International Best Practice and the Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission

The UK government has pledged to establish a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission. This body will have a wide remit to recommend potentially sweeping constitutional change. This article draws on international experience and best practice to outline how the commission might best organise the process to produce proposals which are widely supported, fit for purpose, and durable. We argue that to achieve these goals the commission’s organisation should reflect three key principles: impartiality, expertise, and public participation. This would reflect international best practice and build on recent domestic developments. We argue that these principles can best be achieved if the commission works through a citizens’ assembly that combines members of the public with party politicians. This would be a new departure for the UK, but a necessary one given the scale of the government’s constitutional reform agenda, and its stated goal of restoring public trust in politics

Forming a Government in a Hung Parliament: the UK's Recognition rules in Comparative Context

This paper considers government formation in a hung parliament, in which more than one potential government is viable. In such situations, constitutional rules and conventions, which are referred to in the academic literature as recognition rules, guide which actors will be asked to form the government (i.e. to act as the formateur) and in what order. The academic literature identifies six possible recognition rules to guide who should be asked to form a government. These are the majority principle, the continuation rule, and the gravitational, plurality, fault and plebiscitary principles. Recognition rules have political consequences. They may influence which parties form the government, and what policies are then implemented. To protect the Monarchy and its political impartiality, the recognition rules need to be clear, democratic and effective. In the past the UK has applied a range of different conventions and principles which are potentially contradictory, and do not all follow an equally democratic logic. This can jeopardise the Monarch's role in the government formation process. An alternative to the use of ex ante recognition rules is a vote in parliament to nominate the new Prime Minister (in the form of a request to the Monarch). This would protect the Monarchy and its political impartiality by separating the political choice of a formateur (made by parliament) from the formal act of appointing the formateur, made by the Monarch. Parliament could choose a formateur by directly voting on the candidates nominated by political parties, as happens in other European countries, and in Scotland and Wales. Rules are also needed to terminate a government formation process which has become gridlocked. The UK could adopt the 28 day time limit which applies in Scotland

Why Dominant Governing Parties Are Cross-Nationally Influential

Previous research suggests that political parties learn from and emulate the successful election strategies of governing parties in other countries. But what explains variation in the degree of influence that governing parties have on their foreign counterparts? We argue that “clarity of responsibility” within government, or the concentration of executive responsibility in the hands of a dominant governing party, allows parties to learn from the most obviously electorally successful incumbents. It therefore enhances the cross-national diffusion of party programs. To test this expectation, we analyze parties’ policy positions in 26 established democracies since 1977. Our results indicate that parties disproportionately learn from and emulate dominant, highclarity foreign incumbents. This finding contributes to a better understanding of the political consequences of “government clarity” and sheds new light on the heuristics that engender party policy diffusion by demonstrating that the most visible foreign incumbents, whose platforms have yielded concentrated power in office, influence party politics “at home.

Presidents, Assembly Dissolution and the Electoral Performance of Prime Ministers

Many European presidents have extensive constitutional powers to affect the timing of early parliamentary elections, which enables them to influence when incumbent governments must face the electorate. This paper examines whether presidents use their assembly dissolution powers for partisan benefit. To date, presidential activism in the electoral arena of parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies remains poorly understood. We hypothesize that presidents use their powers to influence election calling for the advantage of their political allies in government. To test this argument, we use data on 190 elections in eighteen European democracies. Our results suggest that presidents with significant dissolution powers are able to shape the electoral success of incumbents. Prime ministers whose governments are allied to such presidents realize a vote and seat share bonus of around five per cent. These findings have implications for our understanding of presidential activism, strategic parliamentary dissolution and electoral accountability

Legislative politics, institutional choice and democratic stability The dynamics of executive control in Russia, 1991-1993

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Endogenous and Exogenous Election Timing

This chapter examines the rules that govern election timing in democracies. It begins by distinguishing between constitutionally fixed (exogenous) and constitutionally flexible (endogenous) election timing, reviews which political actors can call early elections when endogenous election timing is permitted, and notes that early elections are heterogeneous and can be of two distinct types—either triggered by government failure or called for partisan advantage. Next, the chapter summarizes the current understanding of the consequences of election timing rules for four important political outcomes: gridlock resolution, the electoral performance of incumbents, the bargaining power of various political actors in negotiating governments and policy, and the rhythm of policy cycles. Together the findings reviewed in this chapter show that election timing rules are highly consequential: they shape election outcomes, accountability, and policy, with significant implications for governance and voter welfare

Government formation and termination

Most of the time government formation and termination in parliamentary, semi-presidential, and presidential democracies entails a degree of bargaining between political parties and, where relevant, the president. This chapter reviews the literature that analyses these bargaining processes and their outcomes. It examines the motivations and resources of parties and presidents in negotiating cabinet representation, the attributes of cabinets, their durability, the different modes of cabinet termination, and the methodological challenges that studying cabinet formation and termination gives rise to. Since the 1990s, I argue, the confluence of the institutionalist turn in the literature on parliamentary governments and the rising interest in cabinet formation and termination among scholars who study semi-presidential and presidential democracies has lent increasing realism to models of government formation and termination. At the same time, the merger of these different research traditions highlights new challenges which are identified in the chapter’s conclusion

Voter reactions to incumbent opportunism

Opportunistic incumbent behavior to gain electoral advantage flies in the face of democratic accountability and should elicit voter disapproval. Yet incumbents routinely behave opportunistically. This observation is puzzling. We address this puzzle by offering the first systematic, individual-level analysis of voter reactions to opportunism. We combine four original surveys with embedded experiments and focus on a common form of opportunism in parliamentary systems—opportunistic election timing to favorable economic conditions. We find that opportunism negatively affects support for the incumbent because it engenders voter concern about the incumbent’s future performance and raises significant concerns about procedural fairness. However, under good economic performance, which often triggers electoral opportunism, voters are still more likely to support than oppose the incumbent despite their negative reaction to opportunism