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Democratic theory has long witnessed a divergence of opinion about the practice of popular participation. Proponents argue that involving citizens in decision-making strengthens democracy, reinforcing political values such as citizenship, accountability and government responsiveness (Barber, 1984:67). Critics, however, claim that it jeopardizes the effectiveness and quality of political decisions (Schumpeter, 1943:262). However, although the literature on the potentials and pitfalls of public involvement in decision-making is vast, studies about the views of elected representatives themselves on the issue remain rare.

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The essays in this thesis explore the effects of legislative leaders on the behaviour of parliamentarians in the European Parliament and the UK House of Commons, and the consequences of this relationship for parliamentary outcomes. The first paper argues that when party leaders are motivated to maintain the voting cohesion of their legislative contingents, and when disciplinary resources are in short supply, leaders may block policy proposals that threaten to divide their members. Accordingly, as the preferences of party members become more diffuse, agenda setting party leaders will be able to maintain cohesion but the actions they take to do so may contribute to the overall level of gridlock in the legislature. I introduce new data and methods to evaluate these relationships in the European Parliament, where agenda control and ‘carrot and stick’ disciplinary powers are held by different sets of parliamentary actors. The second paper argues that by making the status quo less attractive and by increasing legislators’ tolerance to new policies, external crises empower leaders who have the ability to propose legislation. In the context of the European Union’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, I combine topic modelling with a two-stage least squares procedure to show that voting coalitions in the European Parliament changed after the crisis in ways consistent with the theoretical model. The implication of the analysis is that prointegration agenda-setters were able to pass legislation in the post-crisis period that would have been impossible to pass in the absence of the crisis. In the third paper, I argue that when members of previously under-represented groups are appointed to positions of high office within the legislature, they can serve as role models to their fellow group members. Using a difference-in-differences design, I demonstrate that the appointment of a female cabinet minister in the UK House of Commons leads to an increase in the participation of other female members of parliament in legislative debates. Furthermore, I develop a novel approach for measuring the influence of legislators in debate, and use this to show that female members of parliament also become more influential following the appointment of a female minister. In exploring the mechanisms that underpin this role-model effect, I introduce an additional quantitative measure which reveals that female ministers are more responsive to the speeches made by female legislators than are male ministers. Taken together, these papers provide important theoretical arguments and empirical evidence concerning the central role that leaders play in the legislative process.

The thesis develops a theory of legislative cooperation in bicameral legislatures. At its core is a distinction between two decision-making scenarios leading to a concurrent majority in the two chambers. In an inter-institutional scenario, the chambers oppose each other as unitary actors. In a trans-institutional scenario, the constituent actors enter into cooperation across the boundaries of their chambers. The central argument is that formateurs face a strategic decision on which of these two routes to take. They can stick to their intra-institutional coalition, or they can abandon it and propose a logroll across issues within a bill that is carried by a majority across the chambers. The thesis comprises three papers, united by the general topic of trans-institutional legislative cooperation, and each demonstrating the crucial role of the formateurs. The empirical analysis focuses on co-decision legislation proposed in the bicameral system of the European Union between 1999 and 2009. In particular, it draws on a new dataset on early-stage and final-stage coalitions in the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. This is based on an extensive analysis of more than 18,000 Council documents and 19,000 amendments in the EP presenting for the first time a systematic insight into early-stage coalitions. Three central findings emanate from the application of the theoretical framework to the new data. First, formateurs can obtain an outcome closer to their preferences by choosing between inter- and trans-institutional scenarios. Second, the transaction costs of exchanges across institutional boundaries are lower if formateurs’ preferences are similar. Third, the decisions of the formateurs potentially produce winners and losers as some actors are included and others are excluded from the coalitions. These findings build on and further develop theories of bicameral coalition formation and legislative organisation. They highlight that the strategic environment in which actors operate surpasses their individual chamber, and explain how this affects the process and outcome of decision-making. This leads to important empirical and theoretical contributions which raise normative implications.

