Making Sense of Opposition

Opposition has several meanings and the term is used in different contexts. Our focus is parliamentary opposition. Utilising King's five modes of executive–legislative relations, this article draws out the different usages of the term and–drawing on the contributions to this volume–advances a number of propositions as to the consequences of opposition. The Opposition and individual opposition parties are significant actors in exposing government to public challenge and oversight, but least effective in affecting outcomes of public policy. Opposition is most effective as a veto player in the intra-party and inter-party modes of executive–legislative relations and most effective in contributing to policy formation in the cross-party mode. Opportunities for further research, especially where the potential for institutional opposition relationships is multi-dimensional, are identified.