Electoral Competition and Strategic Intra-Coalition Oversight in Parliament: The Case of the Bipolar Belgian Polity

Abstract

Although research has highlighted how parties use parliamentary tools to monitor coalition partners and ensure that they loyally execute compromises, the role of electoral competition in intra-coalition oversight is less well documented. Do coalition parties actually ‘police the bargain’ or do they rather use their tools to publicly target and potentially discredit parties with whom they will eventually compete for votes? Although generally difficult to disentangle, this study focuses on the unique Belgian polity, where Flemish and francophone parties govern together in a federal cabinet but compete electorally in two separate party systems. Multivariate analyses of MPs’ use of parliamentary questions between 1995 and 2018 (N = 30,661) confirm that coalition partners are particularly scrutinized when they are ideologically distant or control salient portfolios. Contrary to expectations, however, electoral competitors are not targeted more intensively, nor does direct electoral competition decrease the relative importance of ideological divisiveness or issue salience. These findings provide new insights into how and to what extent parliaments serve as arenas for intra-coalition governance.