How Legislative Democracy Creates Political Parties Michael Koß, LMU

How legislative democracy creates political parties

Michael Koß, LMU Munich

forthcoming in: Comparative Politics 51/1, 2018

Introduction

Standard accounts on the rise of political parties emphasize the role of the electoral arena. Here, the nationalization of politics arguably led to a homogenization of voting behavior and, eventually, the emergence of coherent political parties.1 From this perspective, the legislative arena appears as “chapter 2” of electoral democracy and is largely determined by party system properties.2 The present article challenges this view and provides empirical evidence for Duverger’s claim that political parties can also emerge in the legislative arena. This argument acknowledges that the legislative arena often constitutes chapter one of democracy at large.3 To capture the different dimensions of democracy, this paper introduces the term “legislative democracy” in which all legislation is subject to consent by assemblies. Legislative democracy often precedes electoral democracy as it may exist without universal suffrage, but not vice versa.

Despite the temporal precedence of legislative democracy, scholars have primarily focused on the advent of electoral democracy. Previous research examined the choice of electoral systems, the enfranchisement of voters, and the arrival of the secret ballot.4 In contrast, there exist hardly any analyses of the evolution of parties in legislatures apart from work done on the British House of

Commons and the Congress of the United States.5 This article aims to fill this gap by exploring the emergence of political parties in the lower chambers of two emerging European democracies,

Sweden and France. The analysis focuses on the period between 1866 and 1958, i.e. the first wave of democratization.6

Legislative democracy creates political parties by means of two institutional mechanisms: control over the plenary agenda in the plenary and powerful committees.7 The centralization of agenda control in the hands of governments vertically differentiates the legislature and serves as an incentive for legislators to exert an ex ante impact on legislation by means of voting discipline maintained by political parties. Alternatively, powerful legislative committees horizontally differentiate the legislature and allow legislators to exert an ex post impact on legislation. This renders seats on powerful committees (and in particular committee chairs) legislative mega-seats, i.e. desirable offices which allow for considerable impact on legislation.8 Given that parties serve as the gatekeepers to seats on powerful committees, their establishment can be regarded as the alternative path of legislative democracy creating political parties. These alternative paths pose the question under which circumstances parties emerged as managers of government agenda control or, alternatively, as gatekeepers of access to powerful committees.

In order to uncover the causal mechanism which allowed parties to emerge in legislatures, this paper performs a comparative process-tracing analysis primarily based on transcript evidence that has so far been largely overlooked: the committee reports and parliamentary proceedings underlying procedural reforms. More specifically, the process-tracing analysis focuses on the 37 reforms that were debated on the plenary floor after the beginning of competitive elections in 1866

(Sweden) and 1871 (France), respectively. The Swedish and French legislatures are most similar with respect to potential independent variables explaining the distribution of agenda control and committee power, but most different regarding the ultimate outcome of procedural reform. In both legislatures, a multi-party system evolved and coalition and minority governments were prevalent, both of which were arguably conducive to the emergence of both decentralized agenda control and powerful committees. Committees were indeed empowered in both legislatures; however, in 1958,

a procedural path change occurred in the French National Assembly during which agenda control was centralized and committees were disempowered.

As the evidence presented here suggests, parties emerge as a response to an increasing quest for procedural efficiency in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the dawn of competitive elections. Individual legislators preferred the creation of powerful committees which provided them with a return for investing emerging party leaderships with the power to select committee members, namely the prospect of mega-seats on committees. Since party membership became the most important selection criterion for committee membership, the empowerment of committees therefore caused the emergence of parties as gatekeepers of committee access.

In contrast, individual legislators were only willing to unilaterally surrender their inherited powers to control the plenary agenda to party leaders if anti-system legislators could credibly threaten to obstruct legislation. Unlike their pro-system counterparts, anti-system legislators have no interest in cooperation with others. Rather, “an anti-system opposition abides a belief system that does not share the values of the political order within which it operates” and aims to either break away from the polity it operates in or to abolish democratic rule as such.9 Obstruction is here defined as the exploitation of procedural loopholes in order to delay or derail legislation.10 Obstructive anti- system legislators are willing to accept full-blown legislative deadlock. In this sense, maintaining legislative democracy by means of a centralization of agenda control not only helps democratic parties to thrive and survive, but also democracy at large.

Legislative organization and political parties

Scholarship on the advent of political parties mostly focuses on the electoral arena. Here, only coherent political parties were able to fulfil voters’ demand for identifiable and coherent policy

platforms. In turn, candidates were increasingly elected on party tickets rather than individual merits which allowed parties to impose discipline upon formerly autonomous legislators.11 In this respect, party organization and party system properties such as fragmentation, patterns of government alternation, or government formation are regarded as crucial for the evolution of legislative organization.12

This article aims to show that this is not the whole story. Parties also emerge in the legislative arena independent of and prior to electoral democracy. Representative institutions were originally neither devised to foster democracy nor the emergence of political parties.13 Historically, individual legislators dominated parliamentary procedure. This is why the “legislative state of nature” is characterized by equal rights of all legislators.14 Two departures from the legislative state of nature allow for the emergence of political parties in the legislative arena: vertical differentiation, i.e. the centralization of agenda control and horizontal differentiation, i.e. the establishment of powerful committees.

Agenda control refers to the ability to introduce, amend, and discuss legislation.15 These features correspond to three dimensions of agenda control: timetable, positive, and negative control.

Timetable control refers to decisions about which proposals are debated. If governments or majorities control the legislative timetable, they possess gatekeeping power. Positive agenda control encompasses the power to amend legislation or prevent amendments, which is accomplished through restrictive rules (which exclude certain kinds of amendments) or closed rules (which forbid all amendments) as well as the power to make last amendments.16 Negative agenda control comprises measures affecting the length of legislative debates such as closure procedures, which terminate such debates.

