The Temporal Dimension of Coalition Policy Making in Parliamentary Democracies

Democratic governance imposes temporal limits on policy making. It limits the duration of office holding and terminates the duration of policy-making processes with the dissolution of parliament, the end of parliamentary sessions, or the conclusion of legislative terms (Döring Reference Döring and Döring1995; Reference Döring2001). For policy making in coalition governments, this temporal dimension may also enhance coalition tensions and restrict policy agenda changes. According to Martin and Vanberg (Reference Martin and Vanberg2011), for example, early bill initiation gives ministers an opportunity to demonstrate responsiveness to their constituency that they are working hard on their behalf.Footnote ⁵ When elections approach, Strobl et al. (Reference Strobl, Bäck, Müller and Angelova2021) show that coalition governments are less likely to implement (austerity) policies that risk alienating voters (see also, König and Wenzelburger Reference König and Wenzelburger2017).

More generally, Martin (Reference Martin2004) found that coalition governments usually pursue an accommodating policy agenda, in which government bills with little policy divergence of coalition parties have priority, while others are postponed. Conversely, Sagarzazu and Klüver (Reference Sagarzazu and Klüver2017) showed that at the beginning and at the end of the term the strategy of differentiation between coalition partners predominates, while coalition compromise is more likely in the middle of the term. As coalition participation influences voters’ perceptions of partisan policy positions (Fortunato, Silva, and Williams Reference Fortunato, Silva and Williams2018; Fortunato and Stevenson Reference Fortunato and Stevenson2013), coalition members have incentives to differentiate themselves from their coalition partners to improve their electoral chances (Fortunato Reference Fortunato2019).

These incentives can generate principal-agent problems in government policy making between ministers and their coalition partners, especially when the policy divergence of coalition parties increases (Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2005; Müller and Strøm Reference Müller and Strøm1999; Strøm and Müller Reference Strøm, Müller and Longley2000; Strøm, Müller, and Bergman Reference Strøm, Müller and Bergman2003). These problems continue to exist despite attempts to alleviate them via screening of coalition partners (Kiewiet and McCubbins Reference Kiewiet and McCubbins1991; Saalfeld Reference Saalfeld2000; Strøm Reference Strøm and Döring1995; Reference Strøm2000), ministerial portfolio allocation (Bäck, Debus, and Dumont Reference Bäck, Debus and Dumont2011; Bassi Reference Bassi2013; Reference Bassi2017; Laver and Schofield Reference Laver and Schofield1990; Laver and Shepsle Reference Laver and Shepsle1996; Martin and Stevenson Reference Martin and Stevenson2001), and formal agreements on coalition compromise (Bäck, Müller, and Nyblade Reference Bäck, Müller and Nyblade2017; Bowler et al. Reference Bowler, Indridason, Bräuninger and Debus2016; Indridason and Kristinsson Reference Indridason and Kristinsson2013; Klüver and Bäck Reference Klüver and Bäck2019; Moury Reference Moury2013; Müller and Strøm Reference Müller and Strøm1999; Reference Müller, Strøm, Strøm, Müller and Bergman2008; Strøm and Müller Reference Strøm, Müller and Longley2000; Timmermans Reference Timmermans2017).

According to this literature, higher coalition policy divergence increases the incentives of ministers—who have the task and expertise to draft government bills within their portfolios—to drift from previously agreed upon coalition compromise by proposing “hostile” bills, while it motivates the coalition partner to coalition policing by scrutinizing and amending such proposals in parliament to avoid policy losses (Becher Reference Becher2010; Huber Reference Huber1996; Laver and Schofield Reference Laver and Schofield1990; Laver and Shepsle Reference Laver and Shepsle1996; Martin Reference Martin2011; Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2005; Reference Martin and Vanberg2020a; Tavits Reference Tavits2008). This, however, risks inaction and delay, with high electoral costs for the responsible parties when the costs for coalition policing exceed the benefits of jointly implementing government bills (Duch and Stevenson Reference Duch and Stevenson2008; Fortunato et al. Reference Fortunato, Lin, Stevenson and Tromborg2021).

This dilemma of coalition governance has sparked prolific research on the conditions under which ministers propose “hostile” bills and coalition partners (successfully) scrutinize such bills. From a spatial perspective on policy divergence, Laver and Shepsle’s (Reference Laver and Shepsle1996) prominent model of portfolio allocation suggests that ministers can autonomously implement their policy position within their portfolios when their party holds the median position in parliament. Under a constrained environment, Martin and Vanberg’s (Reference Martin and Vanberg2011) model of coalition bargains also predicts that ministers initiate hostile proposals—government bills representing the policy position of their party instead of the previously agreed upon coalition compromise—for seeking electoral position-taking benefits.

