Uncovering legislative pace in Germany: A methodical and computational application to answer temporal questions of law-making

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Uncovering legislative pace in Germany: A methodical and computational application to answer temporal questions of law-making Jasmin Riedl Universität der Bundeswehr München, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, 85579 Neubiberg, Germany

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Temporality Legislative pace Data-wrangling Transparency Law-making Policy-making Germany Database

How fast are law-making processes and how often are lawmakers exploiting institutional fast lanes to help speed up legislation? To this day, Political Science has not managed to provide a quantitative answer to these questions. By placing a scientific focus on this gap, the current examination will conceptualise a quantitative measure for legislative pace which is analogous to the tempo of music. This will permit the author to place the (subjective) temporal perception of law-making procedures into the overall context of legislature. A database, which contains machine-readable data extracted and transformed from semi-structured documents, will be highlighted for its ability to measure legislative pace in Germany. As a result, every procedural step within all the adopted federal laws in Germany (between autumn 1990 and autumn 2017), is able to be processed by computers. Finally, the paper employs the aforementioned database and the conceptualised quantification of pace (metronome) to shed light on legislative pace in Germany. Results are presented for the 16th legislative period (2005–2009) of the German Bundestag. Thus, the paper contributes to an ongoing dispute between “acceleration-optimist” and “deliberation-supporters” with respect to their views on the speed of legislation. The paper shows to what extend law-making can accelerate in times of parliamentary truce or in cases of broad consent between the majoritarian actors. However, this does not always imply a diminished (parliamentarian) interest inclusion and control. In general, institutional time-rules and parliamentary practices offer reliable so called “checks and balances” to monitor legislative acceleration. Nevertheless, what seems to be lacking, is a stronger set of rules that control the power of government and the parliamentarian factions' ability to delay law-making procedures.

1. Opacity and subjective judgment on legislative pace: the need for an objective measure and quantitative data for analysing the pace of legislation Politicians' actions are under constant scrutiny by the media, voters, and political competitors. This is particularly noticeable whenever the pace of legislation enters public attention or parliamentary debates. Two observations provide striking examples of this: First, if law-making procedures speed up in times of crisis, this is broadly and controversially discussed by media, politicians and scientists. That was the case, for example, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and after the September 11th terrorist attacks in the USA (Albright, 2011; Birkland, 2006; Merkel & Schäfer, 2015; Rüb, 2015; Zohlnhöfer & Hus, 2016, p. 170). Additionally, even in times without such crises, lawmakers pass laws quickly in order to gain a certain benefits, such as providing “election gifts” (e.g. tax reductions) to voters shortly before the next polls (Aidt & Mooney, 2014; Barber & Schmidt, 2018; Lagona &

Padovano, 2008). The tenor of discourse which ignites over the pace of legislation, resonates with the hopes or fears of two groups. “Acceleration-optimists” (as I call them) reason that policy-making becomes proportionately more efficient (i.e. better) the faster that it is. “Deliberationsupporters” (as I call them) on the other hand, worry that hasty legislation compromises consultation, negotiation, and a balance of interests. They also worry that high-speed policy-making lacks a key characteristic of democratic decision-making, the intentional and institutionalised decelerated process. These opinions vary according to the context, preference, and role of all respective actors in that the same legislative process may appear slow to one observer, yet faster to another. Moreover, media, the public, and politicians can then assess a specific pace positively or negatively. Thus, pace-assessment is a shorthand method for obtaining a more general approval or rejection regarding a legislation. Depending on the respective actors' perspective, either the (consensus) democratic necessities of policy-making or the

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.07.002 Received 4 May 2019; Received in revised form 30 June 2019; Accepted 1 July 2019 0740-624X/ © 2019 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: Jasmin Riedl, Government Information Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.07.002

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efficiency of decision-making is put forward (Bohsem, 2008; Deutscher Bundestag, 2001a, 2001b, 19671B; Prantl, 2008; Riedl, 2015; Rüb, 2015, p. 207). In the case of Germany, the 2008 German “Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetz” (FMStG, Financial Market Stabilization Law) serves as an example for this “deliberation-acceleration-discourse”. The FMStG is widely associated with an extraordinarily quick process where some voices praised the efficiency of the law-making process. Others criticised that a virtue of parliamentary democracy, its deliberation, was being sacrificed to satisfy a “tremendous impatience” in the face of financial collapse (Bohsem, 2009; Deutscher Bundestag, 2008c, 19349B-19376A, Deutscher Bundestag, 2008d, 19657A-19683D; Füchtjohann, 2011; Merkel & Schäfer, 2015; Prantl, 2008; Rüb, 2015; Völker, 2015, p. 213). In principle, both journalists and politicians base their statements regarding the pace of legislation on (subjective) judgements. Science, for its part, analysed the pace either qualitatively or employed variables to measure the speed of legislation that cannot inform about single processes pace. What is lacking is an appropriate objective measure for the pace of law-making that works if one take single processes as the unit of analysis. That is unfortunate, since said debates on legislative acceleration and deceleration are generally heated (Riedl, 2015). Therefore, the first aim of the paper is to answer a methodical and a technical question: How can one underpin subjective or qualitative judgements on legislative pace with an objective, quantifiable measurement? How do we collect and retrieve the necessary data to measure legislative pace? For the first question, the answer resembles a metaphorical quantification in music: Two people can differ on how they perceive the pace of music in a song. This pace, however, can also be measured independent from personal opinion by means of “Beats Per Minute” (BPM) or “Mälzel's Metronome” (MM). Subsequently, the paper elucidates which form of this logic can be applied to legislative pace (chapter 2). The second question will be answered by using existing non-machine-readable documentation on law-making procedures in Germany and transforming this into a machine-readable database (chapter 3). However, the method to arrive at the necessary data is applicable to other cases as well. In chapter three, this will be explained in detail. In order to measure legislative pace, we first need to know precisely what happens, and how much happens, in any given period of time. Up until this point, all of the systematic and quantitative analysis has failed because publicly accessible data (at this level of detail) is lacking. By answering these two questions, an approach is presented that pairs individual pace perceptions with objective measurements. Moreover, the pace of any law-making procedure becomes comparable and German legislature more transparent. The second aim of the paper is to shed light on legislative pace in Germany. The ongoing dispute between “acceleration-optimists” and “deliberation-supporters” (a phenomena we find in all democratic systems (Jessop, 2009; Riescher, 1994)) shows the pressing urgency for taking an empirical, comparative, and quantitative look on legislative pace. Regarding the ongoing disputes, two questions will be addressed: How fast are legislative processes in Germany and what are the reasons behind their pace? Does the pace of legislation in Germany follow a legislative cycle? That means, unpleasant laws are fast at the beginning of a legislative period and election gifts are also fast at the end of a legislative term. In the following analysis, policies are called to be unpleasant or a gift, if they are (un)favourable for the respective lawmakers' voter group(s) (Lagona & Padovano, 2008, p. 228). The two questions need to be answered and can be examined by taking the institutional characteristics of the German political system into account. As will be explained in detail in chapter 4, in Germany, we find a parliamentary system of government, a federal system (with strong cooperation between federal and state level), and partly consensusdemocratic mechanisms of decision-making. Against this backdrop, the said questions are answered respectively by the 16th election period of the German Bundestag (chapter 5). Moreover, quantitative data is

