Along came a spider...

This project focuses on the legal constitutional principles underlying the political architecture of the systems under review, the relationships between governments and representative organs, and analyses how they apply to new forms of governance beyond the state (‘agencies’ and EU).

System of government: the constitutional design

What legal constitutional concepts and principles underlie the government-parliament relationship (BVerfGE, 62, 1 Parliamentary dissolution case I; 2 BvE 4/05 of 25 August 2005, Parliamentary Dissolution Case II)? How can executive power to held to account and why? How do political parties affect the legal constitutional accounts? How do they affect the controlling functions of the parliament? How does the electoral system affect the form of government prevailing in a Member State and what are the legal principles underlying it?

The ‘sovereignty of parliament’

Does parliament have full legislative powers (contrast ‘parliamentary sovereignty’, as a legal concept and in real terms, with ‘rationalised parliament’ in France)? Does the government or executive have prerogative powers? Does it have own law-making powers? Can parliament delegate law making powers to government? Can it take back delegated powers? Can it control their exercise? Is there a hierarchy of norms (‘primauté de la loi’ in France, ‘sovereignty of parliament’ in the UK or the Netherlands)? What purposes does it serve? How does this legal concept relate to government-parliament relations?

Quangos, agencies or the devolution of power to non-state bodies

Can powers be delegated or devolved to ‘agencies’/’quango’s’? Can governmental functions be ‘outsourced’ to public, semi-public or private bodies? Are there limits? How does this affect the traditional parliament-government relationship?

Government and parliament relations and membership of the EU

How are government-parliament relationships affected by membership of the EU? What are their respective roles in the context of the EU? How does parliament perform its scrutiny of the government, when the latter acts in the EU context? Is the division of law-making functions between government and parliament affected in the context of EU law (e.g. transposition of EU legislation)?