Abstract
In this chapter I present a procedural model of legislative behaviour. With this model, I explain governments’ choice of legislative path (between an executive law or a government bill) taking into consideration the strategic aspects of the proposal itself. Moreover, this governmental decision will not be made in isolation but rather consider other institutional actors such as the parliament and the president. Consequently, I present four distinct scenarios within which the strategic choice of the government for one or the other legislative instrument, as the type law, can be explained. Thus, I deduce four hypotheses concerning each of the scenarios. When we have a weak and a minority government scenario, the government will more likely propose an executive law. When we have a majority and a strong government scenario, the government will more likely propose a government bill.
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Notes
- 1.
In this book, when I refer to the government I am identifying the institution that has, essentially, executive power, and that governs and administrates the state. This happens even if some other institutions have functions and powers in common with the government (eventually at other levels of governance).
- 2.
Further explanation about the strategic aspects of this choice will be given. I want to make clear that, when I talk about strategic choice of government, I mean legislative initiatives that can be enacted in one of the two formats of laws (executive law and government bill). The choice of the government is thus strategic because it implies a calculus and a choice. When I say strategic, I do not consider the cases where a government is merely formally obliged to initiate one of the legislative instruments, an executive law or a government bill, because there is no choice then.
- 3.
In this book when I talk about office-seeking I mean the cases where a politician acts in a certain way or has as their major aim to hold office, and when I refer to policy-seeking I am referring to the cases where a politician is policy-motivated. For some in-depth reading on these two concepts, see Budge and Laver [35].
- 4.
By ideal point I mean the alternative that a given actor has which is unique and their most preferred. This concept has been used since Black’s work on sets of preference relations that are single-peaked.
- 5.
In this book, I acknowledge actors’ preference formation as a given, but also as an important concept if it gives us guidance regarding agenda-setters’ actions. There are several factors that can constrain the agenda-setter, some of the most common being institutional rules and ideology. Here, ideology is defined as a set of preferences organised by some value(s) [291, 78].
- 6.
Here I do not consider the most preferred policies of the median voter if I assume that the government when enacting a law already takes this aspect into account in its strategic calculus.
- 7.
In the model, I present the electoral awareness that appears as a parameter precisely because of this previous argumentation.
- 8.
In the interpretation of this game a few aspects should be considered. All the moves of the actors occur sequentially, all actions are observed by the actors before they make a new move (i.e. they are not simultaneous), and the payoffs for the actors, within each possible combination of actions, are common knowledge.
- 9.
In the case of Γ, the term histories is often used instead of strategies.
- 10.
The allocation of payoffs after making a certain move according to their preferences and other actors’ preferences refers to the gains they have at the end of the game.
- 11.
All actors have perfect information about everything that occurred in the game.
- 12.
All the actors know the possible payoffs and strategies of the other actors.
- 13.
The Euclidean space refers to the points of space that comprise real numbers and geometric shapes, that is, the actors’ positions can be in any of the dimensions considered.
- 14.
The policy positions of the proposed bill are endogenous to the model.
- 15.
A sub-game is a subset of an extensive-form game that has just one beginning node, and by that all the actors know every action of the previous actor(s).
- 16.
The notation of these ideal points is \(X^*_G\) for the government, \(X^*_M\) for the majority in parliament and \(X^*_P\) for the president.
- 17.
Corresponding to the awareness of the electorate regarding policies, which is taken into account by the legislators.
- 18.
For practical reasons I assume that this law is the same as the outcome, even when I define y as the bill outcome.
- 19.
This could mean, within the idea of rule by decree, a pejorative way of proposing laws, because this concept normally relates to acts of non-democratic rulers. One of the first examples of rule by decree was in the Roman Empire, but other several historical examples are known. This notion is related to the state of exception and it is thus related to non-usual times. If it is used recurrently, it is associated with loss of legitimacy. In the examples I show in this book this concept can be relevant when the government does not have a majority in parliament.
- 20.
For a legal and empirical definition of this type of legislation see executive law in the Glossary.
- 21.
For a legal and empirical definition of this type of legislation see government bill in the Glossary.
- 22.
The hierarchy of the laws is particularly relevant in the day-to-day reality, the relevance order defines legislation precedence. Higher ranked legislation has priority over lower ranked one. For instance, in Portugal a constitutional law has a higher ranking in the hierarchy of laws than an executive law. Because I am looking at the legislation that the government can propose, either in the form of an executive law or a government bill. There is no relevance in the ranking for the strategic analysis that I undertake.
- 23.
