Coalition agreements and party Mandate: How do coalition agreements constrain ministerial action
By Catherine Moury
Forthcoming with Routledge (October 2012)
XXVI Convegno SISP
Università Roma Tre
13 - 15 settembre 2012
In December 2011, Belgian political parties have just managed to form a government – after 541 days of negotiations on a common programme. Although this particular case is an extreme, dysfunctional example of coalition governance, the point I make in this book is that there are good reasons for party leaders dedicating substantial time and energy on the preparation of a coalition agreement. As I see it, coalition agreements – which enable package deals and are drafted under conditions that ease the making of compromises - allow party leaders to agree on more policy deals than they would otherwise do. Putting their policy deals into black and white also commits individual ministers to the coalition parties’ priorities and reduces the risk of serious intra-party dissension. Party leaders have efficient mechanisms of information and vetoes at their disposal; they can be confident that ministers will transfer most of the coalition agreement into concrete decisions, including those that are unpopular within their party or Ministry. They also know that the cabinet will accept few initiatives the document had not previously foreseen. In sum: I argue that it is party leaders’ wish that ministers comply with the document and they can make this happen. This obviously does not mean that ministers never deviate from the coalition agreement; they sometimes do. But my point is that this deviation is not widespread and would generally occur solely when it is in the interest of all coalition parties to do so.
While this argument is not new, it has been the subject of much debate; and the existing empirical evidence is too scarce to definitively settle the argument. This book aims to fill this empirical gap. Drawing on more than sixty interviews with key cabinet decision-makers (including 42 former ministers) and on the codification of all important decisions taken by eight cabinets in four different countries, I show that ministers in no way are policy dictators in their sphere of competences: they are in fact strongly and consistently constrained by the coalition agreement. This holds true for a large variety of cabinets, including those that were least likely to present congruence between their actions and the coalition agreement.
Theorising Coalition agreements
Entering cabinet provides parties with direct influence over public policies and office positions; it then comes as no surprise that parties rarely decline such an opportunity. However, incumbent parties not only benefit from advantages but also face challenges. These include the risk of disappointing voters and of losing representation in Parliament as a result. This threat is even more acute in coalition; it is not straightforward for governing parties to make policy decisions together with their partners while at the same time keeping a distinct and attractive party profile (Müller and Strøm 2000, Martin and Vanberg 2011). The disappearance of the Italian Communist Party, Rifondazione Comunista, from parliament after having governed in coalition with the Centre-Left Democratic Party (2006-2008) is a good example of the difficulty of such an enterprise.
Although parties may be put at risk by accepting compromises and package deals, not being able to decide on common policies would certainly contradict their longer-term interests. Each policy decision therefore requires party leaders to appraise its intrinsic value; its expected repercussion within the electorate, the parliamentary group and the rank-and-file; and the time and effort which would be needed to obtain an agreement (transaction costs). In technical terms, they would (often instinctively) compare the expected costs of a decision to its expected benefits; and pass it only when the latter outweigh the former. The first argument of this book is that coalition agreements considerably reduce the costs associated with policy-making and, hence, enable party leaders to agree on more policy deals that they would otherwise do. On the one hand, coalition agreements reduce the transaction costs associated with policy-making. Those documents indeed allow the grouping of policy deals (‘package deals’) on which coalition parties mutually commit. Party leaders and ministers do not have to negotiate on every single policy independently, and transaction costs are therefore reduced. In addition, the specific conditions under which coalition agreements are drafted - behind closed doors, in a limited time - removes public and media pressure on negotiators and hence ease the making of compromises (Peterson and al. 1983). The fact that negotiators (including party leaders) are theoretically eligible for ministerial posts also increases their willingness to conciliate (Moury 2010). On the other hand, coalition agreements decrease the electoral and intra-party cost associated with coalition decision-making. MPs, followers and perhaps the voters accept concessions more easily when they are included in the coalition agreement – this is especially true if they have been involved in the formulation of the document in some way (Müller and Strøm 2008:168). By writing a coalition agreement, party members therefore reduce the risk that accepting compromises might create strong intra-party dissension, while also keeping the possibility to differentiate their positions on issues not included in the document (Timmermans 2003, Moury and Timmermans 2008, Muller and Strom 1999, Strøm and al. 2010, Saalfeld 2008).
