Resumen de Political parties and parliamentary oversightcommittee seats: sharing and trading the costs

Hallbera West

• Political parties are important actors for making the chain of delegation inparliamentary systems work in practice, but less constructive in securing thecorresponding chain of accountability that goes in the opposite direction.This article, however, argues that parliamentary oversight (accountability)conditions improve in institutionalised settings, like in central oversightcommittees. The article explores political parties’ strategies related to thistype of task by investigating who sits in this type of committee. Theexpectation is that in this setting political parties will share the oversightresponsibility, but that smaller parties want to trade the costs because theyhave fewer resources compared to larger parties. The investigation focuseson the five Nordic national parliaments with strong parties that controlelections as well as the committee seat allocation. Overall, the investigationshows that institutionalisation does seem to spur joint responsibility and thatlarger parties take the load of this type of activity.