Studies contend that in parliamentary democracies with strong institutions, coalition parties can overcome their dilemma and implement coalition compromise by allowing coalition partners to scrutinize and amend government bills in parliament, even if ministers pursue a maximal position-taking strategy by always introducing hostile proposals (Becher Reference Becher2010; Goodhart Reference Goodhart2013; Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2005; Reference Martin and Vanberg2014; Reference Martin and Vanberg2020a).Footnote ⁶ Yet, scrutinizing government bills in parliament delays government policy making and raises challenging costs for coalition parties (Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2011).Footnote ⁷ Also, while ministers can only implement a maximal position-taking strategy when the challenging costs of (weak) institutions for scrutiny exceed the policy benefits of the coalition partner, higher ministerial costs of being scrutinized and amended risk delay and gridlock, with crucial electoral costs for both the partner and the office-holding ministerial party (Bäck and Carroll Reference Bäck and Carroll2018; Martin Reference Martin2004; Tsebelis Reference Tsebelis2002).

Parliamentary institutions thus offer an imperfect mechanism for coalition partners to control ministerial discretion (Goodhart Reference Goodhart2013). Empirically, it is difficult (if not impossible) to provide evidence for the level of imperfection as the coalition partner or opposition parties can also use parliamentary institutions to scrutinize and amend government bills (Fortunato Reference Fortunato2019). Yet, the conventional wisdom and empirical evidence of government policy making are that the amount of parliamentary scrutiny increases with the level of policy divergence within coalition governments (Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2014; Reference Martin and Vanberg2020a; Pedrazzani and Zucchini Reference Pedrazzani and Zucchini2013). Furthermore, if a minister could anticipate how much scrutiny her bills will undergo in parliament, she could use her agenda control over the timing of bills to postpone bill initiation when she expects costly scrutiny, or otherwise, to initiate her bills immediately. Although ministers may not know perfectly the type of their partners at the beginning of the term, we can expect adjustments in ministerial policy-making activities over time as ministers get to know better their partners.

Theory: Ministerial Learning and Timing of Bill Initiation

To complement the predominant static perspective on coalition policy making, we introduce a parsimonious dynamic theory of government bill initiation timing.Footnote ⁸ Even though coalition policy making is a complex procedure, we simplify our argument to the introduction of only two pieces of bills to provide an intuitive and tractable setting for modeling ministerial learning and the timing of bill initiation. For simplicity, we distinguish between a ministerial office holder and a partner within a majority coalition government.Footnote ⁹

The minister is responsible for drafting two bills in her portfolio over a term.Footnote ¹⁰ She introduces the first bill at the beginning of the term and then decides when—early or late in the term—to introduce the second bill.Footnote ¹¹ When the government and parliamentary majorities coincide, the coalition partner plays the role of a parliamentary scrutiny “gatekeeper,” who has the choice of approving immediately or allowing for scrutiny of the bills in parliament.

Because time is a scarce resource for government policy making within a term, scrutiny can impede the policy-making process and constrain the government’s ability to approve its policy agenda (Cox and McCubbins Reference Cox and McCubbins2007; Reference Cox, McCubbins, Edwards, Lee and Schickler2011; Döring Reference Döring and Döring1995; Fong and Krehbiel Reference Fong and Krehbiel2018).Footnote ¹² We assume that the coalition partner can be of two types: He can be either a competitive type, who mainly cares about his performance in the next election and has vote-maximizing motivations, or a cooperative type, who is predominantly concerned about the effectiveness of coalition policy making. In other words, the type reflects whether, in addition to policy concerns, the partner has particular individual electoral concerns for the next election.

To understand this concept, it is important to distinguish between the party as a single political actor and affiliated members as current agents of the party. While long-run ideological policy preferences of the party are likely to persist over time, the short-run vote-maximizing motivations of partisan agents might vary across portfolios and from one term to another. That is why even though we model parties as single actors, the underlying assumption is that the partner’s type reflects motivations of the current ministers as party agents and is therefore randomly drawn by nature.Footnote ¹³

The legislative process develops as follows, whereby stages 1 and 2 reflect the static and stages 3 and 4 add the dynamic perspective:

1. 1. The partner’s type (competitive or cooperative) is randomly determined by nature. To capture the information asymmetry of the coalition parties, we assume that the partner knows his own type, whereas the minister has the prior knowledge that the partner is competitive with probability q.

