Perpetual scrutiny? Mutual control among coalition political parties in the executive and parliamentary phases of law-making

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate on how political parties that form coalition governments keep tabs on each other during the drafting and negotiation of new bills. Our article complements existing studies focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making by enriching current knowledge with an analysis of the executive phase, where bills may be significantly changed before they are submitted to the legislature. Contrary to theoretical expectations, results based on unique data from the Czech Republic reveal that bills which are heavily altered during the executive phase are subsequently significantly changed in the parliament. Additional interaction models indicate the effect is stronger for bills that are highly significant for the proposing minister and are a greater distance from any coalition compromise. Our findings open the question of why the coalition parties leave the resolution of some controversial issues to the parliamentary phase: the outstanding conflict may be genuine, or the coalition MPs may just be playing out a prearranged and staged battle that enables the coalition partners to show their distinctive qualities to the voters.