Brunner, Martin, 1980- Parliaments and legislative activity : motivations for bill introduction / Martin Brunner. -- Wiesbaden : Springer VS, c2013. -- (Studien zur Neuen Politischen Ökonomie). -- Scope and content: "This study aims at solving the puzzle of why opposition parties or government backbenchers propose legislation even though the chance to influence policy outcomes in this manner is almost nil. I argue that instead of influencing policies directly most parliamentary bills serve different purposes: They are used in order to signal own policy positions and to show alternatives to government policies. Or they point at topics that rank high on the public agenda but low on the government agenda. They can also be a means for individual MPs to build up an independent personal profile. Using formal models and comparative empirical evidence from Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom this study shows that parliamentary initiatives of opposition and backbenchers are not simply "much ado about nothing", but the result of vote-seeking motivations."--Cover. -- ISBN : 978-3-531-19611-4 brož. *2Studien zur Neuen Politischen Ökonomie0 kompetence parlamentu * parlament * zákonodárná iniciativa * politická opozice * politická strana * Evropa