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It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the US Congress, legislative‒executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal‒agent framework, this collection scrutinises the conventional wisdom of ‘executive autonomy’ in foreign affairs, indicating that even though parliaments have arguably become more involved in foreign and security policy over time, any notions of parliamentarisation need to be treated with caution. While expectations of consensus in the name of the national interest continue to play an important role in foreign policy decision-making, the papers highlight the role of party-political contestation structuring parliamentary debates and votes in this increasingly politicised issue area. This introductory paper introduces the analytical framework and hypotheses guiding the contributions in this collection, summarises their main findings and suggests avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how democratic legislatures oversee the military, using Canada as a case. The paper argues that the tendency to engage in intrusive oversight versus reactive oversight is shaped by institutional structures and party preferences. Canadian institutional structures discourage parliamentary defence committees from engaging in intrusive oversight of the armed forces to achieve policy influence, and encourage opposition parties to focus on reactive oversight efforts that complement their vote-seeking preferences. Vote-seeking, the paper argues, incentivises opposition parties to be public critics of the government’s handling of military affairs, rather than informed but secretive monitors of the armed forces. The paper then addresses a key case where the opposition was able to use an exceptional constitutional power of the House of Commons to force the executive to disclose classified information regarding the military: detainee transfers by the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan. This case highlights the trade-offs that parliamentarians face when they demand information to perform more intrusive oversight of the armed forces. This suggests that party preferences are a significant, yet understudied, aspect of how legislatures vary in their oversight of the military. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his later writings Peter Mair expressed strong and ever more urgent concerns over the state of party politics and the future of representative politics itself. This paper uses Mair’s thesis to frame a discussion about the state of our representative system of democracy. It starts by setting out his arguments on party and democratic failure. It then considers the question of whether the evidence supports such a perspective, or whether in fact there are signs of adaptability and change. This in turn leads to a discussion about the reform agenda in established representative democracies, with particular attention to the potential of ‘mini-publics’ in enabling a role for ordinary citizens in debates over constitutional reform. The paper concludes by arguing that this reform agenda provides evidence of democracies being reconfigured rather than stripped down. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the institutional rules and the decision-making process in the European Union before and after the Lisbon Treaty. What challenges did the EU respond to that ultimately led to the Lisbon Treaty? What institutional changes were made? What has been the outcome of these changes? If we look at these results through various European integration theory lenses, what can we learn? To address these questions the paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces the issues. The second examines the challenges to which Lisbon was supposed to be the answer. Section three examines the institutional and decision-making changes that were made by means of the Lisbon Treaty. Section four offers an assessment as to what effects the Lisbon changes have had to date. The fifth offers an analysis that draws on European integration theories to make sense of the findings. The final section concludes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates changes in the French parliament’s role in the control of military missions, introduced by the 2008 constitutional reform, and examines their effects on practices of parliamentary control and legislative‒executive interactions. The paper analyses how the constitutional changes have developed; the attitudes of parliamentarians towards control; the knowledges they relate to legislative-executive relations; and the post-reform practice of parliamentary control of French military missions. Although legislative‒executive relations with regard to military missions have been recalibrated and formalised, they have not fundamentally challenged the executive’s lead. Reasons include a strong belief in the need for effectiveness, acceptance of the institutional order, and a foreign policy culture of executive leadership. French parliamentarians value their new powers, but mostly do not seek their further extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU‒US strategic partnership impacts on legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the empowerment of the European Parliament over the years is due to its special role in providing a bridge connecting the public’s policy preferences on the one hand, and the legislative behaviour of elected officials on the other. As the only popularly elected EU institution, successive treaty reforms increased the EP’s political power. These reforms were accompanied by an explicit desire to see citizens’ involvement in EU politics increase and, in turn, provide support and legitimacy to the European integration project. This paper models MEPs’ track records on various political issues, and assesses the extent to which their output is in line with the positions their party campaigned on and the policy preferences expressed in public opinion. The findings suggest that there are discrete patterns of representation, where some parties are more inclined toward greater congruence with their selectorate and manifesto than others. Furthermore, the degree of congruence varies across policy issues