Modes of Executive-Legislative Relations: Great Britain, France, and West Germany

Abstract

Political scientists and politicians both talk in terms of between the executive and the legislature. But in fact it is seldom helpful to speak of executivelegislative relations tout court. If we wish to understand the phenomena generally subsumed under this heading, we need to identify and consider separately a number of quite distinct political relationships. Different patterns of such relationships are found in different countries. For example, in Great Britain the most important such relationship, or mode, is that which links the Government with backbench majority-party Members of Parliament. The same relationship is the most important in France. But in West Germany the both within and among parties are important, and so is a crossparty mode, operating within Bundestag committees, which has no real equivalent in either of the other countries.