‘Going institutional’ to Overcome Obstruction: Explaining the Suppression of Minority Rights in Western European Parliaments, 1945–2010

When and why do parliamentary majorities in Europe suppress minority rights? We argue that such reforms are driven by substantive policy conflict in interaction with existing minority rights. Government parties curb such rights if they fear minority obstruction due to increased policy conflict and a minority-friendly institutional status quo. We find empirical support for this claim using comparative data of all reforms in thirteen Western European parliaments since 1945. Curbing of minority rights is significantly more likely under conditions of heightened policy conflict and these effects are stronger the more the institutional status quo favors opposition parties. Contrary to frequent claims on consensual rule changes from single-country studies in Europe, our findings demonstrate the importance of competitive strategies in explaining institutional reform in European parliaments. The conditional impact of the status quo provides interesting theoretical links to historical institutionalist arguments on path dependence.