From a Top-Down to a Bottom-Up Approach to Legislative Oversight

• Autores: Chen Friedberg
• Localización: The Journal of legislative studies, ISSN 1357-2334, Vol. 17, Nº. 4, 2011, págs. 525-544
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Over the years there have been several studies of oversight in the context of the US Congress; much less attention, however, has been paid to the study of oversight in parliamentary systems. Comparative studies spearheaded by several international organisations in recent years offer a different perspective of legislative oversight. They emphasise a new concept, oversight potential, and suggest that strengthening this potential would help promote good governance, fight corruption and improve democracy. This study examines the concept of oversight potential in a pure parliamentary system – the Israeli Knesset. It shows that low potential impairs actual oversight in a parliamentary system that uses mainly police-patrol techniques as defined by the 1987 work of McCubbins and Schwartz. It suggests that increasing oversight potential will help improve the oversight outputs of the legislature. Finally, it develops a bottom-up legislative approach for measuring oversight potential, and by doing so it enriches this neglected field of research.