Agenda control can be defined as centralized if governments or majorities enjoy privileges in two of the three dimensions (timetable, positive, and negative agenda control). The centralization of agenda control is an institutional prerequisite for the dominance of political parties in the legislative arena because serves as an incentive for the cohesion of governing parties and opposition parties alike.17 This cohesion ensures that governments include the policy preferences of their legislators in an ex ante fashion: Since governments cannot rely on compromises with disciplined opposition parties, they have to ensure their proposals reflect the views of rank-and- file legislators to get passed.

The second institutional mechanism allowing parties to dominate legislative organization are powerful committees. Committees provide coalition partners without control of executive departments with the expertise necessary to control the actions of the respective minister and to either alter or stop proposals which deviate from their preferences.18 In order to enable legislators to do so, three features of committees are essential: First, committees need to be able to rewrite bill proposals, which not only allows them to change government proposals but also ensures that it is the amended committee version of the proposal which becomes the basis of the plenary debate.

Second, permanence, which allows committee members to acquire the expertise which distinguishes them from their ordinary peers not sitting on committees. Third, committees need to be congruent with executive departments which makes it more likely that committees are able to oversee the activities of particular ministers.

Committees are powerful if they possess any combination of two of their three core features

(permanence, rewrite authority, and congruence with executive departments). Powerful committees allow individual legislators to affect policies in an ex post fashion because they ensure that proposals which were controversial in the cabinet stage receive more scrutiny and

amendments in the committee stage.19 Given that committee seats allow for enhanced ex post impact on legislation, powerful committees have the same effect as a centralization of agenda control: they foster the emergence of political parties as the central actors in legislatures. Political parties emerge as the only feasible gatekeepers to committee seats, which in turn serves as an incentive for individual legislators to keep to the party line in order to ensure promotion to mega- seats on powerful committees. Dissenters lose their committee seats more often than those who hold to the party line.20

To summarize, control over the plenary agenda and powerful committees are alternative institutional mechanisms which ensure the emergence of parties in the legislative arena. In the case of centralized agenda control, this is ensured by means of party discipline allowing individual legislators to affect policies in an ex ante fashion. Governments are forced to include individual legislators’ views in their proposals because there is no chance for policy deals with opposition legislators in committee. In the case of powerful committees, parties become the gatekeepers of access to sought-after committee seats which allow individual legislators to amend government proposals and influence policies in an ex post fashion.

The origins of centralized agenda control and powerful committees

The existence of two institutional mechanisms ensuring the emergence of parties in legislatures raises the question of how to explain the respective departures from the legislative state of nature.

As for control over the legislative agenda, previous research identified the fragmentation of party systems and alternation in government as the major causes for a centralization. The smaller the number of parties represented in a legislature and the more regular (coalitions of) parties alternate in power, the more likely a centralization of agenda control arguably becomes.21 Such correlations between the fragmentation of party systems, patterns of government alternation, and the

centralization of agenda control exist. However, from the perspective of causality, this raises the question why, even in legislative democracies with emerging two-party systems and regular alternation in government, procedurally equal junior legislators would accept to invest party leaders with far-reaching powers over the plenary agenda.

The origins of powerful committee systems have received less scholarly attention, at least beyond the U.S. Congress.22 With respect to parliamentary systems, André, Depauw, and Martin present the most elaborate analysis. Based on the notion that committees are monitoring devices of coalition partners, they argue that the advent of coalition government empowered committees that helped coalition partners keep tabs on each other.23 Similarly, Strøm notes a correlation of powerful committees and minority governments, which implies that committees are the arenas where governments negotiate policy deals with parliamentary majorities.24 From the perspective of causality, however, this also raises questions, most notably how to explain the advent of powerful committee prior to the institutionalization of parliamentary government. An answer to the questions raised here requires a causal mechanism to be corroborated in a process-tracing analysis of procedural reforms.

Methodological underpinnings

A process-tracing analysis is a “procedure for identifying steps in a causal process leading to the outcome of a given dependent variable of a particular case in a particular historical context“.25

This focus on causal processes renders it appropriate to identify the logical steps that led to the emergence of parties in the legislative arena. More specifically, each logical step requires a causal process observation as “an insight or piece of data that provides information about context or mechanism and contributes a different kind of leverage in causal inference”.26 If causal-process observations can be contextualized in a particular case (here: of procedural reform), they count as

evidence for the existence of a causal mechanism.27 Causal mechanisms are “portable concepts that explain how and why a hypothesized cause, in a given context, contributes to a particular outcome”.28

The evidence analyzed to identify causal process observations will be the parliamentary documentation relating to particular reform attempts, such as the reports of procedural committees and parliamentary records of reform debates. Such transcript evidence “offers a unique opportunity to assess actors’ beliefs”.29 To be sure, reasons forwarded by legislators do not necessarily equal causes explaining procedural changes. Additionally, public speeches are often regarded as problematic evidence since actors tend to conceal their true intentions.30 Indeed, it is often advisable to take legislators’ explanations for their actions with a grain of salt. However, there are two reasons why parliamentary documents suffer from less bias than other transcript evidence.

First, the parliamentary floor is an arena of interaction, which implies that actors concealing true intentions and true causes will most likely be exposed by their peers. Second, parliamentary transcript evidence can be triangulated with contemporary and current scholarship on parties and legislatures in order to trace back reform processes and their causal origins.

