agenda control, only when it comes to positive agenda control. To complete this project, we plan to assemble a multi-chamber cross-national dataset on legislative organization and decisionmaking. The primary data in which we are interested are (1) votes (or other pertinent information, such as committee dissents) that bear on the setting of the floor agenda: and (2) votes on final passage of bills. Of secondary interest are (3) use of party resources in pursuing the agenda of the government or majority party, (4) intermediate votes, either those setting the terms and rules of debate on the floor or those concerning substantive amendments, and (5) identification of the reversionary policy, if any.