2. 2. The minister introduces her first bill, which the partner either immediately approves or allows for scrutiny. If the partner approves, then the bill passes with the support of the parliamentary majority and the bill implements the policy position of the ministerial party.Footnote ¹⁴ If the partner does not approve the bill immediately, then the bill undergoes a monitoring process and is passed with amendments at the expense of the policy position of the ministerial party (and more in the interests of the partner’s party).

3. 3. The minister observes whether her first bill has been immediately approved or scrutinized and updates her beliefs about the partner’s type. She decides then whether to initiate the second bill early or late in the term. Figure 1 depicts the parties’ choices and outcomes for the second ministerial bill (the complete game tree is presented in Figure B1 of Appendix I: Theory, Data, and Method).

   Figure 1.

   Second Bill: Parties’ Choices and Outcomes

   

4. 4. Once the second bill is introduced, the partner either immediately approves or allows for scrutiny. If the partner approves, then the bill passes with the support of the parliamentary majority and implements the policy position of the ministerial party. If the partner does not approve the bill immediately, then the outcome depends on whether the minister has initiated the second bill early or late in the term. An early-initiated scrutinized bill is passed with amendments at the expense of the policy position of the ministerial party (and in the interests of the partner’s party). Scrutiny of a late-initiated bill cannot be—due to time constraints—completed by the end of the term to advance the policy position of the partner’s party but rather results in the passage of a compromise bill.Footnote ¹⁵

We next formalize the payoffs of the coalition parties that account for their dilemma. Following the (spatial) literature on policy divergence of coalition partners, the parties have different policy positions that create principal-agent problems, as they can only implement government bills jointly. If a government bill passes without scrutiny, then the policy payoffs change from coalition compromise 0 toward +X for the minister and –X for the partner, where X > 0.Footnote ¹⁶ However, if an early-initiated bill gets scrutinized and subsequently amended to reflect the partner’s policy position, then the policy payoff to the minister is $ -\frac{X}{\alpha } $ and the policy payoff to the partner is $ \frac{X}{\alpha } $ , where $ \alpha \ge 1 $ denotes the minister’s power to constrain scrutiny activities (e.g., by holding the median position, having a large seat share in parliament, etc.). In turn, the policy payoffs to both coalition parties from implementing the coalition compromise are normalized to 0.Footnote ¹⁷ Therefore, if a bill is initiated late, subsequently scrutinized, and then amended to reflect the coalition compromise, then the parties’ policy payoffs amount to 0.

According to Martin and Vanberg (Reference Martin and Vanberg2011), early bill initiation allows the minister to demonstrate responsiveness to her constituency, that she is working hard on their behalf; thus, she generates position-taking benefits B > 0 for herself. Late initiation, in turn, is associated with temporary inaction and so generates no position-taking benefits.Footnote ¹⁸ As for the partner, the process of scrutinizing government bills imposes challenging costs. However, the competitive partner derives individual electoral benefits from scrutinized bills. We assume that these benefits compensate him for the challenging costs. In other words, for the competitive partner, the costs are offset by the individual electoral benefits he receives as a result of scrutinized bills. The cooperative partner type does not have vote-maximizing motivations but incurs the challenging costs of scrutinized bills, which we denote by C. To highlight the incentive divergence between the two types, we posit that challenging costs C are large enough that they exceed the partner’s policy benefit $ X+\frac{X}{\alpha } $ from the passage of the amended bill that advances his policy position instead of the initial bill.

To find a solution for our dynamic perspective on bill initiation timing, we search for a perfect Bayesian equilibrium that consists of the partner’s reactions to the first and second bills, the minister’s beliefs about the partner’s type, and the minister’s subsequent decision about early or late initiation of the second bill. Specifically, the partner’s decisions to approve the bill immediately or allow it for scrutiny are optimal given his type, incentives, and expectations about early or late initiation of the second bill. In turn, the minister uses the partner’s reaction to her first bill to draw inferences about the partner’s (competitive or cooperative) type. Given these inferences and her incentives, the minister optimally decides whether to initiate the second bill early or late.