In which legislatures and during which time period shall transcript evidence on which procedural reforms be analyzed to trace the emergence of parties? The selection of cases requires that the spatial, temporal, and substantive boundaries of the analysis are determined.31 The cases to be analyzed are legislatures in emerging parliamentary democracies which are most similar with respect to potential independent variables but still display most different outcomes of procedural reform. As regards spatial boundaries, the analysis focuses on the Second Chamber of the Swedish

Riksdag (Andra kammaren) and the French Chamber of Deputies (Chambre des Deputés), which

became the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale) in 1944. The procedural evolution of these legislatures has hardly been analyzed.32

The legislatures and the emerging parliamentary party systems of Sweden and France showed several similarities: Both were directly elected lower chambers in two-chamber systems where lower and upper chambers possessed equal legislative powers.33 Another similarity lies in the multi-party systems which evolved in both the Swedish and French legislatures. By the 1870s, two embryonic parties had emerged in the Riksdag’s Second Chamber, a dominant conservative

Ruralist Party and a liberal party. The Social Democrats entered the legislature in 1895. However, legislators could only meaningfully be associated with party labels since 1911.34 After 1911, a fluid five-party system emerged when a Farmers’ Party was created in 1917 and a faction of the

Social Democrats declared itself the Communist Party in 1921. This five-party system stabilized after 1934 and was henceforth dominated by the Social Democrats. Parliamentary parties in France were similarly factionalized as their Swedish counterparts. After 1871, a Republican and a

Conservative camp emerged with several sub-groups. Socialists were first represented in 1893 and also experienced internal struggles, which also led to the creation of a Communist Party in the wake of a split in 1921. In 1901, the Radicals emerged as the pivotal parliamentary party and remained so for the rest of the Third Republic. After 1944, the parliamentary parties of the Fourth

Republic consisted of three mutually opposing groups: laical Radicals and clerical Christian

Democrats, Socialists and Communists, and Gaullists who opposed all other parties.35

Both legislatures are also remarkably similar with respect to potential independent variables. First, in both of them, Communist anti-system parties existed which may have caused a centralization of agenda control. Just as well, the emerging multi-party system may have prevented the centralization of agenda control. Likewise, parties in both countries formed coalition or minority

governments that were arguably conducive to powerful committees once the parliamentary responsibility of governments was established (in France in 1876 and in Sweden in 1919).

As for the temporal boundaries of case selection, the period of investigation starts with the advent of elected legislatures, i.e. assemblies which needed to approve or consent to all legislation. This was the case in Sweden in 1866, when the former four-chamber Estates Riksdag became an elected body. The Second Chamber was directly elected through majority rule, initially by only about 20 per cent of the male population. When proportional representation was introduced in 1909, the suffrage was extended to about 40 per cent of the male population. Since 1921, members of the

Riksdag’s Second Chamber have been elected by universal suffrage.36 In France, the analysis starts in 1876, when the Chamber of Deputies of the Third Republic was elected for the first time by universal male suffrage. In 1919 and 1945, variants of proportional representation were introduced, but they were abolished both times (in 1927 and 1958, respectively) in favor of the original majoritarian system with two ballots introduced in 1876.37 The 1958 transition towards the French Fifth Republic marks the end of the period of investigation, since most different procedural outcomes – on the one hand, powerful committees (Riksdag), and on the other, centralized agenda control (National Assembly) – persist to this day.38

As regards the substantive boundaries of the case selection, any proposal aiming to (de)centralize control over the legislative agenda and either strengthen or weaken legislative committees which became subject to a plenary debate will be taken into consideration. This results in a total of 37 procedural reform attempts in the Swedish and French legislatures. Figures 1 and 2 provide further information on these reforms. Each of the 37 reform attempts is represented by a diamond on the respective line in the figures. There were 15 attempts in the Swedish legislature and 22 in the

French legislature. 16 of the 37 reform attempts concerned agenda control and 21 committee

powers. Further information on all these reform attempts and the sources for evidence on these reforms and the underlying parliamentary procedures and institutions can be found in the online appendix.

Figure 1: The Evolution of legislative organization in the Riksdag, 1866–1958

Governent Governent control 2

1 Centralized Centralized dimensions governent governent control

No 0 1875 1900 1925 1950 Agenda control (dots indicate reform attempts) Committee power (dots indicate reform attempts)

Note: Dots indicate reform attempts.

Initially, all three dimensions of agenda control (timetable, positive, and negative) were decentralized in both legislatures, preventing parties from dominating plenary proceedings. In the

Riksdag as well as in the Chamber of Deputies, only one feature of committee power was present

(permanence in Sweden and rewrite in France), which meant that committees were initially weak.

A mere five of the 37 attempts changed the distribution of power regarding committees or agenda control in both legislatures. This is visualized by the solid and dotted lines (agenda control and committee power, respectively) of figures 1 and 2 going up or down. First, the Chamber of

Deputies’ committees were empowered in 1902 when committees (which, as mentioned, already possessed rewrite authority) became permanent. Second, the permanent Swedish committees were empowered in 1908 when they received rewrite authority. Third, the formal disempowerment of committees in 1935 remained ineffective.39 The fourth and fifth changes occurred simultaneously

and were the most fundamental ones as figure 2 suggests. In 1958, the newly adopted constitution of the French Fifth Republic invested governments with timetable, positive, and negative agenda control. Additionally, committees lost their authority to rewrite proposals and were accordingly disempowered.

Figure 2: The Evolution of legislative organization in the Chamber of Deputies / National

Assembly, 1876–1958

Governent control Governent 2

1 Centralized dimensions Centralized Germanoccupation

No governent control No governent 0 1875 1900 1925 1950 Agenda control (diamonds indicate reform attempts) Committee power (diamonds indicate reform attempts)

Note: Dots indicate reform attempts. The grey area depicts the period of breakdown of legislative democracy under

German occupation.

The 1958 reform in the French National Assembly meant that despite their many similar features, the legislatures in both countries nonetheless differ with respect to the ultimate outcome of procedural reform. This begs the question whether party system properties caused these changes or whether changes to legislative democracy created political parties. The following three sections aim to provide transcript evidence to answer this question.

The quest for efficiency and the ascendancy of parties

The evidence from all 37 reform attempts clearly suggests that the primary cause of procedural reform was not related to political parties. With the exception of reforms codifying legislative states of nature at the outset of the Third and Fourth French Republic (numbers 16 and 32 in the online appendix) and one proposal rejected on the floor of the Riksdag without discussion (number

1 in the online appendix), all reform proposals which reached the plenary stage referred to the increased legislative workload or the need to organize legislative procedures more efficiently.

References for all these observations are presented in the online appendix. Only the push for efficiency that arose from legislative democracy allowed political parties to emerge in the legislative arena.

