POLS PIRSS Seminars Series

Analyzing Legislative Behavior: Israel and Italy in Comparative Perspective

Delaying Bills Using Amendments in the Legislative Process
Tal Elovits
(NASP-Unimi, Ph.D Candidate)

Geographical Representation on the Floor: How Parliamentary Rules Shape Legislative Speeches
Edoardo Viganò
(Universitat Witten/Herdecke )

Chair
Francesco Zucchini (NASP-University of Milan)

19 September 2024, h.14.30
Seminar Room Conservatorio 
Via Conservatorio 7 - Milan 

Abstracts

Tal Elovits| Delaying Bills Using Amendments in the Legislative Process
This study investigates government agenda control in the Israeli Knesset by introducing Israel to Döring's comparative categorization of parliamentary democracies. Using an expert survey and legal sources, we analyzed the mechanisms of agenda control employed by the Israeli government. Additionally, we explored the use of amendments as a means of negative agenda control, leveraging a new dataset of all amendments to nonbudgetary bills between 2009 and 2022 (N=1,699). This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the Israeli parliament and executive-legislative relations, which have become increasingly relevant due to the ongoing political crisis in Israel. This study contributes to the comparative literature on parliamentary democracies and provides new empirical evidence of amendments in the legislative process.

Edoardo Viganò | Geographical Representation on the Floor: How Parliamentary Rules Shape Legislative Speeches
The degree of party control of parliamentary debates influences which MPs take the floor. However, we do not know whether floor access rules matter also for the content of speeches. Drawing on a corpus of speeches delivered in bill debates in the Italian lower house over ten years, I investigate how variation in floor rules shapes MPs' geographical representation in their legislative speeches. The findings reveal that open-access rules increase the intensity of geographical representation compared to when parties allocate speaking time, pointing to a tension between party control and dyadic representation. Additionally, this study demonstrates that the effect of open rules on geographical representation is consistent across MPs with different electoral incentives and degrees of alignment with party leadership, as well as across topics varying in their potential for geographical representation.

This seminar is part of the POLS Political Institutions & Regimes (PIRSS) Seminar Series
(Organizing Committee: Andrea Cassani, Tamara Grechanaya, Andrea Pedrazzani)

For an overview of the PhD Political Studies Seminar Series, click HERE