Integrated or Loosely Coupled Systems? The Autonomy of Legislative Organization in Contexts of Constitutional Regime Change

Legislative organization, mostly contained in parliamentary standing orders, systematically affects legislative processes and is subject to intentional institutional design by parliamentary actors. At the same time, legislatures are embedded in broader constitutional regimes that contain basic rules on the role of the legislature and sometimes on its internal organization. However, we know little about how these two sets of institutional rules are linked. Is legislative organization largely driven by the constitutional regime or do parliamentary actors enjoy relevant autonomy in organizing the legislature? While cross-sectional studies suggest that that core characteristics of the constitutional regime (e.g. parliamentarism, bicameralism, and the electoral system) affect legislative organization, there is little direct evidence on whether and how changes in the constitutional framework trigger changes in legislative organization. This paper contrasts different theoretical arguments on the degree of coupling between the constitutional regime and legislative organization that are drawn from the nested games framework on the one hand and notions of path dependence on the other hand. Empirically, the paper analyzes changes in legislative organization in the (West) German Bundestag after 1949, in particular the creation of its first permanent standing orders in 1951. Drawing on archival material, the case study reveals strong path dependence in legislative organization even though the constitutional regime changed considerably compared to the pre-1933 Weimar Republic, especially by installing a parliamentary system of government and strengthening the role of the prime minister. These findings support the idea of a loose coupling between the constitutional regime and legislative organization. [This paper is part of the proposed panel "The Politics of Procedural Choice in European Legislatures"]