The 1908 Riksdag proposal empowering committees, the most important reform in Sweden, exemplarily illustrates the relation between growing legislative workload and the need for procedural reform. The proposal explicitly referred to recent economic and societal changes that prompted a considerable increase in the number of bill proposals, especially ones of “financial and social nature”.40 The report also provided numbers for proposals, amendments, session schedules, etc. This suggests that procedural reforms were explicitly devised to cope with the growing state activity in the wake of the Industrial Revolution relating to the regulation of new policy areas, most notably economic and social policy.41 Additionally, procedural reforms were means to increase parliamentary efficiency. In Sweden, a more “rational” organization of work in parliament was supposed to help complete business more quickly.42 Arguably, the inclusion of minorities in the committee stage would ideally help to effectively multiply the plenary arena and avoid long plenary debates.43

In the French Chamber, legislative procedures were regarded as too slow, especially in light of the fact that committee membership, which was selected by lot, did not mirror the composition of the

floor which prevented an effective multiplication of the plenary. This arguably led to a growing

“incoherence” in legislative procedure.44 Consequently, as in Sweden, reform proposals called for a more “rational” procedure.45

The democratization of committee membership and the ascendancy of parties

The transcript evidence of the 21 reform attempts relating to committee powers suggests that the growing demand for a democratization of access to committees caused parties to become gatekeepers of said access. As expected, this allowed party leaders to become the central actors in legislatures. In both the Swedish and the French legislatures, committee seats could be allocated arbitrarily prior to the empowerment of committees. In the Riksdag, a strong norm dictated that senior legislators would always receive committee seats independent of partisan majorities.46

Against the background of heightened political tensions, legislators increasingly warned that majority rule could be “abused” by governmental majorities and prevent minorities from being represented on committees.47 Given that the Riksdag’s permanent committees coordinated the passage of legislation between both chambers, committee membership was highly desirable for

Swedish legislators. Against this background, the seniority-based allocation mechanism of committee seats caused increasing discontent. Even though the number of permanent committee seats grew from 48 to 72 between 1866 and 1945, Swedish legislators were on average only appointed to a permanent committee during their third term in the Riksdag’s Second Chamber.48

As a consequence, individual legislators called for an extension of the committee system since mere participation in plenary debates was regarded as “boring”.49 These growing requests are ideal-typically exemplified by the speech that Albin Ström, a Social Democrat, held in 1932. Ström likened the internal organization of the Riksdag to the employment sector and called legislators not represented in permanent committees “jobless”.50 According to Ström, legislators without

committee seats were handicapped since they could hardly contribute to the debate in the plenary, which was based on committee proceedings. In 1948, a cross-party motion called for a reform of the committee system ensuring the “employment” of all legislators.51

In the French Chamber of Deputies, the arbitrary allocation of committee seats raised similar discontent. Here, majority elections of committee members in bureaus chosen by lot allowed senior legislators membership in multiple committees. Even though the maximum number of committee seats that could be held by the same legislators was set to two in 1876, the Speaker soon admitted that he was powerless to enforce this rule.52 In 1894, the independent Marcel Habert criticized that “it was always the same [parliamentarians] who get elected [to committees]”.53 As in Sweden, committee seats were regarded as highly desirable, but more as steps towards the cabinet rather than instruments of inter-chamber coordination. Accordingly, French legislators criticized the fact that “large parts” of their peers were “excluded” from committees.54 Against this background, bureau elections of committee members were seen as producing a “salon of the refused”.55 Similar to their Swedish peers, French legislators also called for more “occupation” in committees.56

Given the increasing demand for seats and the growing criticism of the existing allocation mechanisms for committee seats, political parties came to be regarded as mediators which could best ensure fair representation of legislators in committees. By 1908, even the Swedish justice minister Albert Petersson, despite being an independent not holding a Riksdag seat, had to admit that the distribution of committee seats through party groups was “particularly appropriate” given that it would ensure the “impartial evaluation” of proposals and a “bridging of party oppositions” in committee.57 Before 1908, senior legislators had denied parties the role of gatekeepers of committee seats which would allegedly foster “partisan conflicts” preventing the best decisions on

policy proposals.58 Accordingly, the 1908 reform turned parties into gatekeepers of committee access and ended the dominance of the seniority principle. Tellingly, justice minister Petersson also came to affiliate with the Conservatives after the 1908 reform.59 Even though individual legislators could formally present lists of names to be approved for committee membership, party groups always created these lists centrally. Parties’ positions as gatekeepers henceforth allowed party leaders to discipline dissenting legislators without any formal sanctioning mechanism.60

In France, the reform proposal which preceded the empowerment of committees in 1902 also envisaged parties as gatekeepers in order to ensure that “all deputies who wish to work are able to find a committee employment corresponding with their competences without running the risk of being evicted completely by the hazard of bureau elections”.61 Due to the ongoing suspicion vis-

à-vis parties among conservative legislators, it was not until 1910 that parties finally became the gatekeepers of committee access. By this time, even conservatives like Edouard Aynard, chair of the procedural committee, called parties the “very essence of the parliamentary regime”.62 Since

1915, registration with party groups was compulsory to ensure that all legislators received a committee seat.63

The evidence presented here suggests that parties became central actors in parliaments since they were able to offer legislators a more predictable career path than the pre-democratic seniority- based status quo ante. In contrast, there is no evidence for a causal relation between the dominant mode of government formation and committee power. In Sweden, neither parliamentary government nor meaningful party labels existed when committees were empowered in 1908. In the French parliamentary regime, committee membership was indeed regarded as a step towards the cabinet, but there is no evidence that parties used committees to keep tabs on each other. In both legislatures, parties hardly existed when committees were empowered. Rather, parties

eventually emerged as central actors in parliaments as a response to bottom-up demand for committee representation, which in turn allowed them to emerge as the fairest gatekeepers of access to newly empowered committees.