presented, for the first time, on legislative pace for each law respectively. The paper will conclude with a reflection about the contributions made and the implications for policy makers and researchers. 2. The metronome of law-making: measuring legislations' pace In democratic systems, politicians depend on their constituency. They need votes to sit in political offices, exact power, and enforce political agendas. Political actors therefore seek to implement policies from which their constituency will benefit from, and which align to, their own political preferences. They do not seek negotiated consensus. This is a rational-choice point of view (Ostrom, 1991; Saalfeld, 1995). Democratic systems “check and balance” this kind of individual rational behaviour by employing various institutional precautions – one of which is the deceleration of political processes. However, against the backdrop of an ever-faster environment, it is argued that legislation must pick up speed, become faster, and accelerate. As a result, policymaking is sometimes perceived as slow and inefficient (Dewey, 2009, p. 63). Even more so, this is the case when decision-making depends on many veto payers and thus has high consent requirements (Tsebelis, 2002). The formal goal of all legislative processes is the root cause of this fundamental problem in that legislation is both intentional and goal oriented. Proposed bills must inherently seek adoption. Therefore, subjective judgements on legislative pace often focus on political achievements, or the so-called output-oriented legitimation (Scharpf, 2011, p. 35) which neglects the quality of political processes itself. Moreover, when taking a closer look at the scientific debate, we find that analyses often focus on the number of bills passed, or the simple duration of their law-making procedure, as a measure of legislative pace (Borghetto & Giuliani, 2008; Karow & Bukow, 2016; Kovats, 2009) because of the available data in democratic systems. However, the first one is a statement about legislative density, not speed. The latter one just measures “how much time elapses between the start and end of an action or event” (Grzymala-Busse, 2011, p. 1277). Neither duration nor density provide enough information to enrich the “deliberation-acceleration-discourse” or to couple individual pace perceptions with objective measurements. For example, Martin & Vanberg argue in regard to the relation between pace and parliamentary oversight that: “such a study might involve an analysis of the number of committees to which a bill is referred …, the number of hearings scheduled, the number of expert witnesses invited to testify. At the moment, such data are not available in systematic fashion” (Martin & Vanberg, 2004, p. 17). The paper at hand presents a different approach to measure legislative pace. The approach shifts the focus towards the process and the question of what happens and how much happens within a legislation's duration. If one utilizes the musical tempo of a song as an analogy, a picture emerges that fits legislative pace and the ongoing debate: One can have an opinion on the musical tempo of a song. This opinion considers the musical tempo of a song in its entirety and the arrangement of “beats”, not its ending or output. Two people could come to different conclusions on the perceived pace of the same musical piece in that it may appear to be fast or slow. Individual preferences and expectations influence these conceptions. Furthermore, musical pace is quantifiable and is expressed, for example, as “Beats Per Minute”. Musical tempo refers to the absolute duration of notes: Many (short) notes over a certain period of time create a faster song as few (long) notes over the same period. This sets a distinct tone for each song. By playing the piece, an audience can experience this character. When listening to different versions of a song, this becomes clear. Compare for example, the faster version of “Seasons in the Abyss” by “Slayer” (152 BPM) with the slower version of the same song by the band “Hellsongs” (116 BPM) (Hellsongs, 2008; Slayer, 1990). Or, compare for example, the slower version of “Hurt” by “Nine Inch Nails” (79 BMP) with the faster adaption by “Johnny Cash” (91 BPM) (Jonny Cash, 2002; Nine Inch Nails, 1994). In terms of law-making, this means 2

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great amount of time working on a particular bill or if they have to deal with it multiple times over a short period, that does not constitute quick legislative pace. The number of committee sessions is an example of this: If a committee has to meet nine times in order to agree on a bill in the tenth session, then the committee members involved will eventually have spent many personal resources. Perhaps they had to discuss the bill often. Still, in this example, they were not quick in the sense that they made a lot of decisions in a short period of time. At the start of any legislative process, the number and type of subsequent steps is not predetermined per se by default. Of course, there are key-events that take place in any law-making procedure. However, taking Germany as an example, the number and type of Bundestag's committees is usually set during the first reading in the Bundestag (§ 80 Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag (GO-BT)). Whether a public hearing will be scheduled (§ 70 GO-BT) or whether the mediation committee will be invoked (§ 89 GO-BT) is subject to a follow-up process. Thus, the number of committees' involves, the number of committee decisions (or adjournments), public hearings, or mediation procedures are not set before the process and by rule. Thus, the “space” of law-making varies. The pace of legislation can be defined as follows: If |P| represents a multi-set of distinct points in time of partly consecutive, partly parallel, but generally goal-achieving procedural steps of a particular legislation, then the pace of legislation v(P) can be defined as:

that legislative pace is the distinct temporal-procedural character of a law-making process. Here, it is not about finishing a legislative process in the shortest time possible, rather it is about creating a specific character by legislatives' “beats per minute”. To summarise, pace in general can be two-fold: On the one hand, it is a descriptive and quantitative measure. On the other hand, it can be a (subjective) judgment on how a path is travelled or when a result is achieved. To date, legislative pace has been a subjective opinion – of media, politicians or voters – which refers to either the legislative journey or the timing of its result. Therefore, debates on acceleration and deceleration of law-making tend to be normatively loaded. This provides plenty of space for speculation and argumentation of constraints: Technologically propelled societal and economic acceleration would increasingly lead to desynchronization of the political system and its environment (Laux & Rosa, 2013; Rosa, 2014, 2016). In consequence, it is often concluded that political processes must adapt accordingly. However, a certain inertia of political process is intended and a trait of democratic policy-making. Democratic decision-making takes time. How can a descriptive, quantitative measure for the pace of legislation be defined? The pace of legislation requires two variables: the necessary steps taken in a process and the time passed. The amount of time passed is the duration of each single legislative process respectively. Thus, its start and end points have to be defined. It starts with the first formal procedural step (in the case of Germany: first submission of a bill in the Bundestag or Bundesrat) and it ends with the final decision by the plenary session. One could conceive of other starting or ending points. This paper focusses, however, on the temporality of the “law-making” process. Taking Germany as an example, the formal process in Germany starts either in the Bundestag or the Bundesrat and ends when all negotiations and modifications have been completed. This is the case after the last decision of the legislative actors. At this point in time, the bill has not been countersigned by a Government nor has it been promulgated, published, or entered into force. Still, the lawmaking itself has completed its path. The equivalent of the musical “beats” is measured over the course of legislation with its formal procedural steps. Due to the fact that legislative activity is goal-oriented, all process-steps which bring the legislation to its success – a final decision – have to be counted. This means that all stages have to be counted that are prerequisite for a final decision in the parliament or – in the case of a federal system – in the two chambers. In Germany, for example, these are the submission of a bill in the Bundestag or the forwarding of the Bundestag's bill to the Bundesrat. Furthermore, this includes all plenary decisions as well as those of the involved committees, including the involvement of a mediation committee. Which criteria qualify a procedural step as prerequisite for a decision? A processual event is considered a prerequisite if it results in a formally mandatory or possible step (formally means that constitution or rules of procedure of the participating bodies say so). Formally possible steps are counted only in two cases: 1. if they bring the bill closer to its final vote (i.e. a committee's decision to schedule a public hearing) or, 2. if they necessarily result from a decision (i.e. the scheduled date of a public hearing). In consequence, events that do not contribute to the final vote on the bill are excluded. These are mainly adjournments or removals from the agenda. Thus, they are not part of the second variable or, the legislative “beat rate”. It is important to note that legislative pace does not equal individual workload or personal investment of time. If political actors spend a

