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The Role of Parliamentary Committees in Coalition Governments

Keeping Tabs on Coalition Partners in the German Bundestag

Gerhard Loewenberg

University of Iowa

The coexistence of strong parties and strong committees in the U.S. Congress has been interpreted in a principal-agent framework with committees regarded as agents of the congressional parties. In a parliamentary system having coalition governments, the coexistence of strong parties and strong committees has a comparable rationale. With data during a 40-year period, the authors showthat the coalition parties in the German parliament distribute committee chair positions so that coalition parties can monitor each other’s cabinet ministers. Such monitoring is an alternative at the legislative level to intracoalition monitoring through the use of junior ministers at the executive level and is a means of enforcing coalition treaties.

Key Words: coalition government • parliamentary committees • German Bundestag

Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 38, No. 9, 1104-1129 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0010414005276307


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