LIST OF PANELS

This panel is oriented to increase our understanding regarding the role of parliaments in the design and analysis of public policies. In parliamentary systems, and especially among public policy scholars, parliaments are perceived as institutions tasked with approving policies designed and negotiated elsewhere (e.g.  Kreppel 2014). Governments play a major legislative role: they draft and propose legislation, and build the necessary coalition to ensure that bills will become laws. Opposition groups are depicted as inactive and permissive, responsible for buttressing pre-set policy options. Yet, conclusions on executive predominance have relied disproportionately on the study of visible influence, with a focus on early or late stages of the policy-making process: the success rate of bills or the final vote on legislation (Russell and Cowley, 2016). The capacity of legislatures for designing and evaluating policies along the legislative process is a question largely ignored by existing research. Recent developments, such as the rise of new radical parties across Europe (De Giorgi and Ilonszki 2018); or the coronavirus outbreak, where parliaments have accommodated a number of conflicting policy interests improving in a number of cases government proposals (Murphy 2020), make the analysis of these questions especially interesting.   

Many stages of the parliamentary process allow legislators to participate in the design and analysis of public policies. The amendatory process is one where research is in its infancy. Defined as the “black hole” of the legislative process (Capano and Vignati 2008:35)  we know very little regarding legislators’ incentives for introducing amendments, and also regarding their capacity for having these amendments passed (see Damgaard and Jensen 2006; Shepard and Carney 2005; Griffith 1994; Russel and Cowley 2016; Russel et al. 2016). Amendments are examined and discussed in parliamentary committees oriented, among other aspects, to provide expert evaluation of the pros and cons associated to different policy-making alternatives. But committees have also crucial roles regarding oversight functions, policy implementation and evaluation of policies. The interest on the functioning of parliamentary committees has increased (e.g. Matson and Strom 1995; Whiteman 1996; Chaqués-Bonafont and Muñoz 2016) but we still have little empirical information regarding their actual role as policymaking institutions. Do committees provide independent policy analysis separable from politics driven by systematic and objective evidence? Do variations in the Chamber’ human and economic resources or in legislators’ specialization influence their policy effectiveness? To what extent the participation of interest groups and/or public officials contributes to a more efficient policy-making? More research is also required to explore under what circumstances legislators, in parallel or alternatively to their activities in the parliamentary arena, rely on judicial procedures to prevent public policies they oppose from being implemented (Garoupa and Magalhaes, 2020).  Due to data and methodological limitations, large-N and systematic studies on all these questions are extremely rare (see Gava et al. 2020; Sebok et al. 2019 for an exception), leaving crucial questions about who and why has power for influencing policies unanswered.

In an attempt to shed new light on the role of parliaments in the design and analysis of public policies, this panel welcomes papers oriented to explore any of the following aspects. First, the role of parliaments along the amendatory process, including analysis oriented to explain legislators’ motivations for introducing amendments, with a focus on their impact on policy goals and instruments, and/or the likelihood of these amendments to be incorporated into the final text of laws. The panel welcomes also papers oriented to explore the role of parliamentary committees, regarding the discussion of amendments along the legislative process but also more generally, concerning their participation in the implementation and evaluation of policies. We are interested on papers analysing under what circumstances committees are capable of creating independent knowledge on policy problems and the role of internal or external resources in the process. Of special interests is the analysis of the participation of interest groups, public officials or authorities in the process. The goal is to explore committees motivation for inviting different types of actors but also their actual contribution, namely, what particular information they provide to policy makers, on the basis of what arguments and with what consequences. We also welcome papers that analyse why legislators engage in judicial procedures, like abstract reviews, moving opposition strategies outside the parliamentary arena. A key question is to explore whether these procedures are used by all groups or by the contrary are characteristic of particular opposition types, and regarding what policy issues they are more likely to be initiated. Methodologically, the panel welcomes all types of qualitative and quantitative research on case studies, comparative research across countries and/or different territorial levels (including the European parliament, national or regional parliaments). Theoretically, we are open to conceptual frameworks oriented to explore causality taking into consideration the macro level (such as the characteristics of bills, the type of government, coalition agreements, committee structure, the impact of the electoral cycle or the politicization of issues), but also the micro level (actors’ gender, preferences and resources, including past parliamentary experience, specialization and/or expertise).