Legislative reforms and party competition (C01)

该项目调查在什么情况下，政府政党能够在议会制度中发起和采取政策改革，以及政党如何在政策不确定性下权衡党派反应和公共责任。在前两个阶段，我们研究了委托代理问题所造成的多党制政府的议程设置和议会决策的影响。我们证明，当部长们的任职成本超过其政策收益时，他们可以不提出建议。此外，我们还发现，议会决策过程的复杂性不仅取决于政府政党之间的互动，还取决于政府与反对派之间的互动、议会机构的实力、政党的能力以及它们不同的选举需求。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，以及反对派活动方面的党派反应和公共责任之间的权衡。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。我们期望该项目的最终研究成果将增进我们对改革的了解，并使我们更好地理解民主治理和代表性。

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.