A different, but related, challenge that parties face when entering government is that ministers may act according to what is best for their career or their department rather than for the party they represent. In technical terms, party leaders risk ‘agency loss’ when delegating to minsters. In a coalition agreement, this risk is aggravated by the fact that an alliance of parties (‘a collective principle’) delegates decision-making powers to a single minister (‘agent’). The latter manifestly has many incentives to act in a way that is good for his/her own party (or for himself/herself) but detrimental to the others (Martin 2004, Strøm 2000, Thies 2001). If Ministers have incentives to act ‘opportunistically’, they also have the possibility to do so. On the one hand, ministers have direct access to crucial informative resources (daily relationship with civil servants, regular contacts with experts or lobby groups) that MPs and their leaders do not have. They themselves may be in command of a considerable degree of policy expertise after several years with the same portfolio (Martin and Vanberg 2004: 15, Strøm and al. 2010). On the other hand, Ministers are granted constitutional competences to draft bills; and hence to to determine the exact substance of the legislative proposals presented to the cabinet (Martin and Vanberg 2011: 14) and to choose not to present a policy proposal (Strøm and al. 2010). My second argument is that coalition agreements is an efficient mechanism to limit ministerial drift. As such, coalition agreements can be seen as a contract written by party leaders for ministers, where the legitimate expectations of the principals/coalition parties vis-à-vis the agent/minister are specified. This argument obviously does not imply that the coalition agreement always specifies in detail every single policy that ministers should pass – this simply could not be done. In fact, the length, completeness, and precision of coalition agreements vary greatly across cases and countries (Moury 2005, Müller and Strøm 2008); and coalition programmes sometimes include impracticable compromises (Timmermans 2003, 2006). Nor does my argument imply that ministers are constrained by a text they receive ‘from above’: we know that they often participate in the negotiations (Timmermans 2003, chapter nine). However, negotiators rarely know for sure whether they will become ministers and which portfolio they would get in such a case; and they have to report constantly to their party bureau and parliamentary group about the negotiations[1] (chapter five, six and seven). Hence, coalition agreements can be conceptualised as a contract written by the party with the aim of reducing the autonomy of ministers.
As we know, coalition agreements are not self-enforcing (Thies 2001: 582); and ministers are not likely to stick to the original deals if there are no complementary mechanisms constraining their actions. A third argument is that party leaders and the other ministers not only wish ministers to comply with the document but can to a great extent request them to do so. The literature has listed many of these mechanisms: party leaders can to recruit ministers who are likely to be loyal to the coalition agreement (for example by nominating ministers from the negotiating team, Timmermans 2006, Moury 2010); they also could also reward/punish ministers if they act according to/against the coalition (Indridason and Kam 2008). Moreover, party leaders and other ministers have set many mechanisms to keep the informational advantage of ministers to a minimum and to veto initiatives not in accordance with the coalition agreement. Ministers are often required to meet regularly with the members of their party bureau and/or parliamentary group and to report every relevant action or piece of information (Müller 2000); party leaders frequently associate Junior Minister from one party to a Minister from another party (Thies 2000, Verzichelli 2008); and meet within the coalition committee to coordinate policy and manage conflicts within the coalition (Timmermans 2006, Timmermans and Andeweg 2008); and in ‘strong legislatures’, coalition partners can also make use of parliamentary committees to scrutinise and amend the actions of other cabinet ministers (Kim & Loewenberg 2005; Martin and Vanberg 2011).
Testable hypotheses
Party leaders, I argue, formulate coalition agreements with the expectation that the document will effectively constrain cabinet action. This argument is not new (Browne and Drejmanis 1982; Peterson et al. (1983, 1986); (Strøm and Müller 1999: 255-257; Müller and Strøm 2008; Timmermans 2003, 2006; Walgrave and al. 2006; Timmermans and Breeman 2010) but has been the subject of much debate. Indeed, many influential authors have claimed that coalition agreements do not constrain cabinet (Laver and Shepsle’s (1990, 1996); Luebbert 1986).
If this argument is true, we should observe ministers being effectively constrained by the coalition agreement. One obvious indication of this constraint would be that cabinet translates the statements included in the coalition agreements into concrete actions:
H1. Cabinet translates the coalition agreements into decisions.
However, to fully confirm the argument we must also examine matters the ‘other way round’ and measure to what extent cabinet decisions are determined by the coalition agreement. If we observe that most of the cabinet decisions originate from the coalition agreement, this would provide further evidence for the argument.
H2. Most cabinet decisions originate in the coalition agreement.
The third hypothesis relates to the extent to which Cabinet decisions have been precisely defined beforehand in the coalition agreement. As noted by Andeweg (2000:286), a coalition agreement must be sufficiently detailed to constrain ministers effectively. Hence, I will find additional support for the argument if I ascertain that a considerable number of cabinet decisions have been precisely defined beforehand in the coalition agreement.
H3. Most cabinet decisions have been precisely defined beforehand in the coalition agreement
In the fourth – and last – hypothesis, I turn to how key cabinet actors perceive the extent to which they are constrained by the coalition agreement when making decisions. If the argument holds true, key policy-makers should feel considerably constrained by the document:
H4. Ministers and their closest collaborators feel constrained by the coalition agreement.
Finally, it is worth noting that the extent to which ministers are constrained by coalition agreements is relevant for the ‘agenda-setting’ theorists. Numerous policy scholars – mainly Americans – argue that it is external pressure, and not political actors’ preferences that best explains policy change. In their view, policy change is rarely predictable and political parties are not very important in the agenda-setting process (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). The main idea of this book is that external pressure does not automatically lead to major policy change: political parties determine whether or not policy change will be produced (see also Green-Pedersen 2004, Walgrave and Varone 2008; Walgrave and al. 2006, Timmermans and Breeman 2010). If, as I expect, we observe that most Cabinet decisions are based on the coalition agreement, this would bring additional support to the argument that, at least in Europe, change is mediated by political parties.
