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Europe remains a destination of an ongoing influx of asylum seekers. The attempts to build an EU-wide political consensus around refugee policy have so far failed. This article provides a perspective on EU citizens' preferred policy towards refugees and asylum seekers at both the EU and domestic levels. A hidden policy consensus is identified in which European citizens across all social and ideological backgrounds prefer refugees to have the right to work but their freedom of movement to be restricted while their application for asylum is being processed. At the same time, the mode of refugee allocation between countries, which has been prominent in political debates across Europe, is relatively unimportant to respondents, as they focus on the domestic level rather than EU-level policy. The widespread consensus on support for refugees' participation in the labour market may unite EU citizens around cautious hospitality by deemphasising allocation principles, and stressing country-level solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how nationality and partisanship, two personal attributes of Commissioners, influence member states' bargaining success in EU law making. Building on principal-agent theory, it is expected that countries with close national and political linkages to the Commissioner responsible for negotiating a proposal are more successful in attaining their preferred outcomes. The hypotheses are tested using a linear regression model on the DEUIII dataset. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that a state has more bargaining success when the responsible Commissioner comes from that state or is affiliated with the same European Parliament party group as one of the governing parties in that state. Moreover, shared national ties moderate the detrimental effect of preference disagreements with the Commission on states' success. The study contributes to the literature by showing that Commissioners are not independent but political actors who can act autonomously and successfully pursue the preferences of their home countries and parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic inequality constitutes a defining challenge of our time and it remains puzzling why rising levels of inequality have not led to more redistribution. In this article a novel individual-level perspective is taken, with a focus on how much legislators and citizens agree on questions of redistribution and inequality, and what causes these mismatches. The study compares legislators' views to a representative citizen sample in Switzerland. The results show considerable disagreement between the groups with legislators being more sceptical towards redistribution and seeing inequality as fairer outcome. The mismatch is only partially explained by legislators' higher social status. Ideology plays a fundamental role as more polarisation according to ideological lines is found among elites and their attitudes are also more rooted in their ideology. In sum, the findings point to some underexplored angles of the puzzle of why not more redistribution has been observed and thus offer a valuable addition to the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an institutional approach to accountability in representative democracies. Theorising accountability comprises both settled polities with well-entrenched institutions and unsettled polities with weak or contested institutions, and it is argued that agency theory and formal principal–agent models giving priority to compliance and control usually make assumptions that are unlikely to apply to the latter type of polity. An institutional approach challenges principal–agent assumptions regarding what accountability means and implies, what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing and responding to accounts and assigning accountability, and how accountability institutions work and change. Accountability is related to fundamental issues in democratic politics and the paper treats distributions of information, normative standards of assessment, authority and power relations as endogenous to democratic politics. The paper also holds that institutions affect actors’ identities and roles through socialisation, internalisation and habitualisation, as well as through external incentives. An aspiration is to take a modest step towards understanding areas of application for competing approaches to democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do parties with different ideological origins adjust their policies in response to the binding commitments that derive from the European integration process? This paper examines whether party platforms have adapted to the ideological content of EU treaty provisions – based on ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘regulated capitalism’ – across a range of policy areas The analysis builds on existing research which has examined how party families respond to the challenges and opportunities of the integration process. This is the first study that focuses on long-term party policy adjustment across different policy areas by examining whether there has been a shift away from core ideological goals towards the direction of EU policy. The main finding is that there has generally been a shift towards the direction of EU policy across all party families in both member and non-member states. The findings have implications for the quality of representation and functioning of democracy in the member states since the deepening of the European integration process reduces ideologically distinct policy alternatives across party families and can hinder policy innovation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper models the correlates of parties’ positions on the issue of European integration, asking why some parties are in favour of European integration, while others are less favourable or even opposed to it. The paper builds on existing work which has identified three sets of explanatory factors predicting parties’ positions on integration: the electorate, parties and party system characteristics. By employing multilevel modelling using data on over 220 parties in 14 Western EU member states for the years 1984 to 2006, the effects of party- and context-level predictors of parties’ positions on EU integration are assessed. The findings demonstrate that parties’ positions are primarily influenced by EU preferences of the general electorate, parties’ left–right ideological extremes and incumbency status. The results also show that the impact of party characteristics is moderated by the electoral context in which parties operate. Moreover, the interaction between both levels offers further insights as to the nature of these associations. Specifically, party size is a robust predictor of integration position only when accounting for the levels of party system's fractionalisation and polarisation. Additionally, parties oriented towards the centre of the ideological spectrum are even more likely to favour European integration within highly polarised systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses how macro-societal conditions determine educational inequality between migrants and natives in the Western EU member states. The education system, with its ability to integrate young immigrants, is often seen as the foundation for successful integration in later curricular stages. By means of linear hierarchical models, this paper demonstrates that EU standards of good practice in integration policy are ineffective in producing equal educational opportunities for immigrant pupils. Educational inequality between migrants and natives is mainly a result of the political-institutional settings. The paper thus rejects the widely held belief that consensus democracies are in fact kinder and gentler. By contrast, the analyses reveal that majoritarian democracies are more effective in equalising educational opportunities between immigrants and natives. [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]

