Ministerial policy dominance in parliamentary democracies

Abstract

To what extent do ministries dominate a particular policy domain? The policy dictator model and many principle-agent models of governmental control that followed suit assume that governments create ministries with clear and exclusive policy responsibilities. We test this assertion using data from parliamentary bills from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. For each bill, we observe its substantial policy content and the responsible ministry. The data show that bills on similar issues regularly are drafted by different ministries in parliamentary democracies. About 40 per cent of policy issues cannot be ascribed to one dominant ministry. The regularities elucidate that ministerial division of labour within governments is considerably more complex than commonly assumed. The variegated level of ministerial dominance across policy domains calls for a new research agenda on how governments assign responsibility for legislative action in parliamentary democracies.