Koordinationsausschüsse als parlamentarische Agendasetzer

该项目分析了欧洲议会中的协调委员会（CC）作为横向集体行为体（HCA）。协商委员会的例子包括德国联邦议院的“公民大会”、奥地利国民理事会的“总理会议”和英国下议院的后座议员商业委员会。这些不分等级的委员会通常由议会议长和其他成员，如党团代表和委员会主席组成。他们的核心任务是制定议会议程。议程设置对于理解立法机构至关重要，因为它塑造了议会的进程和产出，影响了公共辩论和选举竞争，并影响了议会中不同行为体之间的权力分配。尽管如此，我们对协商委员会如何影响立法议程以及产生何种后果，以及为什么它们的作用在各国议会之间存在差异知之甚少。该项目的第一个模块将绘制和解释议程设置制度的变化，特别是在欧洲议会的CC（组成，内部决策规则和资源）的设计。第二个模块将探讨选定的社区中心的内部动态，以评估社区中心往往高度一致的决定是否可以根据其成员的个人偏好来解释，或反映研究单位（RU）“横向集体行为者”的自主HCA的出现。借鉴理性选择制度主义，社会学制度主义和心理团体理论，该项目开发竞争的理论帐户CC如何获得资源，以及他们是否以及为什么发展成为自主的行为者。将根据从法律的规则和官方文件中收集的原始数据、对委员会工作人员的调查以及对委员会成员和工作人员的定性访谈，对这些账户进行经验性测试。该项目将促进目前关于立法议程制定制度的体制设计的辩论。在RU内部，CC构成了一个很难找到自治权的案例，因为它们的成员代表了企业行为者（政党团体），这些行为者往往具有对抗性的偏好，乍一看，几乎没有空间让基于团体的行为偏离成员偏好的集合。在这种条件下找到自主权将为这一现象的普遍性提供强有力的证据，而缺乏自主权则有助于确定自主的人道主义援助机构出现的边界条件。

The project analyzes coordination committees (CCs) in European parliaments as horizontal collective actors (HCAs). Examples of CCs include the Ältestenrat in the German Bundestag, the Präsidialkonferenz in the Austrian National Council, and the Backbench Business Committee in the UK House of Commons. These non-hierarchical committees typically comprise the president of parliament and additional members such as party group representatives and committee chairs. Their core task is setting the parliamentary agenda. Agenda setting is crucial for understanding legislatures because it shapes parliamentary processes and outputs, influences public debate and electoral competition, and affects the distribution of power between different actors in parliament. Nonetheless, we know very little about how and with what consequences CCs shape the legislative agenda and about why their role differs across parliaments. The project’s first module will map and explain variation in agenda setting regimes, especially in the design of CCs (composition, internal decision rules, and resources) across European parliaments. The second module will explore internal dynamics in selected CCs to assess whether the often highly consensual decisions of CCs can be explained based on their members’ individual preferences or reflect the emergence of an autonomous HCA in the terms of the Research Unit (RU) “Horizontal Collective Actors”. Drawing on rational choice institutionalism, sociological institutionalism and psychological group theory the project develops competing theoretical accounts of how CCs gain resources and whether and why they develop into autonomous actors. These accounts will be tested empirically based on original data collected from legal rules and official documents, a survey of committee staff, and qualitative interviews with committee members and staff. The project will contribute to ongoing debates on the institutional design of legislative agenda setting regimes. Within the RU, CCs constitute a hard case for finding autonomy because their members represent corporate actors (party groups) with often antagonistic preferences leaving, on first sight, little room for group-based behavior that deviates from an aggregation of members’ preferences. Finding autonomy under such conditions would provide strong evidence for the pervasiveness of the phenomenon whereas its absence helps define boundary conditions for the emergence of autonomous HCAs.