The centralization of agenda control and the ascendancy of parties

The transcript evidence of all 16 reform attempts relating to agenda control suggests that anti- system obstruction explains the effective delegation of agenda-setting powers to governments and, eventually, political parties. The mere existence of an anti-system actor did not suffice to trigger successful reforms. Irrespective of the Communist SKP, a Swedish commission of inquiry even rejected a modest centralization of timetable control since “in the Swedish Riksdag, it has never occurred that discussions were extended with the aim of obstruction”.64 This suggests that an anti- system party is only causally relevant for procedural reforms in conjunction with legislative obstruction. Like in Sweden, obstruction was initially absent in the French Chamber even after the advent of the Communist PCF. Nonetheless, the presence of the more orthodox French

Communists caused unrest, which is illustrated by the large number of procedural reform proposals after 1920 (see reforms 27–36 in the online appendix). Given that “attacks directed against representative democracy”65 remained nonetheless confined to the extra-parliamentary arena, agenda control continued to be decentralized.

This picture changed when the Communists left de Gaulle’s post-war all-party government in

1947. From then on, they adopted obstructionist tactics and “exploited procedural loopholes with persistence and ingenuity”.66 As a response, senior legislators in the National Assembly agreed on reforms aiming to centralize agenda control: As early as 1948, the procedural committee warned that Communist obstruction would otherwise “discredit parliamentarism”.67 Similarly, a 1952 report aimed to counter “the sabotage of legislation”.68 However, senior legislators failed to

impose discipline on their colleagues. This revealed the increasing weakness of parties which had initially become central actors in the legislative arena in the wake of the empowerment of committees. In 1946, even a proposal to abolish spontaneous amendments during plenary sittings was rejected on the floor. Even though the powers of the steering body grew in 1952 and 1954

(see reforms 28–29 in the online appendix), the plenary remained able to overturn all central decisions regarding the legislative timetable.69 As a consequence, governments linked decisions on the timetable to confidence votes – and stepped down in case of defeats, which explains cabinet instability in the Fourth Republic.

Only when the threat of a military coup against what Conservatives perceived as “the permanent treason of the communist party”70 during the Algerian war grew into a critical juncture in 1958, a majority of legislators surrendered their influence on procedural reform. When the National

Assembly granted extraordinary powers (most notably, to draft a new constitution) to the new de

Gaulle government on 1 June 1958, many non-Gaullist legislators justified their decision by invoking Communist obstruction. The Socialist Maurice Deuxonne declared that he would deviate from his party line for the first time and vote for de Gaulle since the previous legislative period had been wasted on a “class struggle”.71 According to fellow Socialist Jean Le Bail, the Fourth

Republic suffered from the “poisoned gifts” of proportional representation and the PCF.72

Similarly, even de Gaulle’s political opponent, the former Radical Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-

France, argued that it was not the parliamentary regime but rather its abuse which caused the failure of the Fourth Republic.73 The Christian Democrat François de Menthon summarized the discussion when he stated that several deputies were planning to vote for de Gaulle because they feared the PCF. De Menthon himself, however, announced his intention to vote against de Gaulle because he reasoned that the full powers for the general would strengthen the PCF even further.74

Once de Gaulle had taken office, the procedural part of the constitution was primarily drafted by

Michel Debré, a close aide of the Prime Minister who explicitly aspired to reduce the influence of political parties in general and the PCF in particular. Debré thought of the PCF as “a tool of the total claim to power” directed by Moscow whose aim was to destroy the French Republic.75 Debré aimed to privilege governments procedurally in the constitution because he believed that electoral reform alone would not necessarily produce majorities given the strength of the PCF.76

The explanatory power of anti-system obstruction for the centralization of agenda control is illustrated by the fact that senior legislators also approved the constitutional reform. De Gaulle’s cabinet accepted virtually all of the procedural changes that were envisaged by Debré. His ministers were well aware that strict measures were necessary to overcome the legislative deadlock that characterized the previous sessions.77 Similarly, senior legislators represented in the

Consultative Constitutional Council involved in the drafting of the constitution made hardly any objections either, especially with respect to the centralization of timetable and negative agenda control.78 The Consultative Council was only opposed to the centralization of positive agenda control by means of the block vote and recommended to leave the right to amend legislation unrestricted.79 Debré vetoed this recommendation because the aim of the block vote was to counter

“obstructionist methods”, as one of his advisors put it.80

The evidence presented here suggests that anti-system obstruction was causally crucial for the centralization of agenda control in the National Assembly. The high fragmentation of the French party system did not prevent this reform. On the contrary, Debré advocated the centralization of agenda control as a means to contain the electorally powerful PCF and to overcome factional disputes.81 As long as the PCF did not obstruct, however, a majority of legislators refused all substantial reforms of agenda control. Only when a critical juncture emerged, this majority became

willing to surrender its procedural privileges. Perhaps the biggest paradox in the 1958 transition towards the Fifth Republic was that Debré, one of the biggest critics of party rule, ensured its continuity beyond a period of sustained anti-system obstruction.

A causal mechanism explaining the ascendancy of political parties in the legislative arena

There are two alternative paths which lead to the emergence of political parties in legislatures

(figure 3).82 This article has primarily focused on the first four steps up to the empowerment of committees in step 5a or the centralization of agenda control in step 5b. How parties dominate the legislative arena once powerful committees exist or agenda control is centralized is well- established in the literature.83 The arrows in figure 3 depict necessary conditions. Steps 1–6a and

1–6b, respectively, are jointly sufficient and individually necessary for the emergence of parties in legislatures. From this follows that legislators always have a choice and that there is no determinism leading from the first to the last step in the causal mechanism.84

According to the process-tracing analysis of 37 procedural reform attempts in the Swedish and

French legislatures, individual legislators themselves triggered their own decline as equal actors in legislatures by requesting ever more plenary time as a response to the emergence of new policy areas in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Confronted with the need to regulate a growing number of policy areas and constrained by the democratic requirement of assembly consent to all legislation, individual legislators resorted to procedural reforms increasing legislative efficiency

(step 1).85 In this sense, legislative democracy has an inherent dynamic to create hierarchies between legislators and, eventually, political parties. Absent the need to increase legislative efficiency, reforms of agenda control and committee power remained ineffective.

