Legislative reforms and party competition (C01)

该项目调查在何种情况下，政府政党能够在议会制中发起和采取政策改革，以及在政策不确定的情况下，政党如何权衡党派反应和公共责任。在前两个阶段，我们研究了多党制政府中委托对议会议程设置和政策制定造成的委托代理问题的影响。我们证明，当部长的任职成本超过政策收益时，他们可以避免提出建议。此外，我们表明，议会决策过程的复杂性不仅在于政府政党之间的相互作用，还在于政府与反对派之间的相互作用、议会机构的实力、政党的能力以及他们不同的选举需求。在第三阶段，我们将继续并扩大我们的研究，通过检查总理的作用，不寻常的超大和少数联盟，以及关于党派回应和公共责任之间权衡的反对派活动。我们试图确定政府和反对派政党行为的政治内容和背景，以及它们的相互作用如何影响产出。我们期望这个项目的最终研究成果将增进我们对改革制定的认识，并使我们更好地了解民主治理和代表制。

The project investigates under what circumstances government parties are able to initiate and adopt policy reforms in parliamentary systems, and how parties trade off partisan responsiveness and public responsibility under policy uncertainty. In the first two phases, we studied the implications of principal-agent problems caused by delegation in multiparty governments for agenda setting and policymaking in Parliament. We demonstrated that ministers can refrain from making proposals when their office-holding costs exceed their policy benefits. Furthermore, we showed that parliamentary decision-making process is complicated not only by the interaction among government parties, but also by the interaction between the government and the opposition, the strength of parliamentary institutions, the capacities of parties, and their different electoral needs. In the third phase, we will continue and expand our research by examining the role of Prime Ministers, unusual oversized and minority coalitions, and opposition activities with respect to the trade-off between partisan responsiveness and public responsibility. We seek to identify the political contents and contexts in which political parties in government and opposition act, and how their interactions affect output. We expect that the final research output of this project will improve our knowledge about reform-making and provide a better understanding of democratic governance and representation.