and is shaped, to a large extent, by institutional arrangements and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on effects of the Lisbon Treaty on the coherence of EU behaviour at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). It theorises the EU’s presence at the UNGA in terms of a principal–agent model wherein the EU and its entire membership are considered to constitute a collective principal while the actors playing the role of the agent have varied in different phases. It then investigates, in the light of this framework, the voting cohesion of EU member states at the UNGA between 1993 and 2012, paying particular attention to differences before and after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The statistical analysis shows that EU voting cohesion has been increasing in general during the last decade, but the level of cohesion is not (yet) significantly different post-Lisbon as compared to pre-Lisbon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do some countries rely more heavily on equities markets, while others depend more on commercial banking? Analyses of the origins of contemporary capitalist institutions usually look back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, this paper demonstrates that financial institutions -- regarded as central to the way capitalist systems are organised -- changed radically in the mid-twentieth century in many countries. This paper argues that government partisanship in formative moments of institutional (re)creation can better account for their modern manifestation than prominent alternative explanations. A new measure of partisanship that is sensitive to these institutional transformations is presented. Case studies on Germany and France offer evidence consistent with this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The move from territorial defence to ‘wars of choice’ has influenced the domestic politics of military interventions. This paper examines the extent to which both the substance and the procedure of military interventions are contested among political parties. Regarding the substance, our analysis of Chapel Hill Expert Survey data demonstrates that across European states political parties on the right are more supportive of military missions than those on the left. On the decision-making procedures, our case studies of Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom show that political parties on the left tend to favour strong parliamentary control whereas those on the right tend to prefer an unconstrained executive, although with differences across countries. These findings challenge the view that ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’ and contribute to a better understanding of how political parties and parliaments influence military interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislatures in separation of powers systems like the US are often portrayed as having far greater capabilities and willingness to change defence policy than are parliaments in Westminster systems. This paper uses principal‒agent models and hypotheses on legislative will to review the role of defence committees in the US Congress and Britain’s parliament during each country’s most recent, significant change in civil‒military relations. Congressional committees drafted the 1986 Goldwater‒Nichols Act over the objections of the president, fundamentally changing US civil‒military relations. We would expect the British House of Commons to be at the opposite end of the spectrum, unable and unwilling to act without the prime minister’s blessing. At first glance, this is indeed what happened during Britain’s 2011 Defence Reform effort. Parliament took no concrete, independent action. A closer examination, however, suggests that parliamentary committees helped set the agenda for the 2011 reforms. These results point to the need to carefully assess both legislative capabilities and will when examining the role of legislatures in foreign policy, as well as the indirect means by which parliaments affect security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This reveals a gap between the normative theoretical assessment of EU politicisation and empirical sociological analysis of this phenomenon. To reconcile this discrepancy, this paper develops three actually-existing trajectories of politicisation: the remote conflict, the international conflict and the domestic conflict. Each trajectory carries unique challenges and opportunities to the democratic legitimacy of the Union. It is argued that the domestic conflict trajectory is most promising from a normative democratic perspective. Paradoxically, this does not necessarily imply a renationalisation of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite its central importance for the implementation of EU social policy, the issue of member state enforcement of European regulations has attracted little academic attention. This paper analyses changes in national enforcement systems and horizontal cooperation between them by comparing labour inspectorates in the EU-15 member states over time (2000 versus 2010). Starting from the assumption that, as administrations, enforcement systems are strongholds of national sovereignty, it is argued that member states’ interest in creating a level playing field and in enabling free movement in accordance with the ‘four freedoms’ should nevertheless bring about change. The results show insufficient enforcement capacity overall, but also that important changes have taken place regarding the coordination, steering and pressure capacity of national labour inspectorates, and also regarding cooperation amongst them. This points to the emergence of horizontal cooperation as a distinct feature of the European Administrative Space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the importance of socio-economic and religious factors in explaining the long-term electoral decay of the dominant party in Italy’s so-called First Republic – the Catholic DC – and the emergence of the regional autonomous Lega Nord (Northern League) from the DC’s remains. On the basis of a unique data set, this paper examines the effects of modernisation and secularisation of the DC electoral decline with