Martin and Vanberg ( 2005 ) take an important step in this direction, expandinginto the study of legislative checks on external (executive) actors in their study of
legislative review in Germany and the Netherlands. In multiparty parliamentary
systems, control of any government ministry by a particular party generates the
potential for policy disputes among parties within the governing coalition over
legislative proposals in that policy area. Martin and Vanberg demonstrate that the
greater the scope of policy disagreement between coalition partners, the greater are
the revisions made by parliaments to government proposals. This form of check on
the executive appears to be greatest precisely where alternative legislative coalitions
to the government—for example government parties apart from the one control-
ling the ministry of jurisdiction, plus opposition parties—are most viable. Martin
and Vanberg’s account is consistent with Thies ( 2001 ), who documents internal
checks within coalitions in the form of split party control over ministerial and
junior ministerial portfolios.
Finally, there has been a boom in the past decade, fueled largely by transitions to
democracy in presidential and hybrid constitutional systems, in the study of
legislative checks on presidents. Linz ( 1994 ) identiWed presidential systems as
problematic in part on the grounds that partisan incompatibility between legisla-
tures and executives could produce intransigence in bargaining, which in turn
could induce executives to pursue non-constitutional means in pursuing their
agendas. Carey and Shugart ( 1998 ) examine a speciWc vehicle frequently associated
with abuse of presidential power, executive decree authority, and argue that its
use frequently follows patterns consistent with legislative delegation rather than
executive usurpation. Figuereido and Limongi ( 2000 ) argue that the centralization
of authority over the legislative agenda in the Brazilian presidency is potentially
consistent with the interests of legislative majorities in maximizing decisiveness.
There is little in their account to suggest potential for checks on the executive, but
Amorim Neto, Cox, and McCubbins ( 2003 ) demonstrate that the conditions
required to centralize agenda control are actually contingent—present when stable
legislative majority coalitions support the president, absent otherwise—thus re-
viving the prospect that even legislatures with relatively high partisan fragmenta-
tion might impose eVective checks on presidents. The extent to which this prospect
is realized, and the speciWc conditions that encourage or discourage it, ought to be
central to academic research on comparative legislatures in presidential systems
(Cox and Morgenstern 2001 ).
Focusing speciWcally on separation of powers between legislative chambers,
Tsebelis and Money ( 1997 ) make the case that bicameralism does more than encour-
age policy stability by making it more diYcult to change the status quo (although it
does this, too). It also focuses policy debate and deliberation on the dimension of
conXict that separates the collective preferences of the two chambers. If this dimen-
sion happens not to reXect an important political cleavage in the electorate—say,
because on the most salient issues the chamber majorities are quite close, whereas
legislative organization 449