Philippe Mastronardi

In the course of a major reform wave following the"new public management" as a model, Swiss parliaments at the state and local level have undergone a far-reaching change process. Most of the intellectual and preparatory work was done in specialized parliamentary committees. We found significant differences in the way parliamentary committees in Switzerland organized the specific contexts to change their governance systems, and these differences had a visible impact on the success of the reforms. Our data show that parliamentary committees' process designs were important to their functioning, especially in a change process. A constructive collaboration culture between the parliament and the cabinet was key to successful reforming of these two respective bodies.