particular reference to the change over time of the religious and rural constituencies, i.e. the two main DC reservoirs of votes; and the attraction of former DC voters to the Lega Nord, particularly in the old DC territorial bastion of support, characterised by high religiosity and concentration of farmers. The research demonstrates the relevance and persistence of structures profondes such as religion and rural property in electoral behaviour over a long span of time ranging from 1953 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why are some governments able to undertake controversial policy reforms and others are not? Conventional wisdom argues that single-party majority governments are best able to implement reforms because there are fewer veto actors within the government that can block the reforms. However, these accounts fail to consider the veto power of societal actors and particularly of trade unions, which can stall reform even in the presence of a unified executive. This paper argues that controversial reforms require broad societal and, consequently, political consensus, which are easier to achieve under minority governments or governments of broad coalitions. Evidence from 22 OECD parliamentary democracies over 35 years shows that minority and large coalition governments have been more successful in reducing social security contributions and pensions than narrower majority governments. This is especially true in countries where trade unions are militant and often resort to industrial action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How well do electoral competition, ideological divides and territory-based cleavages explain the strategies of administrative-territorial reform chosen by political parties in Poland? The role of these logics is explored in the creation of regions and regional self-governments (1999), local electoral reform (2002), rules of adopting regional development projects (2006) and the creation of metropolitan regions (2008). The paper provides evidence supporting the significance of vote- and office-seeking strategies, the rise of a national conservative opposition to decentralisation associated with the weakening of the post-communist divide, and parties representing distinct eastern and western constituencies. Since its creation, subnational government has become more dominated by state-wide parties and has stabilised the emerging bloc party system on the central level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to Gamson’s Law, the allocation of cabinet portfolios in parliamentary democracies is proportional to the legislative seat shares of the governing parties. However, portfolio allocation departs systematically from perfect proportionality. This paper proposes a theory of portfolio allocation that seeks to explain the variance in proportionality across different bargaining situations. It argues that the degree to which the coalition formation process is characterised by uncertainty and complexity influences portfolio allocation. In uncertain and complex bargaining situations, parties that otherwise would be in an advantageous bargaining position will have a difficult time exploiting their bargaining advantage. As a result, portfolio allocation in such circumstances will be closer to proportionality. These patterns are observed in data on coalition formation in 14 West European parliamentary systems in the period 1945–1999. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many studies of the policy process in Spain use distinct periods as an organising framework for analysis, and this approach implies that the process itself changes according to the different periods in question. However, we argue that this 'periodisation' approach fails to draw an appropriate distinction between policy choices and outcomes, on the one hand, and the policy process on the other. Whereas different policy choices may of course have very different consequences, these choices may not result from different processes: the outcomes should be distinguished from the causes. In seeking to explain the policy process, as opposed to policy choices and outcomes, this paper emphasises the need to look at institutional factors - in particular, the institutional design of contemporary Spanish democracy and Spain's economic model as the core explanatory variables. Only in this way can an account be provided which accommodates both core stable characteristics of the policy process as well as short-term variations in policy choices and outcome both across time and across different sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the tensions Peter Mair identified between responsible and responsive government in relation to the constraints and opportunities of an internationally integrated and instituted economy. Drawing on the example of the short period of democratic stability and its subsequent breakdown in the Weimar Republic, the article argues that in Weimar Germany’s ‘golden twenties’, governments could bridge the gap between responsibility – defined as a commitment to deep international integration – and responsiveness to its citizens mainly through the availability of cheap credits. With the onset of the Great Depression, responsible government became tantamount to increasingly drastic austerity policies. These policies were not only an economic failure, they also made the gap between responsible and responsive government unbridgeable. The article also shows how a similar cycle of good and bad times, with similar consequences with regard to the tensions between responsible and responsive government seem to have occurred in the crisis that has been affecting the Eurozone since 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the paradox of constructive ambiguity. Based on a focused, longitudinal comparison of the European Union’s energy and defence policies, it analyses the role played by strategies of ambiguity in European integration. Ambiguity is found to be an attractive strategy for political entrepreneurs when member state preferences are heterogeneous and the EU’s legal basis is weak. It is likely to be effective, however, only if it is embedded in an institutional opportunity structure – that is, a formal-legal context – that entrepreneurs can fold into their strategic repertoire of ideas. While ambiguity can be strategic in circumstances where clarity would create strong opposition, it is not sufficient to entrench a European policy if it does not rest on an institutional basis. This suggests that European political entrepreneurs should be wary of relying on coalition building by ambiguity only. