Opposition, Representation and the "Second Game"
Carolyn Forestiere |
Despite
the importance of the opposition for the functioning of representative
democratic systems, the politics of the opposition is a relatively neglected
subject in comparative politics. This disregard is probably due to the immense
preoccupation that political scientists have had with executive institutions.
Examples of executive-dominated studies often examine how governments form
after elections, how they overcome collective action problems to make
decisions, what those decisions are, and when and why governments collapse
prematurely. Because the executive is paramount for policymaking, especially in
parliamentary systems, in large part it is often assumed that opposition
members do not have access to resources that would allow them to take part in
policymaking.
Recent work on parliamentary systems has started to
challenge this approach to understanding policy outcomes. Parliaments are
potentially important because in parliamentary democracies, the executive
proposes bills and the parliament passes them in to law. A point that is
sometimes missed in executive-dominated approaches in parliamentary systems is
that legislatures are often entrusted with significant power to amend or
obstruct government legislation. As a result, the government is not always
guaranteed of getting its first preference in policy. Furthermore, the
executive cannot veto the changes that a legislature might make.
Research that concentrates on the parliament as a major
institutional actor for the determination of public policy investigates how
individual policy preferences and institutional design within legislatures
combine to create possibilities for counter-majoritarian outcomes. The distribution
of preferences among members of parliament is important because the relative
placement of actors upon various policy dimensions
(their policy preference positions) determines who has incentives to challenge
the government’s programs. However, the institutional make-up of each
parliament is at least equally as salient because the specific array of
procedural rules available to each legislator largely influences what the
legislature does and how it, as a collective body, reaches final outcomes.
These two characteristics of parliaments – the precise distribution of
preferences on relevant dimensions and the specific matrix of procedural rules
– are thus both important to understanding legislative action in parliamentary
systems.
My particular research on the politics of the opposition
investigates the institutional side of this equation, that is, what can happen
procedurally in national legislatures once bills arrive in parliament for
debate, revision, and final approval or rejection. I call this the Second Game.
The First Game occurs in each government ministry, when policy is researched
and drafted. But my research calls attention to the fact that some
parliamentary systems are quite active in the revision or obstruction of such
policy. And this, of course, includes a study of the opposition. The role of
the legislature – and the role of the opposition in supporting legislative
action – should not be overlooked.
My work continually makes a central assumption that strong
parliaments are at least associated with strong oppositions. By “strong
parliament” I mean a parliament that is procedurally capable of challenging a
government’s policy priorities. Since the opposition, by definition, is found
only in the legislature and not in the executive, we should look to the
legislature for the specific opportunity structures that are presented to the
opposition.
Certainly, a formal investigation of the legislature as a
primary institutional actor in policymaking is not new. Well-known comparative
scholars such as Blondel, Polsby, Mezey, and Norton have all ranked
legislatures cross-nationally according to important variables in order to
predict which legislatures are the most active against or resistant to
unilateral government demands. However, each study uses a subset of particular
variables to make these predictions. Thus the main shortcoming of this body of
work is the lack of a comprehensive inventory of all the potentially important
institutional differences between legislatures that would account for each legislature’s
ability to challenge government bills. This is precisely what my work
addresses. I build upon previous legislative studies to create a comprehensive
catalog for all the ways that a legislature can potentially challenge a
government. Included in this list are the powers of committees, the procedural
mechanisms through which an upper house can challenge a proposal, parliamentary
agenda-setting capabilities, and individual rights on the floor. Each one of
these procedural mechanisms may create possibilities for counter-majoritarian
tendencies in parliaments, which implicates an enhanced role for opposition
members who work in parliament to secure policy benefits.
Lijphart’s
famous 1999 book, Patterns of Democracy
suggests that most of the world’s democratic systems can be grouped in two main
categories: majoritarian democracy or consensus democracy. The placement of any
one country into either of these categories is based on the institutional rules
and practices of each political system. Lijphart also argues that consensus
democracies are more democratic than majoritarian ones. Obviously, this has
direct implications for representation because majoritarian democracies are
governed by the winning majority, while consensus democracies are governed by as
many people as possible.
I
mention this book because one caveat in Lijphart’s approach is an omission of
the precise procedural mechanisms within the legislature that can affect policy
outcomes. While there is a chapter that investigates the dichotomy between
unicameral and bicameral systems, there is little to no mention of the other
institutional devices that legislatures can use to challenge government
priorities. In other words, it is possible, based on legislative
characteristics, to find majoritarian political systems with consensus-style
tendencies within the legislature. Likewise, it is also possible to find the
legislatures within consensus political systems exhibiting majoritarian-style
tendencies. An exclusive and comparative study of opposition politics in
democratic systems could expose these discrepancies.
In
addition, a study of the opposition has implications for the nature of
representation in these systems. While it appears, superficially, that majority
parties fully control the trajectory of public policy within political
executives, it is altogether possible that majority parties lose their firm
policy grip, so to speak, when we consider the precise procedural powers of the
legislature. The legislature, in such cases, may offer minority parties (the
opposition) incentives and opportunities to engage in collaborative behavior
with some backbencher members of government parties in order to influence the
final policy outcome in some way. This suggests, borrowing from Lijphart’s
logic, that such political systems would have enhanced representation, because
more members of more parties would be able to contribute to the final policy
outcome. Of course this comes at the expense of expedient and efficient
decision making. Nonetheless, such an outcome would be more “representative”
because more interests are finding a voice: first in the government, where
policy is drafted, and second in the parliament, where policy details are
debated and possibly revised. As a result, the opposition in some countries is
not only waiting for the next opportunity to seize the reins of executive
power; the opposition is also active in policymaking.