Strategic Behaviour of Opposition Legislators A case study on the Dutch national parliament Bachelor thesis Political Science Name: Chiel Christian Claassen (s1836803) Study program: BA Political Science First Reader/Supervisor: Dr. T.A. Mickler Second reader: Prof. Dr. R.A. Koole Date: 17-06-2019 Word count: 7197 Words Contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Theoretical Framework........................................................................................................ 3 3. Research design and case selection .................................................................................... 8 4. Method and data ............................................................................................................... 10 5. Results and analysis ........................................................................................................... 13 6. Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 17 7. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 19 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 21 1. Introduction Parliaments have an important position in many democratic systems. The importance of parliaments is translated into its different core functions, resulting in a variety of tasks its members have. Members of parliament (MPs) are not only there to represent the people that elected them, they also form the link between the countries’ citizens and its government (Kreppel, 2014, p. 5). Besides these representative functions, members of parliament have two more tasks to perform. First, they are engaged in the policy-making process. MPs may introduce amendments to policy proposals, which they can then pass or block in parliament. Second, MPs are there to oversee the government’s actions and inactions (Kreppel, 2014, p. 6). They control the work of government. Members of parliament often belong to different political parties that are either in (coalition) government or part of the opposition. MPs of these different parties still carry out the same tasks in relation to the different functions of parliament as mentioned above. However, the position of government MPs and opposition MPs is different from one another and so are their roles. Governing parties want to stay in power, this does not mean that their MPs are not overseeing and checking the government. But it does make control and oversight a primary task of the opposition. MPs of opposition parties that have a clear goal to govern once themselves, are not only in parliament to oppose government. They also must present themselves and their parties as a credible alternative to government (Sartori, 1969). Therefore, the opposition needs to distinct itself from government by opposing government proposals, while at the same time presenting themselves as responsible (Sartori, 1969, p. 153). In some cases, the attempt from opposition parties to distinct themselves from government leads to strategic opposition voting. Opposition votes against government according to a so called ‘just say no’- strategy (Dewan and Spirling, 2011, p. 353). However, on the contrary, consensus between government and opposition parties appears not to be a scanty phenomenon. Previous studies reveal that high levels of consensus are observed across different European parliaments during decision making processes. In these instances, both government and opposition party MPs voted, relatively often, with one another (Mújica and Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006). In doing so, opposition parties seem not to distinct themselves very clearly from governing parties. Page | 1 Voting in the policy-making process, however, is only one of things parliaments do. There are also other things opposition MPs do to set themselves apart from those members in the government benches. This can be seen for instance, when looking at the control and oversight function of parliament, where members of the parliamentary opposition fulfil a special role in overseeing the government. Since government is constituted out of members of political parties other than their own, opposition MPs must critically scrutinize the government. Parliamentary opposition does this by questioning the government policies and proposing policy alternatives to the proposals of the government (Norton, 2008, p. 244). Opposition members have several oversight tools at their disposal to do so. Parliamentary questions are an important oversight tool that parliaments have. I want to further analyse parliamentary questions in order to contribute to our understanding of how opposition parties act strategically. I will test whether party-structural explanations can help explain the varying number of parliamentary questions asked by opposition party members. In doing so, this study tries to find an answer to the following research question: How can we explain the varying number of parliamentary questions asked by members of the opposition? The Hypotheses on the possible predictors of the use of parliamentary questions are tested by means of a case study on the Netherlands. I find that the ideological distance of opposition party MPs to government, explains the number of questions raised by opposition MPs better than their populism, party-size or search for electoral safety. Page | 2 2. Theoretical Framework Opposition Behaviour and parliamentary questions As mentioned in the introduction, it is argued that opposition parties are unable to distinct themselves clearly from governing parties. This seems especially true when one looks at the voting behaviour of opposition parties. Previous studies in the field of opposition behaviour suggest that opposition parties in many countries – including the Netherlands – often vote with the government (Mújica and Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006; Andeweg et al., 2008; Christiansen and Damgaard, 2008; De Giorgi and Marangoni, 2015; Tuttnauer, 2018). In this regard they are not a clear opposition. However, within parliament, members do not only present, amend or pass legislation. Besides their deliberative functions and tasks as representatives of the electorate, members also have control and oversight responsibilities. Control and oversight are primarily tasks that fit the opposition. Of course, government MPs also control the government, however, members of the opposition are controlling and overseeing the actions of their political competitors in the government. An important oversight tool that parliaments have are parliamentary questions. Parliamentary questions are considered a means to hold the government accountable and to keep them responsive to parliament (Hazama et al., 2007, p. 540; Martin, 2011a, p. 262). Members of opposition parties tend to make more use of this tool, as they ask more parliamentary questions than their colleagues from governing parties do (Proksch and Slapin, 2010; Dandoy, 2011; Otjes and Louwerse, 2017). They use them to ask the government for information or to scrutinize government policies (Louwerse and Otjes, 2017, p. 7). Research on parliamentary questions looks primarily at the way both government and opposition party MPs use them. It focuses then on the content of these questions, because they offer insights in the concerns and the behaviour of MPs (Martin, 2011a, p. 254). Hazama et al. (2007) for instance, looked at the content of questions as well as their answers in the Turkish parliament, to find out why questions were raised and what their political effects are. Similar studies looked at other aspects to find out more about the incentives that made MPs raise their questions. The findings of these studies pointed at a MPs’ personal (minority) background (Saalfeld, 2011), electoral reasons (Vliegenthart and Walgrave, 2011) and the MPs’ constituency focus (Martin, 2011b), as reasons for asking parliamentary questions. Page | 3 These findings tell us to some extent why MPs ask certain parliamentary questions. However, they do not explain the varying number of questions raised by different members. Explanations can be given by agenda-setting theory. One of them is, that members of different political parties want to strengthen their (party) profile by emphasizing specific issues from their manifestos (Louwerse and Otjes, 2017, p. 15; Senninger, 2017, p. 298). Members who then function as the spokesperson for the issues that may bolster the party profile are likely to ask more questions (Vliegenthart and Walgrave, 2011, p. 1055). Another explanation is that certain MPs raise more parliamentary questions because their portfolios are given extra attention by the media (van Aelst and Vliegenthart, 2014, p. 404). Nonetheless, for both statements, the content of the questions asked is important in explaining the difference in the amount of questions each MP asked. This study, however, looks at party structural explanations to explain the varying number of parliamentary questions raised by individual members of the opposition. It will be tested whether there are factors that may explain this, independent from the content of the issues raised. Previous studies in the field of opposition behaviour suggest that party related factors can explain the behaviour of individual MPs (Mújica and Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006; Christiansen