In Appendix B, we present the formal analysis and prove that there exists a perfect Bayesian equilibrium such that the competitive partner type allows for scrutiny of both bills, but the cooperative partner type approves both bills immediately. The minister learns that she faces a competitive (cooperative) partner after her first bill has been scrutinized (immediately approved). For $ B>\frac{X}{\alpha } $ , the minister initiates the second bill early in the term. Intuitively, when the minister’s policy loss $ \frac{X}{\alpha } $ is relatively low compared with her position-taking benefit B, then she has incentives for early initiation even if she learns that her partner is a competitive type who will allow for scrutiny of the second bill. However, for $ B\le \frac{X}{\alpha } $ , the minister opts for late initiation after her first bill has been scrutinized and for early initiation after her first bill has been immediately approved. In this case, the minister’s position-taking benefit B does not outweigh the policy loss $ \frac{X}{\alpha } $ . As a result, the minister prefers to hinder the scrutiny process by late bill initiation after she learns that her partner is a competitive type who would allow for scrutiny again. It follows that the equilibrium probability of late initiation amounts to

$$ \left\{\begin{array}{ccc}0& \mathrm{if}& B>\frac{X}{\alpha },\\ {}q& \mathrm{if}& B\le \frac{X}{\alpha }.\end{array}\right. $$

That is, for $ B>\frac{X}{\alpha } $ , the second bill is initiated early, whereas for $ B\le \frac{X}{\alpha } $ , it is initiated late when the partner is a competitive type (recall that the partner is competitive with probability q).Footnote ¹⁹

Empirical Strategy

Variables and Measurement

Dependent variable

Our dependent variable captures the relative temporal location of bill initiation within a term.Footnote ²² To make the measurement of bill initiation comparable across coalition governments with different duration, we divide the number of days from the start date of government to the date of bill initiation by the number of days of the overall observed government duration. For example, if a government started on January 1, 2010, and ended on December 31, 2013, lasting for a total government duration of four years or 1,460 days, a government bill initiated on January 1, 2011, (365 days after the government formation) is located at the 25th percentile (365/1,460) of the term. The resulting measure ranges from 0th percentile to 100th percentile, where the first days of government fall in the 0th percentile and the last days of government fall in the 100th percentile of the term.

To map percentiles into cycles of terms, we transform the percentage rate into a radius measure using the formula r = 2π, which maps from [0%,100%] to [0, 2π] on a circle. Therefore, our dependent variable can theoretically range from 0 to 2π. As presented in Table 1, our dependent variable bill temporal location empirically varies from 0.13 to 6.28 in our data, with small values indicating early initiations and high values indicating late initiations.Footnote ²³ In substantive terms, the minimum value of 0.13 represents the first and earliest government bill, the maximum value of 6.28 (2π) the last bill initiated within the longest term in our dataset.

Table 1.

Variables and Descriptive Statistics

Figure 2 depicts the relative timing and number of government bills from the 11 parliamentary democracies to illustrate our circular outcomes in terms of timing of bill initiation. In this descriptive plot, we distinguish between four periods of a term: the first, second, third, and fourth periods. The circular plots show that the number of government bills differs across countries and across different periods of the terms. Countries such as Denmark, Finland, and Latvia have a larger number of government bills initiated than the other countries included in our data. In countries such as Denmark, Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands, most government bills are initiated in the third period of the term, while in countries such as Belgium, Finland, and Norway, most government bills are introduced at the end of the term. Furthermore, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Poland experience fewer government bills, most of which are equally distributed in the second and third periods of the term. The descriptive statistics suggest that we cover a variety of temporal decisions on government bill initiation of coalition governments.

Figure 2.

Relative Timing and Number of Government Bills within Terms

Independent variables

Our first hypothesis postulates that greater experienced scrutiny of previous bills leads to late initiation of subsequent bills within the term. To measure experienced scrutiny of government bills, building on Martin and Vanberg (Reference Martin and Vanberg2004) we consider the duration (in days) that a bill takes to be enacted from the date of bill introduction. Bills that are scrutinized tend to require more time in the parliamentary policy-making process than bills that are not subject to scrutiny. Given the circular nature of our data structure, our measurement is calculated as follows: for bill i initiated at time T in term A in policy area K, duration $ {}_i $ = mean(duration of passed bills initiated in term A, concluded before T, in area K). In other words, for any observation experienced scrutiny is based on the average duration of past bills in that policy area adopted up until the date of the new bill. In our dataset, experienced scrutiny ranges from 1 to 488,Footnote ²⁴ with a mean of 97 days and a standard deviation of 70 days.Footnote ²⁵

According to our second hypothesis, we expect the effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation to be stronger under higher policy divergence among coalition parties. Measuring policy divergence of coalition parties requires knowledge of the policy positions of the ministerial party in charge of the government bill and the partner parties in the coalition. To measure these area-specific policy positions, we rely on the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) data that cover parliamentary parties since 1945 (Volkens et al. Reference Volkens, Krause, Lehmann, Theres, Merz, Regel and Weßels2019). The CMP splits raw data of party manifestos into quasi-sentences categorized into 56 categories that are used to construct party positions in those categories. Thus, given the availability of manifestos, the CMP data provides term-varying measures of partisan policy positions that parties report themselves.

