Abstract
Over the years there have been several studies of oversight in the context of the US Congress; much less attention, however, has been paid to the study of oversight in parliamentary systems. Comparative studies spearheaded by several international organisations in recent years offer a different perspective of legislative oversight. They emphasise a new concept, oversight potential, and suggest that strengthening this potential would help promote good governance, fight corruption and improve democracy. This study examines the concept of oversight potential in a pure parliamentary system - the Israeli Knesset. It shows that low potential impairs actual oversight in a parliamentary system that uses mainly police-patrol techniques as defined by the 1987 work of McCubbins and Schwartz. It suggests that increasing oversight potential will help improve the oversight outputs of the legislature. Finally, it develops a bottom-up legislative approach for measuring oversight potential, and by doing so it enriches this neglected field of research.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 525-544 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | The Journal of Legislative Studies |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2011 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Israel
- Knesset
- legislative oversight
- oversight potential
- parliamentary committees
- parliamentary questions
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Political Science and International Relations
- Law