Ministerial policy dominance in parliamentary democracies

Abstract

To what extent do ministries dominate a particular policy domain? The policy dictator model and manyprinciple-agent models of governmental control that followed suit assume that governments create ministries withclear 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 thatministerial division of labour within governments is considerably more complex than commonly assumed. Thevariegated level of ministerial dominance across policy domains calls for a new research agenda on how governmentsassign responsibility for legislative action in parliamentary democracies.