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, more than 60 per cent of governments in Central and Eastern Europe have terminated prematurely. This article argues that the character of party system development in the region has facilitated the emergence of a polarised pattern of party competition and that competition for government now takes place in distinct ideological blocs. Parties seek to form governments within these blocs but not across them and therefore there is little incentive to defect from a governing coalition due to the lack of viable alternatives. As a result, more polarised party systems produce more durable governments. The empirical evidence shows that polarisation and ideological diversity of the government are significant indicators of government duration in Central and Eastern Europe. Ideologically compact governments formed within narrow blocs in the party system survive longer than ideologically diverse coalitions that emerge from less polarised party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To what extent does political practice under the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015) reflect a ‘parliamentary prerogative’? From a formal-institutional point of view one should not expect substantial parliamentary influence in Britain. Yet recent developments suggest the emergence of a new convention. Examining parliamentary debates during the run-up to the votes on Libya and Syria, this contribution shows that the scope and contents of this convention remain contested. Specifically, there is disagreement about the kind of operations that ought to be exempt from the rule, questions of parliamentary procedure that favour the executive and, crucially, the proper timing of substantive votes. Nonetheless, parliament has emerged from the vote on Syria as an informal veto player on decisions regarding war involvement. However, whether MPs will exercise their veto power in prospective cases will depend on the preference distribution in the legislature and the nature of the proposed deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis investigates the role of historical analogies in the influence that parliaments have in foreign policy. Our empirical focus is the UK Parliament’s unusual opposition to the Prime Minister on UK involvement in Syria in 2013. The vote challenges many conventional expectations about the role of parliament in security affairs. Important in this vote were lessons learned and strategically used from UK participation in the intervention of Iraq in 2003. This argument is developed theoretically based on research on historical analogies: parliaments, ‘learn’ (primarily negative) lessons about past foreign policy events which guide parliamentary preferences and procedures and can enhance parliaments’ role in subsequent foreign policy. The article contributes to research on analogies by extending the logic to lessons on process. This use of precedents can offer more structurally oriented perspectives that translate critical junctures into reforms in procedures and policy-making practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the parliamentary elections in Greece that were held in January and September 2015. Topics discussed include the two consecutive victories of the Coalition of Radical Left (SYRIZA) political party in Greece, the June 2012 parliamentary election in the country which brought together Greek political parties including New Democracy, Panhellenic Socialist Movement and the Democratic Left, and the economic downturn faced by the country.

Why do political parties prioritise some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasise policy issues on which they have an advantage in order to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory argues instead that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are salient in the minds of citizens. This study sheds new light on the selective issue emphasis of political parties by analysing issue attention throughout the entire electoral cycle. On the basis of a quantitative text analysis of more than 40,000 press releases published by German parties from 2000 until 2010, this article provides empirical support for the riding the wave theory. It shows that political parties take their cues from voters by responding to the issue priorities of their electorate. The results have important implications for political representation and the role that parties play in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the Eurozone crisis has contributed to Europeanisation trends in the domestic politics of EU member states, it has not to the same extent triggered citizen mobilisation in EU-level democratic procedures. Theories that treat politicisation as an undifferentiated phenomenon tend to miss this important distinction. This article suggests that the weakness of supranational citizen mobilisation is linked to factors that restrict the citizens’ receptiveness to EU-related messages: limited knowledge of the EU and a weak sense of political efficacy, a discursive framing that conceptualises the EU as a consortium of member states rather than a supranational entity, and attributions of responsibility for the crisis that de-emphasise the role of EU policies. These factors constitute cultural opportunity structures that influence politicisation patterns; they imply that politicisation is, under present conditions, more likely to result in a renationalisation than in a supranationalisation of EU politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The critical 2010 federal elections left the Flemish nationalists (N-VA) the dominant political party in the north and the francophone Socialists (PS) in the south of the country, unable to find common ground on the issue of devolution. It took no fewer than 541 days – a world record – to form a government