More Scrutiny, More Harmony? the Early Warning System and Executive-Legislative Relations at Subnational Level

This paper analyzes in comparative perspective to what extent the different regional parliaments with legislative powers use the Early Warning Mechanism and Political Dialogue and tests different explanatory factors. It argues that executive-legislative relations at the subnational level and the position of the regional executive in the domestic government arrangements are an essential explanatory factors for these differences, as the limited resources available to regional parliaments make them dependent on the support of the executive. The paper therefore uses a novel research design that measures legislative activity in conjunction with executive activity in European the EWS and political dialogue that allows it to measure the impact of the type of federalism, the domestic subsidiarity procedure, party politics, resources and executive-legislative relations on the level of activism of regional parliaments.