The Changing Political Economy of Party Membership

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Tools for Legislative Oversight: An Empirical Investigation

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3388</p

A spatial analysis of the XIII Italian Legislature

We present a spatial map of the Italian House during the XIII Leg-islature obtained by applying the Poole and Rosenthal methodology to roll call data. We obtain coordinates for almost all the 650 MPs that were on the House's °oor at the time, and we aggregate them according to parties. We ¯nd that voting patters generate basically a two dimensional political space. The ¯rst dimension represents loyalty to either the ruling coalition or the opposing one. The second dimension may describe differences at the constitutional level. This finding is consistent with the exceptional case of the party Northern League, which at the time did not belong to either coalition, and presented itself as a northern and anti-system party. Last, we compute the average dispersion of party coordinates along each dimension and compare them with the Rice index of cohesion, the agreement index (which takes into account abstention), and one other index we construct to account for absence from voting. We ¯nd that absence is significantly correlated with the dispersion of parties along the second dimension. We use this to motivate the importance of further analysis on the massive absence in Italian Parliament from voting sessions.

Trends in Parliamentary Oversight: Proceedings from a Panel at the 2004 Southern Political Science Association Conference

World Bank Institute Working Paper- Series on Contemporary Issues in Parliamentary Development, Washington D

Tools for legislative oversight : an empirical investigation

Parliaments are the institutions through which governments are held accountable to the electorate. They have a wide range of tools with which to carry out this oversight function, but until recently little analysis had been undertaken on the characteristics or use of such tools. This paper uses data for 83 countries that was collected in 2001 to investigate whether the oversight potential relates to three variables, namely the form of government (presidential, semi-presidential, or parliamentary), per capita income levels, and the level of democracy. The paper finds that oversight potential is greatly affected by the form of government, per capita income levels, and levels of democracy. Countries with parliamentary forms of government, higher income levels, and which are more democratic have a greater number of oversight tools and greater oversight potential. While the oversight potential follows this general trend, the use of committees of enquiry, interpellations and ombudsman offices follows a different pattern. The use of interpellations as an oversight tool is most common in high income countries, less common in low income countries and least common in middle income countries while the presence of committees of enquiry and of the ombudsman offices is most common in middle income countries, less common in high income countries and least common in low income countries.Labor Policies,Municipal Financial Management,Income,Parliamentary Government,Health Economics&Finance,Governance Indicators,National Governance,TF054599-PHRD-KYRGYZ REPUBLIC: WATER MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT PROJECT,Parliamentary Government,Municipal Financial Management

A spatial analysis of the Italian Second Republic, Second Version

We apply the Optimal Classification method to a newly created dataset to provide a spatial map of the Italian Second Republic (1996-2008). We find a bi-dimensional political space in the XIII Legislature and virtually a one dimensional political space in the XIV and XV Legislatures. In addition, the main dimension is explained along the dimension government opposition rather than on the traditional left and right dimension. During the Second Republic, Italy experienced changes in electoral system and in the format of the parties. We use our data to discuss the implications of either change on the dimensionality space. We find that the format of the party system was a more important determinant of the dimensionality of the political space than changes in the electoral system.

Parliamentary Libraries, Institutes and Offices: The Sources of Parliamentary Information

World Bank Institute Working Paper Series on Contemporary Issues in Parliamentary, Washington D

Political parties

Building on the work by Huntington (1968) and Panebianco (1983) this chapters discusses the relationship between corruption and the inadequate institutionalization of political parties

Public accounts committees in the Pacific region

the paper analyzes the organization, the powers, the functioning and the performance of Public Account Committees in the Pacific region. In doing so the paper highlights some of the factors have contributed to making PACs from the Pacific island states work effectivel