rallying Christian Democrats (CD&V and cdH), Liberals (Open VLD and MR), and Socialists (sp.a and PS). The 2014 federal elections marked a change in tone, being fought on socio-economic terms, but confirmed the stalemate nonetheless. The N-VA made further inroads, winning 29.8 per cent of the vote in the Dutch-speaking community. The governing parties held firm, however; the PS in particular remained the largest political formation in the south, winning 31.0 per cent of the vote in the French-speaking community. Moreover, on 25 May 2014 federal elections, regional elections in Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels (and the German-speaking community), and European elections were held simultaneously, further raising the stakes in the complex, interconnected, government formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although macro-level analyses of EU policy outputs are common, few empirical studies have measured the long-run evolution of the Union’s energy policy sector. This article provides an overview of European energy legislation to show past sectoral developmental trends, current characteristics and potential future directions. During this period, EU energy policy has evolved sequentially to encompass multiple sectors, including coal, nuclear energy, oil and gas production, energy conservation, market harmonisation and climate change concerns. Moreover, by measuring the velocity of legislative output as an indicator of policy activity, the overall picture is one of gradual incremental growth centred broadly on several episodes of shallow, delayed action punctuated equilibrium that has resulted in an uneven mixture of national and supranational decision-making. Expansion is perhaps set to continue along a similar path as a common EU climate–energy policy emerges, although some constraints are evident. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Finnish electoral system has recently been changed to slightly increase proportionality, but nothing has been done to make cabinet alternatives more ‘identifiable’ before the election. This outcome poses a major puzzle for one important theoretical approach to electoral system change. This approach sees normatively ‘unbalanced’ systems as vulnerable to reform and would have expected a significant increase in the pre-electoral identifiability of competing cabinet options. The article explains the Finnish case by embedding it in a comparative model of normative tradeoffs in democratic design. Based on Finnish case evidence and a statistical analysis of 100 elections in 32 democracies (from 2001 to 2011), the article argues that the type of democracy exemplified by Finland is not normatively unbalanced. In particular, the lack of pre-electoral identifiability is compensated for by an unconstrained multidimensionality of partisan preferences. While it may be true that normatively balanced designs are more stable, there is more than one way to be balanced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To date, electoral systems are conceptualised as setting an ‘upper bound’ to, or defining a ‘carrying capacity’ for, the number of parties or lists, and their effect is assessed at the district level. This article adds to the empirical study of electoral systems by analysing a vast database of district-level electoral returns. The argument focuses on the demand and supply of viable electoral candidates, which are conditioned by the interplay of strategic entry (by the party rank and file) and strategic voting (by the electorate). Drawing on a database of almost 18,000 electoral districts taken from 15 West European countries, the empirical analysis yields a number of insights: most specifically, (1) district magnitude only becomes binding and effective when a higher social demand meets a lower carrying capacity of the electoral district; (2) the provision of upper tiers undermines the emergence of Duvergerian equilibria within the primary electoral districts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do electoral pressures provide an explanation for why governments offer pacts to unions and employers rather than acting through legislation when faced with the need to pass potentially unpopular reforms to welfare policies, wages, and labour markets? This article addresses that question by analysing whether governments’ pursuit of pacts affects their vote share and increases the probability that they gain re-election for 16 West European countries between 1980 and 2012. It is found that the presence of social pacts has a significant and positive effect on incumbents’ vote shares at the next election and also results in a higher probability of re-election. These results are conditioned by government type: While all types of governments benefit electorally from pacts, the electoral penalties from the pursuit of unilateral legislation on policy reforms harm single-party majorities the most, minority governments moderately, and coalition majorities the least. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article argues that many of the issues that are causing trouble in the eurozone today had long been debated, but not solved, prior to the beginning of the so-called euro crisis. Three thematic examples are used to show this: the decade-long discussion surrounding economic convergence and the question of a transfer union; the dispute over the alleged use of financial mechanisms as a substitute for addressing structural economic weaknesses; and the development of European banking regulation and supervision before the creation of the single currency. Finally, the article argues that even though some of the features of today’s crises – in particular the debt and deficit issues – were outlined at the time of the euro’s introduction, some important recent developments such as the various new operations undertaken by the European Central Bank were not. This should command modesty and cautiousness in the analysis of the evolution of the euro crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the role played by varieties of capitalism in the euro crisis, considering the origins of the crisis, its progression, and the response to it. Deficiencies in the institutional arrangements governing the