Making Open Government Work by Richard Mulgan

Author:Richard Mulgan [Mulgan, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration
ISBN: 9781137131119
Google: ybq9CgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22857063
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014-10-24T10:59:34+00:00

The level of partisanship depends on the political complexion of the legislature as a whole. In the more adversarial legislatures, such as the Westminster-based parliaments dominated by conflict between two major parties, committees provide an additional forum in which to pursue this competition. Committee members from the opposition are looking for weak points in the government’s performance which they can exploit for political purposes, while those on the government side try to protect their government and its ministers from hostile scrutiny.

A less politically partisan approach is found in committees drawn from second chambers whose members are appointed rather than elected, such as the Canadian Senate and the British House of Lords. Not having to face the voters or worry about reelection, the members of these committees have more freedom to adopt a less partisan approach to their investigations and have conducted important inquiries into matters of government administration. In Canada, the Senate Standing Committee on National Finance was the only parliamentary body to monitor the important but low-profile issue of public sector reform during the 1990s. Similarly, the Senate members on the Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations have been particularly active in ensuring that public servants comply with authorizing legislation and conform with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Thomas 2008: 49–50), not matters that arouse a great deal of public interest.

In more consensual multi-party legislatures, for instance those of Scandinavia, party divisions are more muted and partisan motives less dominant in committee proceedings (Mueller and Saalfeld 1997). Standing portfolio committees tend to become important cross-party centres of sectoral policy expertise, building close relations with relevant sectional interests and subjecting officials to detailed, informed questioning on their conduct of government programmes. Indeed, for individual government organizations, their relevant legislative committees are often the most important centre of political control and accountability.

In all legislatures, one long-standing and comparatively non-partisan focus of committee scrutiny has been the general administration of government finances, a function that stems from the legislature’s role as the authorizing body for government revenue and expenditure. In the United Kingdom, for example, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was first established in the mid- nineteenth century to examine the government accounts, predating the introduction of other subject-area select committees by over a century. The model was later followed in all Westminster jurisdictions (McGee 2002) and elsewhere. The well-established traditions of public servants appearing in person to answer financial questions from public accounts committees paved the way for the extension of committee questioning of officials into the whole range of government activities.

Public accounts committees work closely with government auditors and their offices, which have a similar concern with financial probity and value for money. In the United Kingdom version, the PAC is always chaired by a member of parliament from the political opposition, thus emphasizing the committee’s independence from the executive. The committee also tends to avoid political controversy, concentrating on issues relating to the efficiency and effectiveness of government programmes. Heads of government departments appear regularly before the committee in their constitutionally distinct role as ‘accounting officers’.

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