This paper investigates time variations in the implementation of legislative requests by the Swiss government. Combining the literature on executive–legislative relations with findings from implementation research, we focus on the procedural level and argue that implementation delays can occur because the government does not want to, cannot or should not implement faster. We test these mechanisms using a unique database, which enables us to analyse a systematic collection of all legislative requests that have been approved between the parliament’s 2003 winter session and its 2018 spring session. Our results show that the considerable variation in the time needed for the legislative mandates’ implementation is mostly related to the Swiss government’s inability to transpose faster, i.e. to factors like highly busy administrative offices or complex and controversial issues. In contrast, there is no support for the ideas that the government “shall not” or “does not want to” transpose faster.

本文调查了瑞士政府执行立法要求的时间变化。将有关行政立法关系的文献与实施研究的结果相结合，我们将重点放在程序层面，并认为实施延迟的发生可能是因为政府不想、不能或不应该更快地实施。我们使用一个独特的数据库测试这些机制，这使我们能够分析在议会 2003 年冬季会议和 2018 年春季会议之间已批准的所有立法请求的系统集合。我们的研究结果表明，立法授权执行所需时间的显着差异主要与瑞士政府无法更快地进行转换有关，即 诸如高度繁忙的行政办公室或复杂且有争议的问题等因素。相比之下，政府“不应该”或“不想”更快地转换的想法没有得到支持。