single currency are linked to economic doctrines of the 1990s. The roots of the crisis are linked to institutional asymmetries between political economies. Northern European economies equipped to operate export-led growth models suitable for success within a monetary union are joined to southern economies whose demand-led growth models were difficult to operate successfully without the capacity to devalue. The response to a tripartite crisis of confidence, debt, and growth is explained in terms of the interaction of institutions, interests, and ideas, and its importance for the future of European integration is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that the EU and, above all, the eurozone are facing not one crisis – an economic and fiscal one – but three: an economic crisis, a crisis of institutions, and a crisis of demography. These crises are not simultaneous; they are overlapping and self-reinforcing, and there is a high degree of feedback across all three crises. Economically, the euro inflated economic growth and government revenue in the peripheral economies, giving those member states a false sense of their economic prospects. Institutionally, mechanisms were too weak at the EU level to prevent a dangerous escalation of asset (above all house) prices and too fragmented to confront the crisis through an immediate and decisive plan that would provide calm to the markets. Demographically, Europe’s economic and fiscal problems are and will increasingly be exacerbated by the continent’s demographic situation and its projected development, especially in southern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the situation of migrants and their descendants in European labour markets. This important socioeconomic dimension of the current crisis illuminates the role of pre-existing policies and institutions and points the way to political solutions. The article begins with a comparative puzzle: how can one account for cross-national, cross-local, and cross-sectoral variation in the labour market outcomes of migrant-origin minority groups and explain migrant-origin and gender differences. This is followed by a critical examination of debates on the ‘integration’ of migrants and the ‘second generation’ reflecting political diatribes on the across-the-board poor performance of minorities and the role of ethnic or religious factors. An alternative explanation underscores the importance of policy paradigms and institutional hurdles focusing on three aspects of European political economies: welfare state arrangements, education, and sub-national labour market policies. The arguments put forth rely on comparative aggregate data and surveys in countries representative of ideal types according to the original version of the varieties of capitalism, worlds of welfare, and integration models literature, in particular France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the political economy of reform under the technocratic government of Mario Monti. Unlike the technocratic governments of the 1990s, the Monti interregnum was an experiment in unmediated democracy, in which a government is actively supported neither by political parties nor by encompassing social groups. Italian political leaders adopted unmediated democracy because of the underlying interest group conflicts in the Italian political economy. Unmediated democrats such as Monti can impose bitter medicine on a stalemated society when it is in a stage of acute crisis, but the passage of longer-term reforms requires a social coalition to support those reforms beyond the critical stage of crisis. Thus the government implemented budget cuts, but liberalisation and institutional reform stalled in the face of opposition. Italy is unlikely to be durably reformed by a government that is not anchored to society through political parties or interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous research on morality does not present a clear picture regarding religious effects on abortion and same-sex partnership policies. An examination of the level of permissiveness in the two policy fields across Western European countries reveals that Catholic states do not significantly differ from their Protestant counterparts in terms of policy outputs. Our descriptive analysis of the reform processes in the two fields from 1960 to 2010 shows that Catholicism has no direct impact on morality policy outputs, but may slow down the pace of reforms. The delaying effect, however, is contingent upon the presence of additional conditions. In order to inductively develop theoretical insights into this relationship, particular emphasis is placed on the case of Austria, which was quick to liberalise abortion but a laggard in introducing legal recognition of same-sex couples. The Austrian case reveals that the influence of the Catholic Church may impede reforms so long as institutional and cultural opportunity structures do not promote secular efforts to politicise the issue and build consensus for policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The consensus among Finnish commentators is that the True Finn Party (PS), which grew dramatically to become the second largest electoral party in 2011, is an institutionalised party – that is, it is ‘here to stay’. Although led for virtually the whole of its 19-year existence by Timo Soini, the PS, unlike say Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Popolo Della Libertà, is not viewed as a ‘personal party’ in which its expected lifespan is dependent on the political lifespan of its founder-leader. But how institutionalised really is it and when can a party be said to be institutionalised? Building on the syndrome of properties widely ascribed to the process in the literature, the theoretical contribution of this article is to provide a composite definition and the first systematic operationalisation of the notion of party institutionalisation. The empirical section measures the extent of party institutionalisation using the populist-entrepreneur True Finn Party as a test case whilst the concluding discussion considers the wider question of the conceptual utility of institutionalisation for the analysis of party change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to