Introduction

This book provides a comparative, and theoretically driven, study of the effects of legislative institutions on legislative outcomes in Western Europe. It consciously complements the work that appears in Doring (1995a). While the initial volume documents the many institutional variations across West European parliaments, this volume considers the effects parliamentary institutions have on the course of legislation. Using a unique data set created for this volume, ten authors consider a set of fundamental questions in legislative studies. Topics include: the link among the type of government in place, the electoral system, and the legislative rule; the effects of government declarations on law production; the length of time it takes for passage of legislation; agenda-setting control in parliament; explanations of committee organization; predictors of conflict vs. consensus in parliamentary committees; the use of restrictive rules that limit or forbid amendments to bills; and the effect of increasing veto players on law production.