v: P

|P| max (P )

min (P )

|P| expresses the number of goal-achieving steps and relates them to time passed. The time passed is determined by subtracting the most recent event max(P) from the oldest event min(P). In the unlikely yet possible event that laws pass within one day, this, coupled with the fact that the temporal resolution is on a daily basis, a special case would need to be considered: v : P ↦ ∞, if max(P) − min (P) = 0. So far, this case has not appeared. As an alternative, one may resolve this by setting the closing time of a law to the next day and then calculate the denominator generally as 1 + max (P) − min (P). All goal-achieving steps are regarded as equal. Fig. 1 gives an example to illustrate this. G1, G2, G3 and G4 are four distinct laws and for reasons of simplicity, of equal duration. There are ten days between the first event and the last event. G1 and G3 each contain seven goal-achieving steps (the longer vertical lines), but G3 also witnessed twelve sessions on which the bill was adjourned (the shorter vertical lines, non-prerequisite events). Both laws have the same legislative pace, expressed by the unit RIM. The same applies to G2 and G4: Both experienced twelve goalachieving steps, but G4 experienced twenty-two additional sessions which ultimately postponed the bill. G2 and G4 also advanced at the same pace. Moreover, G2 and G4 are faster than G1 and G3 by 0.5 points. This shows, only those legislative events which are prerequisite (in relation to time passed) set the pace. 3. A database to measure the pace of legislation The second and more technical question will be answered by using archival documentation from legislation in Germany and then transforming it into a machine-readable database. In concrete terms, semistructured documents which are available as PDF-documents are transformed into a structured representation (JSON format) to measure legislative pace in Germany. To begin with, an overview of the raw data Fig. 1. Measuring legislation's pace.

3

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Fig. 2. Technical workflow to setup the database.

general, these archives document and store every legislative event and their respective documents. Thus, the archives serves as the most comprehensive collection of available documentation on federal legislation (in hard copy form and accompanied by content overviews). The overviews are available online as PDF documents and the content overviews are linked to the DIP website (see i.e. DIP and archives information on FMStG: Deutscher Bundestag, 2008a, Deutscher Bundestag, 2008b). The legislative database presented here transforms this textual information from the parliamentary archives of the German Bundestag. The relevant data on legislative processes were extracted (computer-aided) from the content overviews. Nevertheless, a few gaps remain: the meeting dates from the defence committee, for example, are not disclosed and therefore not properly listed. Similarly, subcommittee events which are only occasionally stored in the materials are also not fully documented. In addition, an allocation of the exact subject-field, for example via “finding aids” (Fundstellennachweis, FNA) or via the “subject-scheme” of the GESTA (Stand der Gesetzgebung des Bundes) is also absent. Fortunately, Juris GmbH has made the FNA and GESTA numbers available for integration into the database. Currently, the database contains all (successful) law-making processes between 1990 and 2017 (12th to 17th election period). As of the writing of this article, rejected bills are not included. The archives' content overviews always have a similar structured and the same type of information: 1. a title page with meta-information on the legislative process (i.e. the title or Bundestag/Bundesrat identification numbers), 2. a list of the committees involved and their role within the legislative process, 3. a listing of the legislative material including date, respective actors, and both the content and result (grouped by general phases and once more sorted by working steps within each of those groupings), and 4. additional material such as press statements. Legislative material and additional material is ordered – by consecutive numbers – along the temporal order of its respective position in the law-making process. This documentation is organised into an implicit tabular form, whereby the entries have an internal hierarchy, like a tree structure. Unfortunately, these documents are inconsistent in terms of their layout and spacing. The raw data from the PDF documents were extracted and transformed in two automated steps. This was followed by a manual cleaning process and both a manual and automated check of the extracted data

source will be given and then followed by a general introduction to the technical requirements for transforming the raw data into a machinereadable representation. The section will close with a more detailed explanation of the data transformation itself in order to highlight the most advanced and technically significant step in the process. As previously mentioned, the general method to obtain the necessary data is also applicable to other cases. Most importantly, the appropriate method depends on the ways in which political institutions provide and archive law-making documentation. However, researchers need to find a way to capture not only key events (like i.e. the Legislative Observatory of the European Parliament provide (European Parliament, 2019)), but each and every event during a legislation to measure its pace. Also during the formal law-making process, much more actors (i.e. committees) are involved as key-events suggest. In most cases, access to the parliamentary archives is necessary because they provide information on all legislative events. There are various examples where data can be found online: Just to give one example, the Austrian Parliament provides a detailed overview on its legislative processes, but more detailed research is necessary to check if all events are listed here (Österreichisches Parlament, 2019). In Germany, the so-called Parlamentsdokumentation of the German Bundestag provides access to a database of legislative material (text, plenary session records, etc.) from all initiated bills through their Documentation and Information System (DIP). It is similar to the documentation in Sweden, whereby Sweden serves an API to use the data (Deutscher Bundestag, 2019; Sveriges Riksdag, 2019). The material accessed through the DIP has, for research purposes, already been made (partly) available and as such, provides an indispensable foundation of legislative transparency while simultaneously informing the public about law-making issues and their temporal aspects. Moreover, the data from the 16th, 17th, and 18th legislative period can be retrieved and exported in XML format from a HTML page. Unfortunately, the information contained in the database is insufficient for analysing legislative pace because the DIP is limited to key-actions, as opposed to the collection of every event (i.e. decisions, amendments, adornment) within each legislative process. However, the German parliamentary archives have content overviews on all passed laws online. The content overviews inform about each and every piece of information one can find within the legislative materials hardcopies, but the information is not machine-readable. In 4

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for consistency with the original PDF-data. Fig. 2 gives an overview of the technical workflow for both the transformation and extraction of the data. The workflow is explained in the subsequent paragraphs. At first, the data contained within the PDF documents were extracted and then stored in CSV format using a cloud based-service (www.pdftables.com). Even though the extraction generated reasonable and automated results, variations in the tabular representation were still present, for example, due to incorrectly identified columns or rows. Moreover, the relationship between the entries is not represented in the CSV. Therefore, a second, and much more complex, step is necessary to rectify the known difficulties resulting from the parsing process. This processing step transforms the data in such a way that the data accurately resembles the original PDF (the relation of information): The structure and the relation between all information within the PDF can be formalised by a schema-language that captures the document structure and types of content. Recently, the JSON format became the de facto standard next to XML for sharing structured machinereadable data. Even though XML is considered to be human-readable, JSON is more concise and easier to work with. For these reasons, JSON is the preferred format. The second step – the transformation – increases robustness in terms of mapping the detected elements with respect to the JSON schema. The general procedure here is to separate the following: 1. the general information of the legislative process dealing with, 2. the committees involved, and 3. the law-making material, which are sorted by consecutive numbers and 4. the additional material. The transformationprocess is based on regular expressions indicating the end, or beginning, of a section and the specific rules that deal with the tabular form and contextual relations. These rules are defined in such a way that they capture all common variations that might occur with respect to columnsize. They can filter out irrelevant information and deal with variations in notation or occurring typos (some of them may be captured, others may be not syntactically distinguished and need a manual, contextual and semantic rectification). Internally, the resulting JSON structure is built up while extracting the information of interest. As such, the law-making material is considered to be the most difficult part of the document. All responsible institutions have to be identified correctly and all consecutive numbers have to be correlated to the right institution. Moreover, additional entries (i.e. enclosures) which do not have their own consecutive number but do relate to one, still need to be assigned. All of the lines which are not addressed, are written to the error output of the process in order to provide manual monitoring and for debugging purposes. The script for doing this extraction from CSV to JSON has undergone various revisions and is now very robust. When the project started, there were many problems, especially with longer content overviews (more than 25 pages) because the accuracy of the CSV format decreases as the number of pages from the original PDF increase. The reason for that is not the quantity of pages because generally speaking, longer documents tend to have longer entries. For example, if an entry continues over several pages, the accuracy in layout detection diminishes. However, now that the script is robust, it can handle content overviews with several pages (the longest were about 100 pages) and thus, CSV with less accuracy. Moreover, the script was tailored for different legislative periods and thus, for different layout and spacing. The schema-conform documents can still be further refined, for example errors that are contained in the original PDF document and issues which occurred at the moment of transformation. Some errors cannot be decided on syntactical level and require contextual embedding or semantical relation for decision. The manual refinement process can be done with two different editors. First, based on the JSON schema, a form-based editor has been generated to handle JSON documents. The second one is a text-based JSON editor. The former ensures that any user is able to create syntactically valid documents while the latter gives warnings to users when they violate the JSON schema during editing. Experienced users are more time efficient when

