Parliamentarians’ strategies for policy evaluations

Abstract

This article considers the question of which strategies parliamentarians pursue when they use parliamentary requests demanding an evaluation. In order to be re-elected or to achieve desirable policies, parliamentarians can either appeal to their constituency or to their party by adopting legislative roles. The study is based on twelve case studies of parliamentary requests from the Swiss parliament between 2010 and 2014. The analysis shows that parliamentarians of legislative committees submit parliamentary requests to oppose a policy, while parliamentarians of oversight committees submit parliamentary requests to obtain information on specific policies. On the contrary, the party membership of the responsible Federal Councillor does not influence the strategy. These findings suggest that parliamentarians use evaluations as an instrument rather than using the actual findings. This conclusion might be very relevant to understand how evaluations are used in the political process.