Because not all categories are informative and distinct, Lowe et al. (Reference Lowe, Benoit, Mikhaylov and Laver2011) developed a scaling method based on log odds ratios of quantities of quasi-sentences. The scaled policy positions are shown to be superior to the raw measures of the Comparative Manifesto Project. We adopt this scaling approach and recalculate partisan policy positions in 13 ministerial portfolios as in Bäck, Debus, and Dumont (Reference Bäck, Debus and Dumont2011). For each term and each ministerial portfolio, the policy divergence of coalition parties is measured as the sum of portfolio-specific differences between the ministerial party and its coalition partners.Footnote ²⁶ The greater the policy distance between the minister-proponent and her partners, the higher the policy divergence among coalition parties. In our data, the variable coalition policy divergence ranges from a minimum value of 0.02 (almost no divergence) to a maximum divergence of 17.93.

To examine our third hypothesis, according to which we expect a weaker effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation in the face of powerful ministers, we include two new variables: whether the minister’s party holds the median policy position in parliament and the relative size of the minister’s party in parliament. From the other parties’ point of view, these variables approximate the constraints on their capability to scrutinize and amend ministerial bills. According to spatial models, government policy making is highly influenced by the position of the median party in parliament, as long as the median party approximates the median voter’s position (Baron Reference Baron1991; Laver and Schofield Reference Laver and Schofield1990; Morelli Reference Morelli1999). In this sense, a minister holding the median position in parliament should have a greater ability to avoid amendments and bring the government bill closer to her ideal policy position compared with an off-median partner (Laver and Shepsle Reference Laver and Shepsle1996). To capture whether ministers take the median position in parliament, we consider the ordered area-specific positions of coalition parties and code minister median party as 1 if the minister takes the area-specific median position in parliament.

When compared with smaller parties, larger parties in parliamentary systems are usually in a privileged position to scrutinize bills and have a greater floor time for speeches in parliament (Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2008). In several parliamentary democracies, a larger seat share translates into control of more legislative committee chairs, which leads to powers to schedule public hearings and to consult policy experts and societal groups, as well as a privileged position in terms of extracting policy information (Kim and Loewenberg Reference Kim and Loewenberg2005; Martin and Vanberg Reference Martin and Vanberg2004; Reference Martin and Vanberg2005; Mattson and Strøm Reference Mattson, Strøm and Döring1995). As a consequence, larger ministerial parties should be more able to avoid scrutiny and amendments to their bills. We measure the relative size of the minister’s party by her party’s seat share in parliament.

Control variables

Coalition parties may attach different saliency across policy areas that can facilitate coalition formation, portfolio allocation, and common policy making (Bäck, Debus, and Dumont Reference Bäck, Debus and Dumont2011; Klüver and Spoon Reference Klüver and Spoon2020; Klüver and Sagarzazu Reference Klüver and Sagarzazu2016). We use saliency to approximate the incentives to generate position-taking benefits from early bill initiation. When a government bill represents a policy in an area that is more salient to the party of the minister, we expect an early timing of bill initiation; otherwise, when the minister initiates the bill late in the term, she risks forgoing considerable position-taking benefits. Therefore, we control for area-specific saliency based on counting relative mentions of a specific policy category in a given party’s manifesto related to a portfolio that the bill belongs. Following Lowe et al. (Reference Lowe, Benoit, Mikhaylov and Laver2011), we log transform the counts so that the measure is robust to extreme values.

Given that opposition parties may also vary in their incentives to scrutinize government bills and thus affect their duration when they collaborate in parliament, we control for the cohesiveness of their policy positions. Specifically, we calculate the variance of the policy positions of opposition parties in parliament. To further account for their party size and policy saliency, we weight the policy positions of opposition parties with their seat shares and the saliency opposition parties attach to different policy areas.Footnote ²⁷ Because the length of terms differs across elections and countries, we also control for observed government duration, measured in days. In Table 1, we show the descriptive statistics of the variables included in our analyses.

