Radoslaw Zubek and Twan van der Togt (2027) Breaking with Lotteries in European Political Development: An Informational Perspective. Journal of Historical Political Economy, 7(1).

The decline of political lotteries during early democratization presents an important puzzle in European political development. While prior accounts link this decline to the rise of organized parties, we argue that a need for informational efficiency was a major catalyst. We test our argument by analyzing the Dutch parliament’s reform of committee appointment between 1868 and 1888. Using original data, we show that lottery-based appointment produced committees that tended to be unrepresentative and inexperienced relative to the chamber as a whole. An analysis of over 400 government bills reveals that this lack of representativeness and experience undermined committee specialization during legislative review. A qualitative analysis of floor debates further shows MPs explicitly sought more representative and experienced committees to facilitate specialization. Finally, a comparison of lottery and speaker-based appointments suggests MPs could plausibly expect the latter to enhance informational efficiency. These findings contribute to broader research on how partisan and informational motivations shape political institutions.

The 1902 ‘Balfour reforms’ established a core feature of the UK House of Commons: ministers’ control of its agenda.

In this blogpost, Tom Fleming, Simon Hix, and I explore how this important change came about, and question the idea that it was adopted with cross-party consensus.

Read the full post at the The Constitution Unit Blog.

Thomas G. Fleming, Simon Hix, Radoslaw Zubek (forthcoming) ‘The Origins of Centralized Agenda Control at Westminster: Consensus or Controversy?’ Legislative Studies Quarterly. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/lsq.12480.

Centralized agenda control is a feature of many parliaments, with important consequences for the conduct and outcomes of legislative politics. Much previous work has thus sought to understand the emergence of centralized agenda-setting rules. We extend this literature by studying the `Balfour reforms’, which centralized agenda control in the early twentieth century UK House of Commons. Our aim is to probe a conventional claim in the existing literature: that the opposition supported these reforms. This is a counter-intuitive claim which rests on relatively little direct evidence. We analyze historical roll-call data from 1902 to assess how far the opposition supported agenda centralization. We complement this analysis by examining attempted amendments and speech contributions to parliamentary debates. Contrary to the standard view, we find that the primary opposition party consistently resisted these reforms. This evidence of controversy rather than consensus revises our understanding of a key milestone in the development of the Westminster parliament, and contributes to the wider literature on the choice of agenda-setting procedures.

Together with Tom Fleming, I have written a post for OXPOL, the Oxford University Politics Blog, in which we argue that while the Brexit process may have challenged the UK government’s ability to control parliament, it was pushing at an open door. Recent events can thus be understood as an acceleration of pre-existing trends in Britain’s political institutions and political parties. You can read the full post here.