working with the text-based editor. Both editors are not supposed to translate the above-mentioned PDF documents manually (and from scratch) to a schema-conform JSON document. Instead, an automated approach, that is at least partially capable of creating these documents from their sources, can save copious amounts of time and is therefore economically, the most reasonable option when building an extensive database. Thus, there is an obvious need for the original PDF documents to be automatically transformed. 4. German legislation: parliamentary, federal and partly consensus-based Chapter 2 and 3 clarified the questions on how legislative pace can be quantitatively measured. The following sections apply the conceptualisation of pace by using the aforementioned database. In order to arrive at a better understanding of the practical and scientific relevance of the analysis below, a closer examination of the German political system, its organisation of law-making procedures and the “deliberation-acceleration-debate” in Germany is necessary. When analysing policy-making peculiarities, the institutional constraints of the current system need to be clear. In Germany, we find a parliamentary system of government, a federal structure with strong cooperation between the federal and the state level, and partly consensus-democratic mechanisms of decision-making. With regard to the system of government, it is of central importance that both government and parliament have the right to initiate bills. In Germany, like in the UK, legislative power rests primarily with the government (Martin & Vanberg, 2004, p. 14). Moreover, as the government and its parliamentary factions are “fused” (Støm, 1995, p. 51), the group discipline within the factions is strong (in contrast to presidential systems of government like in the USA). Moreover, government factions usually agree on government bills: The “political dependence between legislative and executive is the defining characteristic of parliamentarism” (Tsebelis, 2002, p. 70). Thus, 50% of all legislative initiatives originate from the government. Among the body of all laws which are passed, the government's share is even higher with 70 to 80% of all passed laws (Deutscher Bundestag & Feldkamp, 2019). However, the consensus-democratic logic of decision-making provides parliamentary opposition with various instruments to actively shape law-making: For example, unlike the parliamentarian system-logic, Bundestag's committees work in detail on draft bills (“working parliament” instead of “speaking parliament”) (Siefken & Schüttemeyer, 2013). Here, each committee is organised according to the size of the Bundestag's factions. Among other rights, a quarter of committee members is sufficient to hold a public hearing. This generally promotes interest inclusion. Moreover, representation of interests is higher in Germany as in majoritarian democracies because of coalition governments and federalistic co-decision-making. The latter one gains visibility – among others – by the Bundesrat's right to initiate federal bills. Moreover, it is a strong player especially within the so called consent procedure of law-making. Long-term political shaping in the best interest of the majority and the protection against (short-term) fringe tendencies is one of the core principles of representative democracy (Runciman, 2018, p. 160). This holds especially true for consensus-democratic systems. Compared to majority democracies, consensus-democratic systems are characterised by an even higher level of interest inclusion and necessary multi-partisan consent (Jung, 2001; Lijphart, 2012). There are simply more political actors who occupy veto- or decision-points in decision-making (Kaiser, 2000, pp. 92–96). In general, it can be said that federal law-making in Germany is characterised by the following: 1. coalition governments with a right to initiate bills, 2. a first chamber (Bundestag) where government parties hold a majority of seats and are fused with the government coalition, and where the opposition (minority factions) have significant rights to participate, 3. and a second chamber (Bundesrat) which is primarily 5

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Fig. 3. German legislative process; abbrevations: BReg = Federal Government, BT = German Federal Parliament, BR = Federal Council, BP = Federal President.

opportunities for participation than consent bills. In the process of passing objection bills, the Bundesrat can either approve the decision made by the Bundestag or it can invoke a mediation committee. The mediation committee seeks to reach consensus between Bundestag and Bundesrat. If, however, the mediation committee fails to deliver consensus and the Bundesrat still dismisses, the Bundestag can then overrule said dismissal. In other words, objection bills can pass without the consent of the Bundesrat. After passing a bill, the Federal Government will sign it, the head of state will promulgate it, and it will become written law once published in the Federal Law Gazette. Consent bills are the opposite because they only pass if both – Bundesrat and Bundestag – are able to reach consensus. This pertains to all laws affecting state finances or state rights, and in particular, their administrative sovereignty. Since 1990, and most notably since the 2006 federalism-reform, the number of consent bills has declined. It was a declared aim of the 2006 reform to make legislation more efficient by – among other measures taken – shrinking the body of consent matters and thus unpacking the “marble cake federalism” (Kropp & Behnke, 2016) a little bit. “Acceleration-optimists” see consent procedures as cumbersome legislature (Höreth, 2007; Kropp & Behnke, 2016; Reutter, 2006; Zohlnhöfer, 2008). Especially with regard to consensus-democratic and federalistic decision-making, the “deliberation-acceleration-debate” in Germany is gaining visibility. Of course, we find this discussion in other democratic countries worldwide, in part due to globalisation and digital transformation. However, due to a higher inclusion of interests and higher number of veto players resulting from the institutional shape of the political system in Germany, perceived high pace of legislation is often seen as diluting the legitimacy and quality of any political decision. Episodes of high law-making density are associated with the parliament's diminishing power of participation and the resulting lack of parliamentary oversight (Borghetto, 2014; Demuth, 2009, p. 98; Laux, 2011; Martin & Vanberg, 2004, p. 25; Rosa, 2014). In contrast, slow policy-making is also seen as an expression of inefficiency (Goetz & Meyer-Sahling, 2009, p. 184) and is often explained by the constraints of the cooperative federalism. What is neglected though, is the important function which federalism plays in Germany. Among others, it divides power between political actors and increases input-oriented legitimacy by an inclusion of (regional) interests and a higher level of consent (Bednar, 2009). The demands of “acceleration-optimists” play into the hands of any government and its parliamentary majority because politicians have an interest in enforcing their policy agendas and not derivations of