This paper seeks to explain why the trend towards more cooperative forms of policy-making, though in all likelihood necessary for policy efficiency and even at first glance promising with respect to inclusiveness and pluralism, can have negative consequences for democratic accountability. The paper first explores the properties of multi-level governance that lead to a deficit in democratic accountability (lack of visibility, uncoupling from representative institutions, composition of networks, and 'multi-levelness' itself) before coming to more general conclusions on the characteristics and limits of accountability mechanisms in multi-level governance and on their consequences for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large and growing literature on accountability highlights a variety of mechanisms by which bureaucrats may be held accountable as regards their role in the policy-making process. This paper looks at accountability mechanisms from the bureaucrat's perspective using material gathered for a study of bureaucratic roles in rulemaking in Sweden, Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It asks to which of the mechanisms for securing public accountability for executive decisions do bureaucrats pay particular attention when helping develop policy: where are the minefields they feel they have to negotiate? The most important of the minefields is political executive approval. It shapes the way the other mechanisms (group opinion, the legislative and judicial branches of government) are negotiated. Thus 'ministerial responsibility' and its equivalents in the other countries remain crucial features of systems of administrative accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have used the concept of 'accountability' to describe and assess relationships among actors who are primarily based in different state jurisdictions, or involving actors transcending state jurisdictions. Is there something inherently distinctive about accountability in transnational spaces as compared to the more familiar instances of accountability observed in domestic contexts? This paper examines the distinctiveness of transnational accountability in relation to: (1) its general meaning and specific forms; (2) its aims and importance; (3) its empirical existence and the relative frequency of its forms; (4) its causes; and (5) its effects. The paper cautiously concludes that on most of these dimensions the similarities outweigh the differences and that it would be unfruitful for research on transnational accountability to develop separately from that on domestic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies possible micro-mechanisms for the operation of Lipset and Rokkan's freezing hypothesis and suggests that their effects do not disappear altogether with the decline of cleavage politics but are sustained by any persistent social or attitudinal divide between the electorates of different parties. A multi-level analysis of survey data from the 2004 European Election Study supports the expectation that political involvement should be consistently higher and volatility lower than otherwise expected among citizens who are predisposed to support particular parties because of their enduring attitudinal and social characteristics. This paper argues that this fact powerfully biases the choices of established parties towards appealing to those citizens who vote in a way that maintains existing political divides among groups in the electorate. This provides a new explanation of why the mobilisation of enduring social and attitudinal divides in the electorate makes party systems reflect past divides even when the conflicts that gave rise to them have lost some or all political relevance, for instance, because of a shift from the national to the European electoral arena. The analysis also provides additional insights into why European elections fail to produce a European party system and why sources of political participation and interest vary across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most West European countries the effects of long-term determinants of the vote - in particular social class, religion and left-right ideology - have slowly weakened since the late 1980s. This paper first describes differences between the EU member states in the extent of structural and ideological voting in the period 1989-2004. It then focuses on the causes behind the changes over time. It is hypothesised that the decline is partially caused by generational replacement (H1). More specifically, it is assumed that structural voting is most important for the generation born before 1950, and politically socialised in the years of the mass party (H2) and that ideological voting is most important for the generation born between 1950 and 1970, who were politically socialised after the decline of cleavages and before the fall of the Berlin Wall (H3). To test these hypotheses, the study employs the European Elections Study 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004. The country by year combination provides data from 62 political contexts. To analyse the determinants of party choice across different countries and years, a methodology is employed that was developed by Van der Eijk and Franklin in Choosing Europe (1996). The study provides support for all three hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting Aid Applications (VAA) helping voters make their decision at the ballots have become more popular throughout Western Europe. They typically consist of a number of statements that are used to match voters with parties. Drawing on a large-scale simulation of 500,000 different configurations of 36 statements and on a random sample of Belgian voters, the paper shows that many of these combinations produce diverging information for the participants. The study establishes that the specific selection of statements has a considerable impact on the 'voting advice' that is produced: some configurations favour certain parties, other configurations benefit other parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of occupational pension reform has attracted less attention than state pension retrenchment. Yet, in countries with large occupational welfare sectors changes in company provision can be equally important for welfare system generosity. This paper compares recent occupational pension developments in the Netherlands and Britain, exemplars of coordinated and liberal capitalism. The paper argues that despite regime-typical differences in the nature and process of change, recent developments have also been remarkably similar. In both