account for cross-national and over-time variation in women’s participation in cabinets. Specifically, it focuses on some key political factors which have not been tested yet, such as the effectiveness of party gender quotas. Previous literature has mainly centred on structural variables, such as the degree of democratisation and economic development. Using an original longitudinal cross-sectional sample of 23 advanced industrial democracies, this article provides new evidence that some important political factors should be considered. It finds that countries with a specialist system have a higher percentage of women in cabinet than generalist systems, left-wing parties in government appoint more women, women are more likely to receive a ministerial post when the governing party has adopted gender quotas, and an increasing number of women in parliament boosts women in cabinet. Furthermore, the article shows that these political variables perform differently through time, and that political factors have become more relevant in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, two unexplored trends in European electoral politics are highlighted. Using newly collected data the article tracks the politicisation of corruption in electoral campaigns from 1981 to 2011, an electoral strategy that has been increasing over time in most European countries. It then empirically tests two aspects of this campaign strategy. First, what are the factors that are systematically associated with a party’s decision to politicise corruption? Second, what are the electoral effects in terms of relative vote share for parties that politicise corruption? Using an original data-set that employs multi-level data (parties nested in countries) the results demonstrate first that politicisation of corruption occurs systematically more often among established parties from the main opposition, new parties and parties on the political right, and occurs as a function of country-level corruption, district magnitude and public party financing. Second, it is found that the main opposition and new parties that use such a campaign strategy make significant electoral gains relative to the previous election compared to parties that do not politicise corruption. Yet gains are offset in low-corruption countries. The findings demonstrate salient implications for research on party systems, corruption studies and democratic legitimacy, among other areas of investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Securing executive attention for new policy demands is notoriously difficult as governmental agendas are crowded by established or ‘core’ policy issues. This article investigates whether it is harder for new and costly policy issues to reach the government agenda when the economy is performing badly. It examines whether, and the extent to which, costly gender equality issues regarding women’s access to the labour market, equal treatment at work and care activities, are more likely to achieve executive attention when the economy is performing well. Using the Comparative Policy Agendas database, a systematic, quantitative analysis is conducted of when and why policies promoting sex equality in the division of labour reach executive agendas. The findings confirm that advocacy for costly gender equality measures is easier to make in times of economic growth. It is also found that female representation in parliament strengthens advocacy for executive attention and reduces friction on policy agenda change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The link between parties’ campaign messages and government action is essential to theories of representative democracy. This article offers the first evaluation of how different empirical approaches alter results regarding the fulfilment of mandates by governments. Three commonly used operationalisations of the notion of election promise are applied to the case of Sweden. The conclusion is that results are not significantly altered depending on the approach that is taken. By studying only certain subsets of promises in election manifestos, overall government fulfilment of election promises can be estimated. By performing the analyses on the case of Sweden, the study also gives focus to two cabinet formations that have received little scholarly attention but are common in the European context – namely minority single-party cabinets and coalitions formed pre-election. The article argues that such cabinet situations are particularly efficient when it comes to election pledge fulfilment, no matter how the notion of election promise is defined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Negative integration through the expansive interpretation of European market freedoms is said to undermine domestic social regulation – by vertically imposing a strictly liberal interpretation of EU rules and by pushing EU member states into horizontal regulatory competition. This article analyses domestic policy responses to one particularly prominent instance of negative integration: the CJEU’s case law on the freedom of establishment since its first landmark ruling onCentrosin 1999. The analysis shows that national company laws have only converged downwards in one particular subfield – minimum capital requirements – but they remain strikingly diverse across, and increasingly within, member states on most other issues, such as workers’ codetermination rights. Legal uncertainty about the Court’s case law, the mixed economic incentives it provides for firms and political disagreement about appropriate policy responses leave considerable space for differential Europeanisation. The crisis adds to these uncertainties and thus reinforces the trend towards differentiation rather than convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While much has been written about the formation and termination of coalitions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the policy output of multiparty governments. The present study attempts to narrow this research gap by analysing policy-making in three Austrian coalition governments between 1999 and 2008. Drawing on the party mandate literature, a manually coded textual analysis of election manifestos is conducted that