involved in making federal decisions. These institutional peculiarities become more apparent when taking a closer look at legislation. Fig. 3 shows the general course of legislation, defined by German Basic Law and the rules of procedure of the participating bodies (Bundesrat, 2007; Deutscher Bundestag, 1949, 2017). The constitutional bodies (Federal Government, Bundestag, and Bundesrat) can declare the formal temporal starting point of a legislative process when initiating a bill. For example, bills initiated by the government are developed in the respective ministry. If the cabinet resolves a ministry draft, the formal process will begin during a so called “first round” where the Bundesrat can comment on the proposal. Usually, the Bundesrat's committees discuss these bills before the plenary assembly decides to vote on a formal comment (the states are represented on every committee by a Member of the Bundesrat). The Bundesrat's statement and the Federal Government's response are then forwarded to the Bundestag. During the first plenary session reading, the Bundestag does not generally discuss the bills –– in broad terms before immediately giving them to the appropriate committees. Each committee takes a decision on the bill at hand, but sometimes committees decide not to take a decision. In preparation for the second plenary session reading, the leading committee summarise the outcomes of the committees' decisions and a voting-recommendation in a written report. As long as the bill is not returned to the committee after the second plenary session reading (which rarely happens), the Bundestag will cast a final vote on the bill during the third reading. Draft laws dealing with international treaties are basically adopted in two sessions. A third reading is possible if the Bundestag decides to do so (§ 78 GO-BT). As previously mentioned, government initiatives generally pass the parliament (an exception is Deutscher Bundestag, 1981). However, if opposition parties within the Bundestag have a majority in the state government, this might be different in the Bundesrat. The members of the second chamber are not directly elected by the people (this is why, correctly spoken, Bundesrat is no “real” second chamber). The state governments send their envoys to the assembly and, thus, the Bundesrat mirrors – abiding to a geometric principle – the coalition governments of the states (Münch & Laufer, 1998, pp. 143–160). Thus, the Bundesrat sometimes acts primarily on behalf of state-interests and in other situations as a partisan body. In the case of oppositional majorities in Bundestag and Bundesrat, this might result in blocking government draft laws (Burkhart & Manow, 2006). The proposition type – consent or objection bill – defines the next procedural steps as well as the extent of consensus and federalistic codecision. Objection bills provide the Bundesrat with fewer 6

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consensus-democratic consent. When the government holds a majority in parliament, it is usually the weaker members within the political system that have a true interest in deliberative consensus. If, for example, the opposition's participation is curtailed by fast legislation, then it is precisely these actors who question the legislative process as a whole. They criticise the lack of time allotted for deliberation, resulting in insufficient quality of political decisions (Riedl, 2015, pp. 96, 111, 133, 135). What is the voter's perspective on these matters though? They expect political solutions: For example, protracted and extensive debates about (future) homeowner subsidies will not help potential homeowners buy a house in the present time. Understandably, they want to receive said subsidies as soon as possible. Hence, according to rationalchoice theory citizens prefer quick political results over the democratic integrity of particular processes in that, the faster individual benefits emerge, the better (Downs, 1957). However, democratic decisionmaking is characterised by the fact that decisions have to take a multitude of individual interests into account. Those who, for example, are unwilling or unable to buy a house might prefer that the money does not flow into subsidies for house building. In general, legislation is temporally structured with multiple loopholes still remaining for political actors. For example, political actors can instrumentalise and leverage this temporal space for their benefit when pushing their agendas (Demuth, 2009; Manow & Burkhart, 2009; Riedl, 2015; Riescher, 1994). Political Science has come up with differing assessments of politicians' possibilities for strategic temporal actions. Some say that political actors have few possibilities to shape legislative temporality because the institutional time-order which defines high functional responsibilities for upholding the legislative process. This “structural burden” relates to the fact that productive legislative processes can only be guaranteed when law-making actors responsibly adhere to the overarching schedule of advancing a bill and passing it (Demuth, 2009, pp. 99–100). Contrary to this argument, the temporality of legislative processes can vary enormously under specific circumstances. This becomes obvious while examining the duration of legislation: Between the years 1990 to 2017, 3135 laws were promulgated and published (Deutscher Bundestag & Feldkamp, 2019, p. 5; Riedl, 2019). However, each bill's legislative run can differ immensely – ranging from three to 1400 days (Riedl, 2018, 2019). This deviates from the idea of having limited possibilities for temporal manoeuvring. Political actors behave well within institutionalised schedules that force either a slowed down or accelerated political processes: “politicians had to learn how to manipulate time, … into something that could be scheduled, anticipated, delayed, accelerated, … and even wasted – but never ignored” (Schmitter & Santiso, 1998, p. 71).

were more or less ignored by media and science: In Germany the speed of the very fast FMStG is well discussed and analysed. Media called it the “law of speed” (Blechschmidt, Bohsem, Braun, Fried, & Höll, 2008). On contrary, other crucial cases are ignored: No broader discussion started about the slowness of the “Gesetz zur Änderung des Artikel 10Gesetzes” (Amending Law for Article-10-Law). Without an overall comparison for legislative pace, scientist focus on the procedures which gain the attention of the media, politicians or voters. Thus, we have a selection bias when analysing the relation between pace and democratic decision-making. The second question addresses another research field of Political Sciences: How does the legislative term effect legislative performance? This is where research on the “political legislation cycle” sets in. In short, “political legislation cycle” means that the election period creates patterns of legislative action. Following the presumptions of political economy, political actors compete for constituency and align their actions accordingly (Brechler & Geršl, 2014): “politicians should supply legislation when doing so has the highest political return” (Lagona & Padovano, 2008, p. 201), or the lowest costs. Respective analyses primarily deal with the question of whether particular policies pass “en masse” at specific points during the election period (Borghetto & Giuliani, 2008; Brechler & Geršl, 2014; Kovats, 2009). In short, it is about the relationship between policy-timing, policy-content, and the number of resolved policies against the backdrop of the legislative period. This includes, for example, such (economic) policies that shortly before an election date are favourable for electorates (Lagona & Padovano, 2008), at least in the view of those who decide for the respective policies. In this logic, “politicians pursue different policies according to the preferences of their electoral platforms” (Brechler & Geršl, 2014, p. 139). According to political cycle theory, they do so shortly before an election date because “time discounting raises the value of votes … makes it now optimal for legislators to satisfying voters' demands, by means of broad based, public goods type of legislation” (Lagona, Maruotti, & Padovano, 2012, p. 2). This implicitly conveys an opportunity for tactics inherent to any legislative period. However, within the German parliamentary system of government, this tactical power rests within the governing majority and not its opposition. There is empirical evidence which shows that political actors are likely to propose bills that are unfavourable for the own electorate at the start of a legislative period (Demuth, 2009, p. 105). Whereas, at the end of the legislative period, one would strive to remain in the constituency's good memories and not feed the campaigns of political opponents. This is according to Machiavelli, who said: “injuries should be done all together, so that the less they are tasted, the less they will offend, and benefits should be granted little by little” (Machiavelli, 2017). Other findings regarding the relation between policy-making and legislative period show that policy goals which enjoy broad approval among a coalition tend to be prioritised: “Initiatives dealing with issues that are more attractive to the cabinet as a whole tend to be introduced earlier on the agenda” (Martin, 2004, p. 457; in contrary: Sagarzazu & Klüver, 2017). Both observations are confirmed by the 16th legislative period of the German Bundestag. During the 16th legislative period, the SPD and CDU/CSU formed a so called “grand coalition” and, with the exception of the final months preceding the Bundestag's elections, a government majority existed in the Bundesrat. Due to an overwhelming majority in the Federal Government and its parliamentary factions, legislative co-decisionmakers were weakened. The power over the parliamentary time agenda, which is often attributed to the parliamentary majority (Manow & Burkhart, 2009), could have played out more easily in terms of using institutional fast lanes for legislation. However, the government and its parliamentarian majority made either moderate use of the fast lanes or were de facto limited in their power to do so. There is some reason to assume the latter.