Methodological choices
Interviews with top executives
I believe that an important and reliable way to answer such a question is to ask (former) ministers themselves. That is why I conducted face to face or phone interviews with around 50 ministers and 20 of their closest collaborators (chiefs of staff, director generals or secretary generals)[2]. I asked them open questions such as: 1) Do you/your minister feel constrained in your actions by the coalition agreement?; 2) Do you/your minister feel free to pass decisions not based on the document?; 3) Would you/your minister be informed when a colleague is preparing a measure which is not in accordance with the document? If yes, how?; 4) Would you/your minister be in a position to stop this measure? If yes, how?; 5) What , in your opinion, is the role of the coalition agreement?; 7) What could explain variation in the length of the coalition agreement?
Transfer of the coalition agreement into Cabinet decisions
In addition to the interviews, I also wish to measure the extent to which ministers are constrained by the coalition agreement. The first and most obvious way of quantifying such a constraint is to calculate how far Cabinets translate the coalition agreement into decisions. To address this task, I adapt a technique to my research question that was created by Royed (1996) and since used by several other scholars to measure the fulfilment of electoral pledges (Thomson 2001, Mansergh and Thomson 2007, Artés and Bustos 2008, Costello and Thomson 2008, Naurin 2009, Moury 2010). It has proven very reliable (Naurin, Royed and Thomson 2010) and consists of identifying testable pledges in the electoral programme and verifying their fulfilment.
The first step of this method is the codification of all the policy statements (‘pledges’) included in the electoral programme (in this case the coalition agreement), distinguishing between (1) non-testable pledges, the fulfilment of which is impossible to objectively assess, e.g. ‘to make the life of self-employed workers easier’; (2) imprecise pledges, the implementation of which is testable but allows the minister a certain amount of discretion, e.g. ‘to reduce taxes paid by the self-employed’; and (3) precise pledges[3], the implementation of which is precisely defined and affords the minister no discretion, e.g. ‘to cut income tax by 3% for all self-employed workers’. To ensure an objective measurement of fulfilment, only testable pledges were considered for analysis. Some scholars also distinguish between pledges about outcomes, the fulfilment of which depends on both cabinet decisions and external factors (e.g. to ‘reduce unemployment’, ‘reduce the public deficit’, ‘reduce crime’) and pledges about actions, whose compliance depends exclusively on a cabinet decision (e.g. to ‘provide subsidies to companies to hire the unemployed’, ‘raise spending on the disabled’, ‘increase the number of policemen on the streets’). Given my specific research question, I only consider pledges on actions.
After identifying the list of testable policy statements about actions, I then analyse the degree of cabinet’s compliance by looking at each pledge and ascertaining whether I could find a Cabinet decision that was congruent with it. Cabinet decisions include bills and decrees, but also ‘decree laws’ and ‘delegating bills’ (often used in Italy). For example, if I want to assess the transfer of the policy statement ‘proposing a bill on equal opportunities at work’ into a Cabinet decision, I first read the concise analyses provided by political scientists (e.g. ‘Politica in Italia’, Keesing archives, Belgian political year, German Politics). If no precise information is found in these reports, I then search the national databases of cabinet decisions using key words (in our example, ‘equal opportunities’, ‘gender’, ‘female’, ‘work’, etc.). These data bases include all decisions (bills and decrees) passed by the Cabinet and are available on the website of the Executive for the most recent cases, on CD ROM (for Lubbers III and Prodi I) and in the official government gazette Faits/Feiten (for the Deheane I government). If I find a bill or a decree in these databases on equal opportunities at work, the policy statement is then codified as considered by cabinet. If I find no cabinet decisions after submitting carefully selected and predefined key words, then the pledge is codified as not translated into cabinet decision.
In contrast to the above-mentioned studies, my analysis stops after Cabinet presents a bill to Parliament by. In other words, I do not consider whether the bill fulfilling the policy statement is passed by Parliament or, if passed, whether the resulting legislation is implemented. Neither do I make a qualitative assessment of each Cabinet decision. In the example above, the Cabinet is considered to have fulfilled its pledge if it presents a bill on equal opportunities at work to Parliament for approval, irrespective of whether the bill is passed or meets its goal. While it is crucial to focus on legislation and implementation to assess how far parties are accountable to voters, I am interested here in how far ministers are constrained by the coalition agreement. It therefore makes sense here to consider bills rather than laws. Finally, I codified a pledge as considered by cabinet when it was either ‘fully fulfilled’ or ‘partially fulfilled’ by a cabinet decision, as Thomson (2001) does not find out that the three-category distinction between ‘fully fulfilled’, ‘partially fulfilled’ and ‘not fulfilled’ to be very reliable[4].