for government action—may be exercised by minorities. Closely related to
withholding approval, and sequentially prior to it in practice, is legislative over-
sight—monitoring policy-makers to verify that their actions are consistent with
the intent of current law and do not exceed the reach of their formal authorities.
Oversight is the revelation of information, which is particularly valued to the
extent that those who exercise government authority are inclined to misuse it
(Persson and Tabellini 2003 ).
We might think of checks as either internal or external, with the former referring
to those exercised within a given assembly, generally by opposition representatives
or parties against the majority; and the latter referring to those exercised either
between chambers, in the case of bicameral systems, or between branches. 6
Procedural rights reserved for minorities to stall progress on proposals, and
sometimes even to scuttle them as withWlibusters in the US Senate, constitute an
internal check, and are frequently defended on the grounds that they guarantee
careful study and consideration of initiatives, contributing to outcomes that
improve the overall quality of legislation. Dion ( 2001 ) counters that, in practice,
minority rights are treated less as social welfare enhancing than as resources at stake
in a non-cooperative battle between majorities and legislative opposition. His
historical study of the US Congress, the British Commons, and the Austrian
parliament suggests that rule changes to curtail minority rights are most likely
precisely when majorities are least secure. One implication is that legislative checks
internal to a chamber should be least eVective precisely when the electoral mandate
of the majority coalition is weakest.
In a diVerent vein, Strom ( 1990 ) identiWes parliamentary committees as poten-
tial sources of opposition party power, particularly in systems where committee
chairs are distributed proportionally rather than monopolized by government
parties. He notes that procedural rights for minorities in European parliamentary
systems are greater where majorities are least secure, particularly where majority
coalitions cannot form, and minority governments wield executive power. Powell
( 2000 ) reaches a similar conclusion, suggesting that internal legislative checks are,
in fact, strongest when the majority coalition’s claim to authority is most tenuous.
Whether Dion’s non-cooperative story or Strom’s more cooperative one better
accounts for the level of internal checks we observe across legislatures more
generally warrants further research attention.
6 Tsebelis’s ( 1995 ) veto-players model disregards this distinction on the grounds that all political
actors, whether a party within a majority coalition, or an opposition-party president, who can block
legislative action by disapproval are equivalent in terms of the stickiness of the status quo. I retain the
distinction, however, on the grounds that legislative coalitions, whether composed of partisan or other
actors, are potentiallyXuid, insofar as any recalcitrant actor can be substituted with any other
agreeable actor carrying as many seats; whereas constitutionally-endowed veto-players (e.g. courts,
executives, other chambers) are irreplaceable.
448 john m. carey