The representation of an extensive-form game as a game tree can be made without loss of generality. This representation is even more useful in more complicated games–like this one–especially because the actors move multiple times, and that can determine (according to the solution of the game) which is the next actor to make a move. Here I specify and represent the major aspects of my game. They are: the set of actors, the possible choices for the actors, the sequence of the actors’ moves and the payoffs of the actors according to their moves (i.e. the payoffs for every possible outcome of the game per actor).
- 24.
A strategy of an actor is the function of a specific move (in the set of possible actions) where a non-terminal history exists.
- 25.
For a general sense of this model, you can see the game tree presented in Fig. B.1.
- 26.
This happens with the cost of a loss of legitimacy, which could mean future negative effects at the electoral level.
- 27.
A sub-game Perfect Equilibrium or a sub-game Perfect Nash Equilibrium is an equilibrium concept where the actor’s equilibrium strategies are a Nash Equilibrium of each one of the sub-games. In other words, it is a possible equilibrium strategy that every actor has in every sub-game. The sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium makes it possible to eliminate non-credible threats. The actors will assume that, once a move occurs, all actors will always go forwards and optimise their actions by ruling out these non-credible threats.
- 28.
For instance, a certain actor, let us call him H, in a given moment, anticipates what another actor will do, let us call him S. The notation would be something like this: maxU H(a H, R S(a H)). In this example it is expected that the outcome would look like:
. We can say that, each actor will optimise their actions given the actions of the others actors. - 29.
In my model, as in the Portuguese case, the legislative election results stand for four years and presidential election results stand for five. These two types of electoral acts are not coincidental.
- 30.
Please be aware that the examples of policy positions of the actors within this section do not correspond to their exact and measured positioning, they merely provide the visual information to help understand my reasoning. That is, this positioning is not empirically measured but, rather, created concerning possible conjunctures.
- 31.
This Fig. 3.1 is not an example of a repeated game where an additional advantage would be the learning process that would came with it. As a demonstration of this and of why a one-period model can be enough and can thus be extended to multiple rounds or even an infinite horizon, see the explanation of Primo [235]. Despite the previous arguments made in the discipline, future research considering multiple periods of bargaining–repeated moves–would be interesting to confirm whether the results on the strategies and the learning process of the actors hold after the reversion point.
- 32.
The government has to report activities to the president and the parliament upon request. The government can ask for a vote of confidence by the parliament and can be censured by a motion of no confidence by the parliament. The result of either could be the government’s resignation or a reinforcement of its legitimacy.
- 33.
The legislature has four legislative sessions each with a duration of one year, starting on 15 September and ending on 15 June of each year. The parliament’s daily work schedule is defined by its president, but other aspects regarding proposals and changes of proposals, for instance, can be put forward either by the government, by and individual MP or by the parliamentary groups.
- 34.
Cannot be re-elected for a third consecutive mandate or in the five years after the end of the second mandate–the same is true if she resigns.
- 35.
- 36.
All the possible outcomes from the utilities of all the actors are available in Appendix B.
- 37.
The strategies per actor are as follows: ((el, gb, o, o); (a, a, a); (a)), ((el, o, o); (a);  (a, a)) and ((gb, o, o); (a); (aa)), ((gb, gb, oo); (a); (a, aa)).
- 38.
It follows a strategic reasoning, taking into consideration what the other actors intend to accept and thus only proposing laws it believes will be accepted.
- 39.
Given that I am talking about conjunctures, I consider the government as having a majority or not in the parliament, meaning that the government has more or less power in parliament by having an absolute majority or not.
- 40.
In this book, when I refer to the political spectrum I mean the positioning of the actors, within one spatial dimension, which concerns a range of lefts and right positions.
- 41.
I do not hypothesise on actors’ preferences concerning issues because it is not line with my formal model. However, as given in the literature, these issues can drive legislation proposals. A relationship exists between the types of legislation and the issues and it happens especially because of time-related aspects such as efficiency and legitimacy. It is important to consider this relationship when making this analysis and it is because of that I incorporate the issues further.
- 42.
These costs are relevant, even if the veto is not effective because it can be overridden, as, in addition to the veto power, the president can also dismiss the parliament. Nevertheless, this is a threat that would lose credibility if used too often, or incur in the risk of new election results be similar to the ones they face at dismissal time.
- 43.
Future work should be developed about that aspect in particular and also about the opposite scenario. It is important to try to understand how in these extreme circumstances the actors move, given that the space for manoeuvre is clearly distinct.
. We can say that, each actor will optimise their actions given the actions of the others actors.References
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Calca, P. (2022). A Formal Model of Executive Law-Making. In: Executive-Legislative Relations in Parliamentary Systems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92343-3_3
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