Time to Legislate A Database to Analyse the Temporal Dynamics of the German Legislature

摘要

What are the temporal features of the German legislature? How quickly do lawmakers act and how fast is the acceleration of policy-making processes? To this day political science has not succeeded in analysing these time-related questions concerning the legislature and the time-strategic actions of political actors comprehensively and quantitatively. So far a vast, ample database comprising said information does not exist. Such a lack seems surprising as time as a resource in policy-making is extraordinarily relevant and the collection of necessary information on the German legislature is at least technologically possible today. This paper therefore puts its scientific focus on above-mentioned methodological challenges. It points out how important temporality is to the research on decision-making processes and it presents a database which will list every single procedural step within any given legislative process. The foundation for all raw data is formed by the entire body of indexes of legislative material, issued and published by the Parliamentary Archives of the German Bundestag for every law respectively. All requested pieces of information are obtained by the means of a computer-assisted read-out. Thereby and for the first time, research on the temporal dimensions of policy-making - its duration, pace and acceleration - will become adequately accessible to analysis.