A legislature’s ability to engage in oversight of the executive is believed to derive
largely from its committee system. For example, powerful parliamentary committees are considered a necessary condition for the legislature to help police policy
compromises between parties in multiparty government. But can other parliamentary instruments perform this role? This paper suggests parliamentary questions
as an alternative parliamentary vehicle for coalition parties to monitor their partners. Questions force ministers to reveal information concerning their legislative and
extra-legislative activities, providing coalition members unique insights into their
partners behaviour. To test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset
of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010-15
coalition. As expected, government MPs ask more questions as the divisiveness of a
policy area increases. Legislatures conventionally considered weak due to the lack of
strong committees may nevertheless play an important oversight role through other
parliamentary devices, including helping to police the implementation of coalition
agreements