Figure 3: The advent of parties as central actors in the legislative arena

¢ Non-reform no

(3a) (5a) (4a) Parties (6a) Committees Creation become fair Incentive for ¢ differentiat of (1) ¢ gatekeepers ¢ ¢ legislators to ¢ no e the powerful Pressure of committee affiliate with plenary committe to (2) seats parties (7) Parties Anti- horizontally es central increase ¢ system actors in efficiency yes obstruct legislative ion (4b) (5b) arena (6b) Parties (3b) Legislators Centraliza ¢ organize use Critical ¢ willing to ¢ tion of ¢ ¢ yes of agenda juncture surrender agenda control privileges control

Arrows (¢) depict necessary conditions; “no” and “yes” refer to the absence or presence of causal factors.

From the perspective of individual legislators as the historical bearers of procedural power in legislatures, the creation of powerful committees is the more attractive option to increase legislative efficiency (see steps 3a–6a in figure 3). Powerful committees allow to horizontally differentiate legislatures by creating several arenas in which legislative proposals can be dealt with. Such a horizontal differentiation creates more career opportunities than a vertical one by means of a centralization of agenda control. Especially the chairs on powerful committees, but also the position as reporter of important committee proposals in the plenary constitute desirable mega-seats to which no equivalent exists under centralized agenda control.86 Against this background, legislators propose to delegate substantial law-making powers to committees (step

3a). This delegation occurs if legislators also accept parties as fair gatekeepers of access to committees (step 4a). The pre-democratic seniority principle fails this fairness test. Parties are more desirable as gatekeepers from the perspective of individual legislators because party membership can be easier acquired than expertise and/or experience. Once powerful committees

are created, legislators have an incentive to affiliate with parties which then become the central actors in the legislative arena (see steps 6a and 7).

Only the intervention of an extraordinary event can reasonably explain why legislators forfeit career opportunities and accept the centralization of agenda control. Anti-system obstruction is such an extraordinary event which is able to convince individual legislators to forfeit both their ancient procedural privileges and the career prospects of powerful committees (step 2). Anti- system legislators have no scruples to engage in unlimited obstruction against all legislation and provoke a breakdown of legislative democracy. If such anti-system obstruction constitutes a critical juncture (step 3b), it becomes possible that legislators accept the procedural empowerment of governments by means of a centralization of agenda control (step 4b). Political Parties are the only feasible bearers of agenda control able to overcome an anti-system threat on behalf of governments by means of coordinated voting behavior. Similar to the creation of powerful committees, the centralization of agenda control accordingly leads to the advent of political parties as central actors in the legislative arena which ensure the cohesion of coalition partners and the opposition (see steps 6b and 7).

Conclusion

A comparative process-tracing analysis of all 37 procedural (non-)reforms of committee power and agenda control in the Swedish and French legislatures during the 1866–1958 period suggests that political parties emerged from the frictions of legislative democracy. Legislators growing activity in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of electoral democracy triggered a quest for procedural efficiency during which parties became the central actors in legislatures through, above all, two institutional mechanisms: a horizontal differentiation of powerful committees or a vertical differentiation through a centralization of agenda control. The former

provides individual legislators who covet mega-seats with an incentive to follow the party line.

The latter allows party leaders to impose discipline on legislators.

The evidence presented here suggests that legislative democracy and political parties co-evolve.

Rather than the effective number of parties, their alternation in government, or patterns of government formation that parties engage in, the interactions of (emerging) senior and junior legislators explain how parties came to dominate legislative procedure. During these interactions, the occurrence of anti-system obstruction accounts for the institutional mechanism through which this dominance is established because it allows for the (exceptional) vertical differentiation of legislatures. Absent anti-system obstruction, legislators’ demand for committee seats triggers the more common horizontal differentiation by means of an empowerment of committees. The resulting co-evolution of legislative democracy and parties explains why there is also evidence that the rules of legislative organization explain party system properties.87

Acknowledgements

This paper has been presented in a panel on the evolution of legislative institutions at the 2017

ECPR General Conference in Oslo. The author wishes to thank all participants and the two anonymous referees. Generous funding for this research was provided by the Volkswagen

Foundation (grant number 88252).

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2 Royce Carroll, Gary W. Cox, and Mónica Pachón, “How Parties Create Electoral Democracy,

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3 For an early version of this argument see Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their

Organization and Activity in the Modern State (London and New York: Methuen, 1954) who argued that “first there is the creation of parliamentary groups, then the appearance of electoral committees, and finally the establishment of a permanent connection between these two elements” (28). For more recent arguments, see also John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

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(2017), 531–54.

5 For the House of Commons, see exemplarily Gary W. Cox, The Efficient Secret (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987); Andrew Eggers and Arthur Spirling, “Ministerial

Responsiveness in Westminster Systems: Institutional Choices and House of Commons Debate,

1832–1915,” American Journal of Political Science 58 (October 2014), 873–87. On Congress, see Keith Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 1991); Gary W. Cox and Matthew D. McCubbins, Setting the Agenda:

Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (Cambridge: Cambridge

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6 See Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

7 On agenda control, see Herbert Döring, “Time as a Scarce Resource: Government Control of the Agenda,” in Herbert Döring, ed., Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe

(Frankfurt: Campus, 1995), 223–46. On committees, see Lanny W. Martin and Georg Vanberg,

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(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

8 On parties and agenda control, see Torun Dewan and Arthur Spirling, “Strategic Opposition and Government Cohesion in Westminster Democracies,” American Political Science Review,

105 (May 2011), 337–58. On parties and committees see Shane Martin, “Why electoral systems don’t always matter: The impact of ‘mega-seats’ on legislative behaviour in Ireland,” Party

Politics, 20 (2014), 467–79.

9 Giovanni Sartori, Parties and party systems: A framework for analysis (Colchester: ECPR

Press [2005] 1976, 118). See also Giovanni Capoccia, Anti-System Parties: A Conceptual

Reassessment,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, 14 (2002), 9–35.