5. Time to legislate: law-making pace in Germany's 16th election period The following chapter examines the speed at which law-making processes in Germany are moving and gives examples as to why they have a certain pace. Moreover, it will take a closer look at the role that legislative cycles play in legislative pace. Both questions are answered exemplarily for the 16th election period of the German Bundestag. By answering these questions, the previously defined concept of legislative pace (chapter 2) and the data used to quantify it (chapter 3) are applied to the particularities of law-making in Germany (chapter 4). Regarding the first question, one fact is adequately analysed qualitatively: In the midst of urgent crises, democratic systems often speed up legislation, as was the case during the global financial crisis of 2008. However, until now, no objective, quantitative measurement was available for measuring that. It was not possible to relate extraordinarily fast legislative processes in a quantitative way while simultaneously relating it to the overall law-making pace. The discussion has remained qualitative (science) or based on individual judgments (political debates, media, public). Moreover, particular slow processes 7

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Fig. 4. Legislation's pace during the 16th election period (2005–2009).

Fig. 4 shows the distribution of legislative speed during the 16th legislative period according to the starting date of each legislation. The points on the graph represent all 613 legislative initiatives adopted between 2005 and 2009. However, not every single law marks an own dot. If two laws were initiated at the same date and had exactly the same speed, their points would appear on top of each other. The orange points represent the twenty slowest law-making processes and the green points represent the twenty fastest legislatures. The x-axis represents the starting date of a bill and the y-axis shows the speed of the legislation as a result of the number of goal-achieving procedural steps divided by the duration of the process. The two grey vertical lines mark the start and end of the election period. As one can see, some processes started before the legislative period of the 16th Bundestag. These bills were initiated during the previous term. In general, legislative initiatives are subject to discontinuity in Germany. Discontinuity means that the legislative process of each and every bill ends with the election period of parliament. However, this only applies if the bill is already being discussed by the Bundestag before the end of the term. Discontinuity does not apply to those bills that are still in the Bundesrat's so called “first round” at the end of the election period. As previously mentioned, initiatives by the government or Bundesrat have to be first discussed by the Bundesrat (first round) before being considered in the Bundestag. Hence, it is sometimes the case that bills from previous governments find their way into the next legislative period. In the following analysis, legislative pace is expressed by the unit RIM. The pace of the vast majority of legislative processes vary within a limited range: the median is 0.079 RIM and the mean 0.112 RIM. The “Gesetz zur Änderung des Artikel 10-Gesetzes” (Amending Law for Article-10-Law) has the slowest process with an RIM value of 0.006. The core content of this law focused on expanding rights to intelligence services in terms of individual privacy and its relationship to correspondence, mail services, and telecommunications (Article 10 German Basic Law). The last procedural decision on the bill was made by Bundesrat on May 15th, 2009. The FMStG had by far the fastest legislature value: 2.333 RIM. The principal component of the FMStG was a rescue fund of up to 500 billion euros to guarantee the solvency of financial institutions headquartered in Germany. The Bundesrat adopted this law at the 17th of October 2008 (last decision on the bill) and after one day, it came into force. The perceived speed – in particular as it is expressed by media, politicians and qualitative research – of this legislation is consistent with the quantified legislative speed. This observation also indicates

that the operationalisation of data for legislative pace fits with qualitative analyses. The FMStG had an exceptionally fast process, which indicates that the speed of legislation can be massively exploited under specific circumstances. However, this level of acceleration seems to require a truce between the actors involved: Regarding the FMStG, all factions had agreed to suspend usual rules (Rüb, 2015, p. 208). This reflex is pretty common in times of crisis (Scheuerman, 2004, p. 108). The decisionmaking power was delegated entirely to a few executive actors. The parliament voted without concretely knowing the final content of the bill (Rüb, 2015, p. 208). Thus, a federal government and the parliamentarian government factions alone have only limited power when it comes to accelerating legislation. Reassuringly, institutional time-rules and parliamentary practices generally offer reliable “checks and balances”. This indicates the persistence of time-rules, at least in the case of Germany and regarding the 16th legislative term. Here, we need further analyses comparing various election periods. Apparently, institutional time-rules can be leveraged increasingly in times of crisis when (exogenous) shocks exert a pressing urgency on the political actors to deviate from institutional (time) rules while simultaneously abandoning the opposition of parliamentary government factions on the one side and minority factions on the other. In such times, voters often demand solutions to overcome said crises. In general, blocking behaviour of opposition parties decreases in times of crisis, not least because it promises less electoral success. Moreover, it is the governing parties which are especially penalised by less voter support if they do not demonstrate their ability to respond to crises (Zohlnhöfer, 2013, pp. 383–385). This is according to research on so called “focusing events” and political actors ability to schedule the timing of policies in times of urgent crises (Birkland, 1998, 2006; Riedl, 2015). Although this was not always the case, the FMStG shows that hasty legislation can compromise consultation, negotiation, and parliamentary oversight. The second and third fastest legislation, for example, held public hearings and committees made various changes to the initiated drafts. The second fastest law, the “Gesetz zur Sicherung von Beschäftigung und Stabilität in Deutschland” (Law to safeguard employment and stability in Germany, 1.375 RIM), also emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In this example, the Bundesrat made its final decision (on the proposal) on February 20th, 2009. Here a broader parliamentary participation was already applied at the beginning of the legislative process (seventeen committees were involved; for the FMStG 8

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only four were involved and Bundesrat did not held any committee meetings on the bill at all). Moreover, this law was part of the biggest recovery package in the history of Germany. The content of this package was separated into four laws with one of them being the “Law to safeguard employment and stability in Germany”. Like the FMStG, it is wide-ranging in content and financially costly. Whereas the FMStG addressed the financial system, the second fastest law addressed the consequences of the financial and economic crisis. On the one hand it was very fast because it referred directly to the crisis. Moreover, almost all groups got some benefits, but costs were not generated immediately, only for the future (Klenk & Nullmeier, 2010, p. 284). To give a last example, the third fastest law was the “Fünftes Gesetz zur Änderung des Dritten Buches Sozialgesetzbuch und anderer Gesetze” (Fifth law amending the third social security statute book and other laws). Its legislative pace was 0.591 RIM. It passed through the chambers at the very beginning of the legislative period and the Bundesrat decided on the proposal on December 21st, 2005. The law extended labour market policy measures, up to an additional two years, that otherwise would have expired on December 31st, 2005. The coalition agreement of CDU/CSU and SPD already noted to do so, what means that there was a consent between the coalition partners for this amending law. These are but a few of the examples which confirm that coalition governments subordinate conflicting materials and prioritize policies which better fit their common agenda (Martin, 2004, p. 457). By doing so, coalition governments can demonstrate consent and performance. However, it also shows that those policies are not only prioritised but that they pass quickly through the process. Moreover, another aspect is relevant again: There was external pressure to some extend. Without passing the law in December 2005, the respective labour market policy measures would have expired. Regarding coalition content, more examples will be given when focusing on the relation between legislative pace and the election period. After taking a closer look at the three fastest law-making processes, the slowest performers will now receive closer attention: As said before, the “Gesetz zur Änderung des Artikel 10-Gesetzes” was extraordinarily slow. Why? There are two main explanations. Firstly, the election stepped in: The previous government (SPD and Greens, 2002–2005) initiated the bill and forwarded it to the Bundesrat's “first round” on the 27th of May 2005, before the early elections were held on the 18th September 2005. In this example, the proposition was not subject to discontinuity. The Bundestag received the bill for its first round in February 2006, after the newly elected government coalition had already consolidated. Secondly, the draft experienced considerable delays before it was discussed in the Bundestag. The report and decision recommendation of the responsible committee (Committee on Internal Affairs) are dated March 2009. The delay was caused by the fact that other projects in the policy field of internal security had priority: the amendment law for the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) and the contentious issue on data retention. As can be read in parliamentary records, the coalition government aimed to take the results of these two legislatures into account when amending the Article-10-Law, (Deutscher Bundestag, 2009, 23419A23426A). In summary, this means that the slow pace of this particular legislative process was a result of external circumstances (early elections) and majoritarian power to delay the bill: Majority actors wanted to wait until the wording and content from the BKA law could be considered and adopted. A similar situation – bills that wait in the process for a considerable amount of time – becomes visible when taking a look at the second slowest process. The “Gesetz zur Änderung des Masseur- und Physiotherapeutengesetzes und anderer Gesetze zur Regelung von Gesundheitsfachberufen” (Law amending the law on masseurs and physiotherapists and other laws regulating health professions) had a RIM value of 0.010. Here it took about two years until the committees of the Bundestag discussed the bill. The same holds true for the third slowest law (“Forderungssicherungsgesetz”, Law to Secure Contractor