This is a thesis about legislative package deals in the European Union and their effects on EU policy outcomes. It analyzes inter-chamber legislative exchange between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The key argument is that package deals increase the legislative influence of the European Parliament across legislative procedures and policy areas. Package deals allow Member States to establish control over the financial aspects of legislation and to ensure its adoption without delay. In exchange, the European Parliament gains further institutional powers and access to some of the EU's most salient policy areas. Legislative bargaining between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament is analyzed across all EU legislation, completed in the period 1 May 1999 - 30 April 2007. The argument is tested empirically through the quantitative analysis of 1465 co-decision and consultation proposals, 19 policy areas and 8 years. Five in-depth case studies complement the findings. The results indicate that the use of package deals in the EU is conditional on the distributive nature of legislative proposals, and their urgency. In turn, package deals and urgency affect legislative outcomes. Package deals and delay increase the EP's legislative influence in the consultation procedure. Package deals and Council impatience increase the EP's legislative influence in the co-decision procedure. Overall, package deals extend the EP's legislative influence in distributive policy areas and increase its institutional powers.

Embedded consensus has characterised the behaviour of the European Parliament since its foundation in the 1950s. This research tests the path dependence of consensus during the period of 1994 to 2002, in the light of the changing institutional powers of the Parliament. It challenges existing theory and empirical evidence drawn mainly from roll call votes that has concluded that the European Parliament has become more competitive internally in response to increased institutional powers. There are three causal factors that reinforce consensus: the need to reconcile national and ideological divisions within a multinational political system; the pull of external institutional factors such as institutional change or the separation of powers; and internal incentives for collusion between political actors influenced by the need to accommodate the interests of the national elites present at the level of the European Union. Switzerland, a multiple cleavage system of decentralised federalism that includes consociational characteristics and a separation of powers, provides a comparative reference point for institutionalised consensus. The hypotheses of institutionalised consensus are tested empirically in four ways: 1) by roll call votes between 1994 and 2001, focusing on procedure, policy area, and the cut-off point of the 1999 elections; 2) competition and consensus in the distribution of policy-related office in the Parliament; 3) by Parliament’s use of its powers of appointment and censure over other institutions; and 4) by the internal consensus on the preparation of Parliament’s bids for greater powers when the European Union Treaties are reformed. In adapting the theory of path dependence to a multinational legislature, the methodology presented in this thesis can be applied in furthering the understanding of other comparable institutions.

The European Parliament (EP) has evolved into a powerful legislative actor over the past 40 years. In order to exercise its hard won legislative competencies in an efficient and effective manner the EP has developed an extensive and influential committee system. The Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) recognised its equal status as co-legislator with the Council of the EU and introduced the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP) as the default EU legislative procedure. Despite the fact that after the introduction of the OLP all EP committees formally operate under the same legal procedure, disparities remain in the levels of influence that each committee commands. This state of affairs demonstrates that if we are to understand what drives committee influence we need to explore the informal sources of influence that committees draw on in addition to the formal rules. This project addresses the lack of understanding of how the committees establish legislative influence by identifying and testing the different resources which committees may be utilising to establish their influence. The thesis puts forward four hypotheses concerning the factors that can account for how committees establish influence. These are developed and tested within three case studies. The case studies comprise the highly influential committees on, firstly, the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, secondly, the Budget Committee and, thirdly, the International Trade Committee. The research project adopts a qualitative approach to complement and create a different perspective from the quantitative studies which dominate the field. It draws on extensive primary material from thirty semi-structured interviews held with MEPs, advisers, EP staff and party officials active in the 7th legislative term (2009-2014). A number of the current conventions concerning the way in which expertise, partisan dynamics, and policy outputs affect how committees establish legislative influence are challenged and new insights regarding their relative importance are offered. Overall, these original findings, contained within this dissertation, have highly significant implications, not only with regard to the committee system of the EP but, also, for the wider field of legislative politics.