10 Joachim Bücker, “Report on the Obstruction of Parliamentary Proceedings,” Constitutional and Parliamentary Information, 158 (1989), 243–64.

11 Cox 1987; Eggers and Spirling 2014.

12 Monika Nalepa, “Party Institutionalization and Legislative Organization,” Comparative

Politics, 48 (April 2016), 353–72; Carroll, Cox, and Pachón 2006; Francesco Zucchini,

“Government alternation and legislative agenda setting,” European Journal of Political

Research 50, (2011), 749–74; Martin and Vanberg 2011.

13 Bernard Manin, Principles of Representative Government (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1997).

14 Gary W. Cox, “The Organization of Democratic Legislatures,” in Barry R. Weingast and

Donald A. Wittman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2006), 143.

15 Döring 1995. See also Björn Erik Rasch, “Institutional Foundations of Legislative Agenda

Setting,” in Shane Martin, Thomas Saalfeld, and Kaare Strøm, eds., The Oxford Handbook of

Legislative Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 455–80.

16 Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal, “Political resource allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo,” Public Choice, 33 (January 1978), 27–43; William B. Heller, “Making policy stick: why the government gets what it wants in multiparty parliaments,” American Journal of

Political Science, 45 (October 2001), 780–98.

17 John D. Huber, “The Vote of Confidence in Parliamentary Democracies,” American Political

Science Review, 90 (June 1996), 269–82; Dewan and Spirling 2011.

18 Martin and Vanberg 2011; see also Royce Carroll and Gary W. Cox, “Shadowing Ministers.

Monitoring Partners in Coalition Governments,” Comparative Political Studies, 45 (2012), 220–

36.

19 Martin & Vanberg 2011, chp. 4 & 5.

20 Martin 2014.

21 Carroll, Cox, and Pachón 2006; Zucchini 2011.

22 Regarding Congress, scholars either regard committees as means of information acquisition used by individual legislators (Krehbiel 1991) or as instruments of party rule (Cox and

McCubbins 2005).

23 Audrey André, Sam Depauw, and Shane Martin, “’Trust Is Good, Control Is Better’

Multiparty Government and Legislative Organization.” Political Research Quarterly, 69 (March

2016), 108–20.

24 Kaare Strøm, Minority Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1990), 70–92; see also Martin and Vanberg 2011, 158.

25 Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social

Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 176.

26 David Collier, Henry E. Brady, and Jason Seawright, “Sources of Leverage in Causal

Inference: Toward an Alternative View of Methodology,” in Henry E. Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 184.

27 Derek Beach and Rasmus B. Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2013), 73.

28 Tulia G. Falleti and Julia F. Lynch, “Context and Causal Mechanisms in Political Analysis,”

Comparative Political Studies, 42 (2009), 1143.

29 Peter Lorentzen, M. Taylor Fravel, and Jack Paine, “Qualitative investigation of theoretical models: the value of process tracing,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, 29 (2017), 470.

30 Beach and Pedersen 2013, 141.

31 Ingo Rohlfing, Case Studies and Causal Inference. An Integrative Framework (Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 24–32.

32 To be sure, there is a rich literature on the legislatures of both Sweden and France, but this literature is either focused on short time intervals or does not aim to systematically explain procedural changes. Existing long-term analyses are mostly descriptive, e.g. Dankwart R.

Rustow, The Politics of Compromise: A Study of Parties and Cabinet Government in Sweden

(New York: Greenwood Press, 1955); Douglas Verney, Parliamentary Reform in Sweden, 1866–

1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958); Nils Stjernquist, Riksdagens arbete och arbetsformer (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1966), David W.S. Lidderdale, The Parliament of France (New York: Praeger, 1951). Systematic analyses do not go back beyond 1958, e.g.

John D. Huber, Rationalizing Parliament. Legislative Institutions and Party Politics in France

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

33 It needs to be pointed out that the veto of the upper chamber in France became suspensive during the transition towards the Fourth Republic in 1944.

34 Rustow 1955, 26–31; Daniele Caramani, The Europeanization of Politics (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2015), 59.

35 Stephen Hanson, “The Founding of the French Third Republic,” Comparative Political

Studies, 43 (2010), 1028–33; Jean Garrigues, ed., Histoire du Parlement. De 1789 à nos jours

(Paris: Armand Collin, 2007), 299; Duncan McRae, Parliament, Parties, and Society in France,

1946–1958 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1967), 42.

36 Majority rule took mostly place in single-member districts. Lists only existed in the cities, where the winner received all seats available, see Rustow 1955, 19, 72. Rustow 1955, 19, 72.

37 Alistair Cole and Peter Campbell, French Electoral Systems & Elections since 1789

(Aldershot: Gower, 1989), 63–6.

38 This is not to say that no more reforms occurred. The Riksdag became unicameral in 1970.

During this constitutional reform, congruence committees and departments was finally established, see Justitiedepartmentet, ed., Ny utskottsorganisation (SOU 1969:62). However, as will be outlined in the next section, Riksdag committees were already empowered in 1908. The most substantial procedural reform in the French National Assembly after 1958 was the 2008 constitutional reform. Even though governments lost their prerogative to exclusively set the

agenda, privileges in timetable control remained due to the newly introduced legislative programing, see Armel Le Divellec, “Vers la fin du “parlementarisme négatif à la française?”

Jus Politicum, 6 (2011).

39 Even though governments received the power to ensure that the original (and not the committee) version of a bill was at the origin of plenary debates, they lacked the power to organize debates in this case. Consequently, if governments were able to dominate the committee stage, they could not do so in the plenary (and vice versa).

40 Lättnad i Riksdagens arbete. Underdånigt betänkande angående åtgärder för beredande af lättnad i Riksdagens arbete (Stockholm: Isaac Marcus, 1907), 21.