Claims and Improve the Enforcement of Payment Claims). Both laws were initiated by Bundesrat. They needed to wait very long before being negotiated in Bundestag and its committees. In general, laws which are initiated by Bundesrat were much slower than those initiated by Bundestag: Bundesrat initiatives had a mean of 0.049 and a median of 0.030 RIM, Bundestag initiatives had a mean of 0.264 and a median of 0.204 RIM. The difference is not due to the fact that the Bundesrat's bills have a “first round”. The same holds true if the first round is not counted. According to these examples, it appears that bills initiated by the Bundesrat have less priority within the Bundestag's timetable. Thus, delay does not or at least not only originate in the case of divided party majorities in Bundestag and Bundesrat. The measured delays might reflect diverging priorities of both chambers. Obviously, there is a need for further detailed analyses. One explanation might be that delays occur in those cases when the second chamber acts as a representation of state interest (initiating bills which are primary of state interest). In such situations, there could be diverging interests between the federal and the state level. This is interesting for further research because it is generally the second chamber which is viewed as a delayer, especially in the context of consent bills and diverging majorities. However, in the cases described (and the data show more cases alike) it is the Bundestag which does not put the bill on its timetable and, thus, delays it. Legislative tactics and patterns also gain visibility when taking a closer look at relation between legislative pace and the central democratic time unit, the election period of parliament and government (Goetz & Meyer-Sahling, 2009, p. 185). Of course, analyses on legislative cycles need more than one election period to make robust conclusions. However, the analysis below is a first effort to check, if we see cycles with regard to legislative pace in Germany. Nevertheless, further research is essential. Fig. 4 shows a moderate u-curve because there is a tendency at both the beginning and end of the legislative period towards faster legislative processes. Are unpleasant laws fast at the beginning and election gifts quick at the end of the legislative period? Yes and No. Many fast laws at the beginning of the parliamentary term were part of the coalition agreement and cut off financial benefits which have previously been granted (CDU, CSU, & SPD, 2005, pp. 70–71). These are, for example, laws regarding individuals' tax return (i.e. abolition of tax exemption for severance payments, abolition of the special expenses deduction for private tax consultancy costs) and the elimination of the home ownership subsidy. The content of these laws indicate that unpleasant laws are passed quickly after taking office, if there is consent within the coalition. The government and parliamentarian government factions control the main agenda and the temporal order of the legislative agenda within the German political system (Manow & Burkhart, 2009). Of course, they also depend on their voters and try – like parties in general – to fulfil their policy agenda and to act strategically to stay in office. Assumptions of legislative policy cycles support this conclusion because political actors plan their activities along a limited time frame which is organised by election periods and yearly session calendars. According to their analysis of the “riding the wave theory”, Klüver & Sagarzazu concluded that parties “respond to voters by highlighting political issues that are salient in the minds of citizens” (Klüver & Sagarzazu, 2016, p. 382). In other words, parties do “not only listen to voters during election campaigns” (Klüver & Sagarzazu, 2016, p. 395). However, within coalition governments, it is likely that some issues are unfavourable for the electorate of some coalition members. Consequently, it is strategically reasonable to either delay or block the issue as much as possible. Such strategies are not unlikely, even if there is a coalition agreements regarding the issue (i.e. discussion regarding the basic pension in Germany 2019 (Rossbach, 2019). Alternatively, the strategy might be to place the issue on the agenda as soon as possible with the hope that the electorate will forget it until the next election. By measuring the pace of law-making procedures we see evidence not only 9

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for early agenda setting, but also for faster processes. Regarding the end of the legislative term, the faster laws at the very end of the election period are not gifts to the voters, but rather, laws which accompany the Lisbon Treaty. At the end of the 16th legislative period, no gifts to the governing parties' electorate were made visible by an extraordinary pace. This might be due to the fact that – shortly before the next elections, none of the coalition partners were inclined to implement policies that accommodated voters of the (concurring) coalition partner. This is also plausible because the coalition parties did not plan to renew the grand coalition for the 17th legislative period. If this holds also true for other election periods, it would show the consensus-democratic disciplining of strategic, short-hand policy-making in Germany shortly before the next polls. It is a preliminary assumption: coalition governments in parliamentary systems of government will prevent election gifts at the end of a legislative term if they prefer to demonstrate differences between the partners shortly before elections. This assumption, however, does not fit with other findings on legislative cycle where election gifts were given by coalition governments in parliamentary systems (Brechler & Geršl, 2014, p. 152; Lagona & Padovano, 2008, p. 228). Within the 16th election period, the law-making processes of the accompanying laws to the Lisbon Treaty had a pace of 0.571 RIM (fourth fastest processes). The higher pace was probably due to (external) pressure: The first accompanying law to the treaty ended up at the German constructional court. Immediately after the court's decision, the parliamentarian government factions initiated new bills during the parliament's summer break in 2009, which is rather unusual if the governing majority is not in a hurry. In order to send a positive signal, these initiatives should have been decided before the Irish referendum on the EU Treaty. Furthermore, the laws should have been adopted before the upcoming Bundestag's elections (autumn 2009), so that the consolidation phase of the new government would not act as an obstacle to the treaty's enforcement. In summary, the pace of legislative processes is not a yardstick for deliberation, interest inclusion or parliamentary oversight per se. As stated by Martin & Vanberg, we need to know what happens within a given time period (Martin & Vanberg, 2004). However, in times of crisis or if, at least, coalitions have some kind of (exogenous) temporal pressure, political actors can speed up processes. However, proverbial institutional fast lanes can open only if an overwhelming majority agrees to suspend the time-rules of regular procedures of decisionmaking. In such cases, it might be that parliamentary co-decision and control are weakened, but this does not have to be the case. Thus, further research on legislative pace should take a closer look at the question of when and why fast pace and minor co-decision correlate. Last but not least, the effects of the election cycle on legislative pace are only partly visible. During the 16th term, it is not the election gifts that appear to be fast shortly before the next elections. In the beginning, we find fast laws which are based on coalition consent and in the end those which are fast due to a perceived exogenous urgency. Here again, we need further analyses. It is not yet clear if it is primarily the election period which is shaping fast laws in the beginning or coalition consent (Sagarzazu & Klüver, 2017).