Method

To empirically examine the timing of government bills in the cycle of a term, we consider the circular nature of our data.Footnote ²⁸ Following our theory, we treat terms as new cycles of legislative activities, which avoids counting bills from previous terms as bills from a new term. Following Woldendorp, Keman, and Budge (Reference Woldendorp, Keman and Budge2000) and Seki and Williams (Reference Seki and Williams2014), we define a new term by changes in the composition of the coalition government (either by a change in party composition or prime minister).Footnote ²⁹ Unlike linear regression estimators, which ignore the bounds of the dependent variable, and aggregated measures such as counts of bills within a certain period, which risk ecological fallacy, a promising way to analyze our type of data is to use circular regression (Gill and Hangartner Reference Gill and Hangartner2010; Mulder and Klugkist Reference Mulder and Klugkist2017).Footnote ³⁰ Circular regression considers the relative temporal location of government bills within a term when estimating how and to what extent a variable influences the timing of an event (e.g., early or late event) within a cycle.

In our analysis, circular regression enables examining the timing of bill initiation at the government level. To draw inference and quantify the uncertainty of the estimates, we apply a Bayesian version of circular regression, which incorporates priors for posterior sampling using the Metropolis–Hastings sampler (Mulder and Klugkist Reference Mulder and Klugkist2017). Our dependent variable bill timing is a continuous variable on a unit circle ranging from 0 to 2π, which indicates the relative temporal location of a bill on the circle of a term. Our statistical model takes the following form for the estimation of model 1, which examines our first hypothesis on late government bill initiation when the minister has experienced greater scrutiny of her previous bills:

$$ \mathrm{Bill}\ \mathrm{timing}={\mu}_0+{g}^{-1}\left({\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{1}}\;\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}+\boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{\phi } +\varepsilon \right), $$

where $ {\mu}_0 $ on the right-hand side of the equation measures circular intercepts and $ {g}^{-1}\left(\cdot \right) $ is a transformation function mapping values to the circular space. Although there are multiple choices available for $ {g}^{-1}\left(\cdot \right) $ (see e.g., Fisher and Lee Reference Fisher and Lee1992), we follow the most common practice and assume that $ {g}^{-1}\left(\cdot \right) $ takes the form of $ 2\arctan \left(\cdot \right) $ , with βs as the coefficients to be estimated (Gill and Hangartner Reference Gill and Hangartner2010). X is a matrix of observations on our control variables with parameter estimates vector $ \boldsymbol{\phi} $ , and $ \varepsilon $ is the error term.

To account for the heterogeneity of the positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation by the level of policy divergence between the coalition parties, we consider the interaction between experienced scrutiny and coalition policy divergence. The corresponding estimation examines our second hypothesis with the following specification (model 2):

$$ {\displaystyle \begin{array}{l}\mathrm{Bill}\ \mathrm{timing}={\mu}_0+{g}^{-1}\\ {}({\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{1}}\;\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}+{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{2}}\;\mathrm{Coalition}\ \mathrm{policy}\ \mathrm{divergence}\\ {}+{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{3}}\;\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}\times \mathrm{Coalition}\ \mathrm{policy}\ \mathrm{divergence}\\ {}+\boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{\phi } +\varepsilon ).\end{array}} $$

Following our theoretical model and disentangling each effect of interest, we examine hypotheses 2 and 3 separately because policy divergence and ministerial power might affect the relationship between parliamentary scrutiny and timing of bill initiation through different channels: the former directly affects the policy payoffs, whereas the latter determines extent to which the scrutiny action can be executed.Footnote ³¹ Although policy divergence between the coalition parties magnifies the policy losses the minister incurs in case of scrutiny, the minister’s powers allow her to constrain scrutiny activities to some extent. To examine our third hypothesis on the power of the minister to constrain scrutiny activities, we use two measures of parliamentary powers: minister’s party holding the median policy position in parliament (minister median party) and the size of the minister’s party in terms of their relative seat share in parliament (minister’s party size). This results in the following model 3:

