Roy Gava

So Close, Yet So Far? The EU’s Footprint in Swiss Legislative Production

This chapter is an output of the project Agenda Setting in Switzerland funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (ref. 105511-119245/1), and part of the EUROCORES project The Politics of Attention: West European Politics in Times of Change, funded by the European Science Foundation. A previous version of this chapter was presented at a Staff meeting of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva. We are grateful to the participants, in particular Rene Schwok, for their valuable comments.

Who Europeanises parliamentary attention, on which issues and how? A policy agenda perspective

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the literature on the Europeanisation of national parliaments by looking at the behavioural dimension of Europeanisation in the Swiss parliament. The authors examine the differences in parliamentary interventions on EU-related issues over time, between types of instruments (agenda-setting versus control) and across parties. Moreover, the authors measure the attention devoted to various policy issues and the tone of parliamentary interventions. Empirically, they analyse with descriptive statistical tools EU-related parliamentary interventions introduced in the Swiss parliament over 30 years (1984–2014). Results show that parliamentary attention to the EU is strongly influenced by the activism of the Swiss People’s Party, a Eurosceptic member of the Swiss governing ‘coalition’.

Policy evaluation in parliament: interest groups as catalysts:

Members of Parliament (MPs) request policy evaluations and use the resultant findings to inform law-making and hold the government to account. Since most elected representatives have developed strong ties to interest groups, one might wonder whether these privileged relationships influence MPs’ parliamentary behavior. This study investigates how MPs’ affiliations to groups affect their demand for policy evaluations. Empirical evidence shows that, regardless of respective party or individual characteristics, MPs are more likely to request evaluations in those policy domains where they have a group affiliation. This effect holds even when controlling for a classical measure of MPs policy specialization, such as legislative committee membership. These findings suggest that ties between MPs and specific types of interest group should be considered when explaining parliamentary behavior across different policy domains. Point for practitioners To influence the policymaking process, interest groups participate in consultation procedures and parliamentary hearings, they lobby elected officials and deliver policy expertise to decision-makers. These advocacy strategies are well studied. This article innovates by showing that, in addition, interest groups foster the development of policy evaluations. MPs affiliated to an interest group active on a specific issue are likely to request policy evaluations in that policy domain. Interest groups strengthen the parliamentary demand for evaluation studies and, thus, may potentially contribute to the accountability of government and public administration.

Financial regulation and agenda dynamics: impacts of the global financial crisis

Both the few “old” and numerous “new” contributions to the politics of financial regulation emphasize concepts and processes familiar to students of agenda setting. However, the parallels between these two strands are rarely addressed explicitly. Building on this gap, this chapter reviews how agenda dynamics fundamentally shape the environment in which financial regulation is produced. In particular, it shows how a major shock such as the Global Financial Crisis altered the way in which financial regulatory issues are usually treated by policymakers.