yields a dataset containing over 1,100 pledges. The fulfilment of these pledges is taken as the dependent variable in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that institutional determinants (adoption in the coalition agreement, ministerial control, and policy status quo) significantly influence the chances of pledge fulfilment and thus present a powerful predictor of coalition policy output. By contrast, factors related to parties’ preferences (consensus between parties, policy distance, pledge saliency, and majority support in parliament) do not have an impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Parliamentary systems are characterised by strong links between the executive and the legislature. While the importance of executive–legislative relationships is well-known, the extent to which executive dominance affects parliamentary behaviour is hard to grasp. This study uses the recent institutional crises in Belgium to study parliamentary behaviour in the absence of a government with full powers. Cabinet formation in Belgium has proved to be protracted in recent years, leading to long periods of government formation in both 2007–2008 and 2010–2011. Such circumstances provide a unique comparison between normal situations of parliament in the presence of government, and exceptional situations of prolonged periods of caretaker government. In particular the article looks at three aspects of parliamentary behaviour that are usually linked to executive–legislative relations: legislative initiatives, voting behaviour and party unity. The general hypothesis is that prolonged periods of government formation gave parliamentarians more opportunities to influence the legislative process and more (ideological) freedom. The results show a nuanced picture: parliament became more pro-active, the salience of the government–opposition divide declined, while party unity remained as strong as ever. It is concluded that government formation processes did not lead to drastic changes in the legislative–executive relationship, but rather permitted a modest correction to the extremely weak position of parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reviews Peter Mair’s argument on the failure of political parties and the subsequent failure of representative democracy in Europe. It develops a conceptual framework to test the validity of Mair’s argument against competing interpretations of the development of representative democracy. It identifies three ideal typical models of representative democracy that seem to have succeeded each other over time: cleavage-based democracy, competitive democracy, and audience democracy. The article proposes specific empirical hypotheses for political parties and voters in each of these periods and provides empirical evidence to test the validity of these hypotheses. It concludes with a discussion of the results, evaluating whether the changes that occurred indicate failure of representative democracy or rather the emergence of a different form of representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the development of legitimacy across 20 European democracies (1990–2010). The claim is that the democratic performance of parties affects levels of legitimacy. A conceptual and empirical discussion is presented to establish this relationship. Democratic performance is characterised by trusting parties to be responsive to the electorate and responsible in government. Legitimacy is defined as a composite measure representing satisfaction with parties, compliance with the rule of law as well as voter turnout and willingness to protest. The responsiveness of parties appears less representative on public concerns and governmental responsibility appears closer to party interests than to the general interest. Hence, a ‘democratic deficit’ seems to have emerged across Europe, manifested by more electoral volatility, new parties and alternation in government and lower survival rates of governments. This negatively affects trust in parties, parliament and government efficacy. Hence, party behaviour has not strongly contributed to political legitimacy since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims at ‘bringing ideology back in’ for the analysis of party politics and, more specifically, for the discussion of the delicate dyad ‘responsiveness vs. responsibility’. The article starts with an analytical discussion on the concept of ideology and on how to study its adaptation and change. It then reviews the ideological shifts that have characterised welfare state discourse and politics since the 1980s: first, the neoliberal turn and its attack on the old social democratic consensus; then the gradual emergence of a new ideological perspective that is called here liberal neo-welfarism. The main argument is that ideology plays an important role in framing partisan strategies in the delicate and increasingly prominent field of social politics. Ideological change reflects not only exogenous socio-economic transformations but also endogenous and relatively autonomous epistemic dynamics that bridge intellectual and partisan arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many European party systems, the radical right has challenged established patterns of political competition. This article studies the consequences of this by using the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and data from Austria’s first national election study (AUTNES). It is found that the FPÖ has weakened Austria’s previously highly stable system of socio-structural and ideological divisions as expressed by the two mainstream parties, the People’s Party and the Social Democrats. In socio-structural terms, the FPÖ has undermined the Social Democrats’ support base. In ideological terms, FPÖ voters have distinct views on newer issues such as immigration, European integration and dissatisfaction with the political system, but its supporters’ views on Austria’s traditional conflicts surrounding the economy and social and religious values cannot explain the party’s success. These findings further our understanding of the transformation of political conflicts not just in Austria, but in Western Europe in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]