needed to answer temporal questions, not only for legislative pace, like this paper illustrated for the 16th election period, but also for questions regarding the comparison of duration or acceleration over decades. Moreover, as the database contains all events – i.e. adornments – a closer look at time strategies to deceleration processes can be taken. Theses aspects will be considered for future work. On the basis of the database at hand, the reasons why bills survive or why they are rejected, cannot be analysed because the database only contains passed laws. Which conclusions can be drawn? In general, some implications are related to the methodical and technical part of the paper while others pertain to the results of law-making pace in Germany. Up until now, just a few efforts to quantify legislative pace have been made. In these cases, research examines either law-making duration or density to measure pace. Unfortunately, these measurements do not fit if one would like to shed light on the “deliberation-acceleration-debate” and the relation between legislative pace and democratic decision-making. With both measurements, all processes remain within the proverbial black box. However, the black box needs to be opened to get the necessary information and to arrive at certain conclusions. The paper at hand opens this box by taking every law-making procedure as a single unit of analysis and then counting the processes' goal-achieving events in relation to the processes' duration. The benefit of this operationalisation of legislative pace is primarily a scientific one: If statements about the concrete procedural design (e.g. co-decision) are to be deduced from legislative speed, then one must also consider what happens within the process. The present definition of legislative pace makes this possible and at the same time provides a solution to the problem posed by having to decide which types of process events should be counted at all. The way in which the necessary data is generated, contributes to science and political praxis: When talking about transparent processes of law-making, we have to see the entire picture and all of its individual elements. The data extraction and transformation shows that we do not need machine-readable data per se because it is possible to generate the data out of qualitative documents. However, at a minimum, documentation needs to be accessible. This is not always the case. In Germany for example, content overviews of legislative processes are available online, but only in German. Moreover, it is not easy to find the information at the first glance because the parliamentary archives do not provide a search screen online. In other countries, similar problems emerge: Detailed documentation on law-making processes are not clearly visible, archival material is not accessible online and neither are their overviews. What we do find in many cases is documentation of legislative key-events, actors, and parliamentary records in the respective national language. Indeed, parliaments, governments, and administrations have all taken meaningful steps in creating greater transparency. However, full online access to complete information is necessary, not only in the respective national language, but at least in English. Until now, archives or parliaments' documentation services provide either no or just some basic information in English. To find the data of interest, it could be helpful to link search screens for existing law-making documentation and materials on parliamentary websites that provide information on legislative work. Western democratic parliaments generally provide information on their websites on “how legislation works”. There should be a link to detailed information for all passed, dismissed, and pending procedures. In general, the procedure to build a database for the sake of analysing legislative temporality is applicable to other cases beyond Germany. However, researchers need to locate the necessary information and extract them. It would be ideal, for example, if governments, parliaments and administrations provided an API for their data. Sweden, for example, provides an API and, moreover, data within various formats (among others: CSV, JSON, XML). Unfortunately, the data provided does not always contain all of the law-making events which occurred during the process.

6. Conclusion The paper at hand aimed to clarify two things: Firstly, to develop a measurement and database for analysing legislative pace quantitatively. Secondly, to apply the conceptualisation of pace by using the database described and hence to take a closer look at law-making pace in Germany. By doing so, the “deliberation-acceleration-debate” in Germany can be underpinned with both objective and quantitative data. The aforementioned database provides the necessary groundwork from which to examine the temporal patterns and oddities of German federal legislature. Furthermore, it contains the necessary information 10

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The analysis of legislative pace in Germany contributes to democratic law-making in general:

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1. The German case shows that the first chamber (Bundestag) delays bills initiated by the second chamber (Bundesrat). However, if a federalistic organisation of state, in conjunction with strong cooperation between the territorial levels is taken serious, than this does not have to be the case. Here a stricter institutionalisation of time-rules could help. For example, the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag does not set any time limit to start the negotiation of Bundesrat's propositions. Moreover, in federal systems, the co-decision of second chambers are sometimes viewed as decelerators. At least, second chambers should communicate the delaying behaviour of first chambers. However, in countries were the progress of a bill can be tracked, delaying behaviour is easier visible. 2. When facing urgent crises, lawmakers can speed up legislation enormously and parliamentary co-decision and control can decrease. However, this seems to be the case, primarily when overall consent is extraordinarily high. The higher the consent, the higher the pace, and (maybe) lower the parliamentary oversight, is an assumption the analysis draws. This assumption needs deeper and more comprehensive research. 3. The relation between legislative pace and the election period indicates that individual rational behaviour at the end of the election cycle is less significant in Germany. This might be due to coalition governments that maybe discipline “vote seeking by law-making” shortly before the next polls. Here as well is a starting point for further research. Data statement The database which has been derived by the author is a collection of tree-structured dictionaries stored as JSON files. At the time of writing this article, these files were not publicly available. However, all data does originate from the issued and published legislative material indexes for every adopted law per the parliamentary archives of the German Bundestag. Data used in this paper can be made available on request in CSV format. Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. References Aidt, T. S., & Mooney, G. (2014). Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902-1937. Journal of Public Economics, 112, 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.01.003. Albright, E. A. (2011). Policy Change and Learning in Response to Extreme Flood Events in Hungary: An advocacy coalition approach. Policy Studies Journal, 39(3), 485–511. Barber, M., & Schmidt, S. (2018). Electoral Competition and Legislator Effectiveness. American Politics Research, 47(4), 683–708. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1532673X18760527. Bednar, J. (2009). The Robust Federation: Principles of Design. Political economy of institutions and decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Presshttps://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511819445. Birkland, T. A. (1998). Focusing Events, Mobilization, and Agenda Setting. Journal of Public Policy, 18(1), 53–74. Birkland, T. A. (2006). Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events. American governance and public policy series. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press. Blechschmidt, P., Bohsem, G., Braun, S., Fried, N., & Höll, S. (2008, October 18). Das Gesetz der Geschwindigkeit. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3. Bohsem, G. (2008, October 18). Eine kaum mehr erwartete Leistung. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4. Bohsem, G. (2009, March 17). Demokratie im Härtetest. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4. Borghetto, E. (2014). Legislative processes as sequences: Exploring temporal trajectories of Italian law-making by means of sequence analysis. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 80(3), 553–576. Borghetto, E., & Giuliani, M. (2008). The pace of the legislative process: A diachronic analysis of the Italian legislature (1996–2006): Paper prepared for the annual conference of the

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Jasmin Riedl is a senior researcher at the Professur für Politikwissenschaft (Comparative Politics) at the Bundeswehr University Munich. She did her doctoral degree in political sciences. She wrote her doctoral monography on policy-timing. Currently, she is working on her postdoctoral degree (habilition) on the temporality of German legislature. She built a database which made every single legislative process step within German legislature machine-readable for the first time. Her research and publication interests include transparency of lawmaking, computationl social sciences, legislative temporality, party politics and internal security.

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