$$ {\displaystyle \begin{array}{l}\mathrm{Bill}\ \mathrm{timing}={\mu}_0+{g}^{-1}({\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{1}}\;\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}+\\ {}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{2}}\;\mathrm{Minister}'\mathrm{s}\;\mathrm{party}\ \mathrm{size}+{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{3}}\;\mathrm{Minister}\ \mathrm{median}\ \mathrm{party}+\\ {}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{4}}\;\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}\times \mathrm{Minister}'\mathrm{s}\;\mathrm{party}\ \mathrm{size}+\\ {}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{5}}\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}\times \mathrm{Minister}\ \mathrm{median}\ \mathrm{party}+\\ {}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{6}}\;\mathrm{Minister}'\mathrm{s}\;\mathrm{party}\ \mathrm{size}\times \mathrm{Minister}\ \mathrm{median}\ \mathrm{party}+\\ {}{\boldsymbol{\beta}}_{\mathbf{7}}\mathrm{Experienced}\ \mathrm{scrutiny}\times \mathrm{Minister}'\mathrm{s}\;\mathrm{party}\ \mathrm{size}\times \\ {}\mathrm{Minister}\ \mathrm{median}\ \mathrm{party}+\boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{\phi } +\varepsilon ).\end{array}} $$

To estimate the models, we run 100,000 Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) iterations and take the first 1,000 iterations as burn-ins. The convergence diagnostics presented in Appendix G make us confident that all chains have appropriately converged.Footnote ³²

Results and Discussion

In Table 2, we present the results of our model estimations. The estimates for the independent variables depict the effect of each variable on the timing of the bill initiation (earlier or later in a term), holding all other variables constant. Positive estimates indicate that government bills are introduced later within a term, whereas negative estimates mean that they are introduced earlier within a term.

Table 2.

The Effects of Experienced Scrutiny, Coalition Policy Divergence, and Powerful Ministers on Timing of Bill Initiation

Note: Dependent Variable: Temporal location of bill initiations within a term. MCMC run for 100,000 iterations; first 1,000 iterations as burn−ins. Lower and upper bounds of 95% credible intervals in brackets. N: 25,477 government bills.

According to our hypothesis 1, we expect late initiation of government bills the greater the experienced scrutiny of previous bills within a minister’s portfolio. This expectation is supported by the results depicted in model 1 of Table 2. As indicated by the estimate for experienced scrutiny, holding all control variables constant, the greater the experienced scrutiny of their previous bills, the later ministers introduce subsequent bills within the term. This estimate is positive and significant (as the range of values of the estimate does not cross the value of zero between the lower and upper bounds of the 95% credible intervals within brackets). Following our theory, after ministers experience scrutiny and learn that they face a competitive partner type, they are more likely to initiate new government bills late in the term.

The substantive effect of experienced scrutiny on the timing of bill initiation (as estimated in model 1 of Table 2) is depicted graphically in Figure 3. Within the circle of Figure 3, the periods of the term are represented as percentages (from 0% at the beginning to 100% at the end of the term). The range in the figure goes from 1 to 60—that is, from the minimum to approximately the median value of experienced scrutiny. This range is depicted by the vertical line from the small circle to the larger circle in Figure 3. The blue curve inside the circle shows the predicted value (with a 95% credible interval) of the effect of our covariate on the timing of bill initiation, holding all other variables constant. From the fitted blue curve, we can observe that, on average, an increase in experienced scrutiny from 1 day to 60 days (median value) leads to later initiation of new bills by about 50% within a term.

Figure 3.

The Effect of Experienced Scrutiny on the Timing of Bill Initiation

Note: Results based on the estimates presented in model 1 of Table 2. The figure shows that, on average, an increase in experienced scrutiny from 1 day to 60 days (median value) leads to a later initiation by about 50% within a term.

Our analysis so far has supported our first hypothesis, according to which greater experienced scrutiny of government bills results in late initiation of new bills. Based on our second hypothesis, this positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation should be stronger the higher the policy divergence between the coalition parties. The result presented in model 2 of Table 2 supports this prediction. The substantive effect of this positive relationship between experienced scrutiny and coalition policy divergence is depicted with a graphical illustration of the marginal effects of experienced scrutiny on the timing of bill initiation (y-axis), conditional on the variation of coalition policy divergence (x-axis) in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Marginal Effects of Experienced Scrutiny on Bill Initiation Timing, Conditional on Coalition Policy Divergence

Note: The higher the coalition policy divergence, the greater the effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation. Results based on the estimates presented in model 2 of Table 2. The vertical bars in the background of the figure depict the distribution of the variable coalition policy divergence.