41 For similar arguments, see Hjalmar Haralds, “Riksdagsarbetets organisation,” Det Nya

Sverige, 4 (1910), 368–74; Pontus E. Fahlbeck, “Riksdagsarbetens svårigheter,”

Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, 16 (1913), 211–5.

42 Justitiedepartementet, ed., Vissa ändringar i Riksdagens arbetsformer m.m. (SOU 1931:26),

122; Regeringens propositioner (Riksdagstryck, sektion B) prop 1932:105, 21;

Justitiedepartementet, ed., Riksdagens arbetsformer (SOU 1947:79), 5.

43 Lättnad i Riksdagens arbete 1907, 49; Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande (Stockholm:

Riksdagstryck, sektion E) KU 1908:25, 46; Andra kammarens protokoll (Stockholm:

Riksdagstryck, sektion A) (AK), 27 May 1908, 89–91.

44 Journal officiel de la République française. Partie documents parlementaires (Paris: Chambre des deputés) (JO Doc) 1889/173, 343; see also Journal officiel de la République française.

Débats parlementaires (Paris: Chambre des deputés) (JO Deb), 3 February 1890, 176; 6 February

1890, 204.

45 JO Doc 1898/250, 1520; 1902/438, 270; 1919/123, 135.

46 See Edvard Thermænius, Riksdagspartierna (Stockholm: Petterson, 1935), 35–49; 164–5.

47 KU 1902:9, 3; see also AK 17 May 1902, 22–5.

48 AK 2 July 1948, 16; see also Herbert Tingsten, Utskottsväsendet (Stockholm: Petterson,

1934), 46–7; SOU 1947:79, 57.

49 AK 4 May 1899, 11; see also ibid., 12, 19; Lättnad i Riksdagens arbete 1907, 6; Lättnad i

Riksdagens arbete. Underdånigt betänkande angående åtgärder för beredande af lättnad i

Riksdagens arbete (Stockholm: Isaac Marcus, 1916), 12, 26–31; SOU 1931:26, 84, 99.

50 AK 25 May 1932, 42; see also the similar remark by the Conservative Ewald Lindmark, ibid.,

46.

51 Särskilda utskotts betänkande (Stockholm: Riksdagstryck, sektion E) SärU 1948:1, 97.

52 JO Doc 1876/152, 3921; Eugène Pierre, Traité de Droit Politique Électoral et Parlementaire

(Paris: Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, 2nd ed. 1893), 769.

53 JO Déb 11 June 1894, 977.

54 JO Déb 3 February 1890, 176; 6 February 1890, 204. On the importance of committee seats see Robert de Jouvenel, La République des camarades (Paris: Grasset, 1914), 79.

55 JO Déb 11 June 1894, 977–8.

56 Ibid.; 15 November 1898, 2215–9; 17 November 1902, 2622.

57 Prop 1908:14, 8.

58 E.g., KU 1878:12, 4.

59 Leif Gidlöf, “G. Albert Petersson,” Svenskt biografiskt lexicon, https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/7146, accessed October 1, 2017.

60 Tingsten 1934, 98; Rustow 1955, 168.

61 JO Doc 1902/438, 270; see also 1910/222, 593.

62 JO Déb 1 July 1910, 2370.

63 JO Déb 29 January 1915, 73.

64 SOU 1931:26, 129; see also AK 25 May 1932, 29, 65; SOU 1947:79, 47; Prop 1948:244, 65;

AK 2 July 1948, 14.

65 JO Doc 1926/2945, 752; see also JO Déb 15 July 1926, 2884; JO Doc 1934/4200, 167.

66 Philip Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (London: Longmans,

3rd ed. 1964), 218; for examples see Christian Buniet, Les Règlements des Assemblées

Parlementaires en France depuis 1871 (Paris: éditions de l’A.G.E.L., 1967), 244, 337–59, 441,

455, 473–4.

67 JO Doc 1948/3708, 455; see also JO Déb 17 March 1948, 1798–1800.

68 JO Doc 1952/2942, 518; see also JO Déb 27 February 1952, 1529.

69 JO Doc 1946/14, 13; JO Déb 30 March 1947, 933; JO Déb 27 May 1952, 1565; JO Doc

1954/8472, 845–6.

70 Comité National chargé de la publication des travaux préparatoires des institutions de la Ve

République, Documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’élaboration de la Constitution du 4 octobre

1958 (Paris: La Documentation Française, vol. 2 1988), 131.

71 JO Déb 1 June 1958, 2581.

72 Ibid., 2589.

73 Ibid., 2577.

74 Ibid., 2591.

75 Michel Debré, Debré, Ces Princes qui nous gouvernent (Paris: Plon, 1957), 13; see also ibid.,

53.

76 Comité National, vol. 2, 1988, 504.

77 François Goguel, “L'élaboration des institutions de la République dans la Constitution du 4 octobre 1958,” Revue Français de Science Politique, 9 (1959), 78.

78 Comité National vol.2, 1988, 297.

79 Comité National vol. 2, 1988, 295.

80 Comité National vol. 3, 1991, 140.

81 Comité National vol. 2 1988, 91.

82 As the evidence presented here suggests, these paths can also be taken sequentially.

83 See Martin 2014 for steps 5a–7 and Huber, Vote of Confidence; Dewan and Spirling 2011 for steps 5b–7.

84 For instance, legislators in Weimar Germany refused to centralize agenda control in the wake of anti-system obstruction, which eventually triggered the breakdown of legislative democracy.

See Michael Koß, Parliaments in Time. The Evolution of Legislative Democracy in Western

Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

85 To be sure, electoral democracy forcing legislators to emphasize their responsiveness towards their electorates also played a role here. However, the similar level of procedural reform activity under exclusive (Sweden) and inclusive (France) suffrage formulas illustrates the greater causal leverage of growing state activity.

86 Seats on the cabinet as the ultimate mega-seats are feasible under both powerful committees and centralized agenda control.

87 For this argument see Allen Hicken and Heather Stoll, “Legislative policy-making authority, party system size, and party system nationalization,” Electoral Studies, 47 (2016), 113–24.