Figure 4 highlights our finding that the effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation (based on the positive fitted line with a 95% credible interval) is enhanced by a higher policy divergence within the coalition government, holding all control variables constant.Footnote ³³ The positive slope depicted in Figure 4 suggests that in an environment comprised of competitive partners, late initiation of government bills becomes more predictable the higher the policy divergence among the parties that comprise the coalition government.

According to our third hypothesis, if the minister has powers to constrain or preclude scrutiny activities in parliament, we should observe a weakening in the positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation. To examine this prediction, we approximate the parliamentary powers of the minister by her party holding the median policy position in parliament and by her party’s relative size in terms of parliamentary seat share. In support of hypothesis 3, we can see in model 3 of Table 2 that the effect of experienced scrutiny on late initiation is substantially reduced when we add a triple interaction to our model between experienced scrutiny, minister’s party size, and minister median party. We can better depict this result by interpreting the marginal effects of experienced scrutiny on the timing of bill initiation, conditional on the variation of both minister’s party size and minister median party (see Figure 5 below).Footnote ³⁴

Figure 5.

Marginal Effects of Experienced Scrutiny on the Timing of Bill Initiation, Conditional on the Minister’s Party Size and Minister Median Party

Note: The vertical bars in the background of the figure depict the distribution of the variable minister’s size (seat share).

The solid-line slope in Figure 5 depicts the marginal effects of experienced scrutiny on the timing of bill initiation (with a 95% credible interval) when the minister’s party does not hold the median policy position in parliament, conditional on the size of the minister’s party. The dashed-line slope depicts the marginal effects of experienced scrutiny on the timing of bill initiation (with a 95% credible interval) when the minister’s party holds the median position in parliament (i.e., minister median party equals 1), conditional on the size of the minister’s party. As highlighted in Figure 5, the positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation becomes weaker the greater the size of the minister’s party in parliament. Moreover, this effect is further weakened when the minister’s party holds the median policy position in parliament. More precisely, when the party of the minister holds the median policy position in parliament, the magnitude of the effect is indistinguishable among small ministerial parties (as indicated by the two predicted lines overlapping for ministerial parties holding less than 35% of the seats). However, as the minister’s party holding the median policy position in parliament becomes larger (in our case, controlling more than 35% of the seats), the positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation becomes smaller, eventually nonsignificant when approaching the maximum value for minister’s party size in our sample (0.59). This result supports our hypothesis 3 and reveals the importance of considering both the median policy position and the size of the ministers’ party when examining our expectation that powerful ministers are capable to incur less scrutiny and have fewer incentives to initiate bills late in the term.

The results from our control variables also present interesting and expected patterns. Holding all other variables constant, bills addressing policy areas of high saliency for the ministerial party are, on average, initiated earlier within the term (indicated by the negative and significant estimate for policy saliency). As these bills are probably highly visible to the constituencies of ministerial parties, this underlines their strategy of generating position-taking benefits by early bill initiation. A higher share of parliamentary seats also seems to translate into earlier initiation of bills, as indicated by the negative and significant estimate for minister’s party size in model 1 and model 2 of Table 2. Furthermore, the greater the policy divergence between parties that comprise the opposition (opposition policy divergence), the earlier the minister introduces a government bill. This is also to be expected because a lower cohesiveness of opposition parties reduces the risk of scrutiny and thus allows ministers to generate position-taking benefits. The negative and significant estimate for government duration can be interpreted as constraints of the electoral calendar and voter demands imposed on the minister. The minister cannot delay her bills indefinitely at the risk of not having time before the next election to approve her policy agenda and being penalized by her constituency in the election. Thus, as the term passes by, the likelihood that ministers will initiate government bills increases. Another explanation that we cannot dismiss is that the effect of observed government duration might be driven by very short-lived coalition governments, which inevitably have less time to initiate bills.Footnote ³⁵

To test the consistency of our findings, we have conducted several robustness checks, which are presented in Appendix II: Goodness of Fit and Robustness Checks of the supplementary material. The results from these robustness checks strengthen the main findings (presented in Table 2)Footnote ³⁶ of this study on the dynamic temporal perspective on coalition policy making, giving us confidence that ministers initiate bills later within a term when their past bills have experienced greater scrutiny and that this positive effect of experienced scrutiny on late bill initiation is stronger the greater the coalition parties’ incentives to implement their ideal policy positions (i.e., the higher the policy divergence between the coalition parties) and the less powerful that ministers are to preclude scrutiny activities in parliament.