countries retrenchment and individualisation has left most citizens at risk of being less well off in retirement. Corporatist governance in the Netherlands has not challenged the overall orientation of this process, but has merely distributed the costs of retrenchment more fairly than liberal Britain. Instead, the constraints of the globalised financial market directed change: exposure to market discipline, reinforced by national policy actors and international market regulators, made occupational provision vulnerable to retrenchment regardless of regime type. Thus, the significance for levels of social protection of differences between liberal and corporatist governance models of occupational pensions may have been overrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the reasons for the sudden rise of women in party politics and political representation in Spain. Structural explanations and the conditioning influence of the electoral system are reviewed before focusing on institutional and party-political explanations. It argues that the key factor in explaining this rise is not just the adoption of rules on the gender parity representation, but the intra-party politics that allows for effective implementation of such rules. Using insights into the internal dynamics of the PSOE gained from extensive field observations and interviews, it argues that high levels of female representation were secured via internal party procedures, coupled with political backing from the party leadership. The paper therefore takes the discussion on women' participation in representative politics beyond the question of adopting quota rules into the terrain of how, instead of remaining a dead letter, it is successfully implemented in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As attention has shifted to the topic of change in organised economies, Finland represents a valuable case study. The nation's leap from paper producer to high technology leader represents a unique opportunity to study restructuring within the confines of an allegedly incremental organised economy. To date, Finland's transformation has been interpreted as a product of sweeping liberal reforms in finance and corporate governance. This article, however, identifies an enduring role for collectively organised economic actors in labour market and technology policies. Cooperation in these arenas did not inhibit restructuring. On the contrary, collaborative technology policies actively facilitated the rapid redistribution of resources to an emerging ICT industry. In exploring the opportunities and constraints associated with these policies, this article not only sheds light on Finland's shift into high technology markets, but also identifies a more flexible role for coordination in the new economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a comparative analysis of core executive adaptation to engagement with the European Union in three states: Ireland, Greece and Finland. To date, the substantive focus of the literature on executive adaptation has been on the question of convergence or continuing divergence of national responses. The dominant conclusion points to the continuing divergence of national responses. The analytical framework that guided the empirical work in this paper was divided into two inter-related institutional components: structures and processes, and the agents who actively engage with the EU's governance structures. The comparative analysis provides evidence of both convergence and continuing diversity. In managing Europe from home, states appear to choose from a menu of possible models, prime ministerial-led or foreign ministry-led systems. Two variables stand out in explaining variation across the three states, the level of institutionalisation and the relationship between formal and informal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Europeanisation of national interest groups is an important research agenda in the EU, very little research examines their Europeanisation outside the EU, and during the EU accession process. The article fills this gap by focusing on Europeanisation of interest groups in Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Using new survey data, the article looks at interest groups' involvement in the national pre-accession process, and their activity at the EU level. The main argument of the paper stresses the absence of significant differences between the levels of Europeanisation of business and other types of interest groups (especially NGOs) in the current phase of EU accession. The regression analyses provide support to this argument, showing that access to national institutions, resources, the Europeanisation of policy areas and dependence on EU funding account for interest groups' levels of Europeanisation, while variations across group types are not very significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. Withthe exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention inresearch on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to addressthat and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men's parties' – partiesled and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women andwomen's concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical rightparties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is nowevidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibitan active political involvement of women and engage in some representation ofwomen's concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised' political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recentgendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academicand political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics. [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]

Focusing on Japan, this paper explores whether powers and competences in the political system are likely to be recalibrated in favour of the executive when the environment is perceived as increasingly threatening. It shows that the executive has been significantly strengthened during the past two decades of political reforms, though a closer look reveals that only the most recent efforts are motivated by security concerns. Case studies on military deployments and arms exports do not expose any clear trend towards curbing parliament’s formal control powers, but they indicate two related mechanisms that affect executive‒legislative relations. Firstly, the executive has sought to ensure faster decision-making in security policy, which may limit the Diet’s ability to scrutinise policies in depth. Secondly, the level of contestation over security policy issues has been decreasing, especially given the securitisation of North Korea and China. This provides the executive with more leeway in devising policies. [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]

Differentiation has become a core feature not only in the European integration process but also in the implementation of European policies. Among the means to address differentiated implementation are European Administrative Networks (EANs). Through the exchange of information, best practices and advice, EANs are expected to contribute to more uniform implementation. However, the ways and extent to which they do so remain largely unexplored. This article addresses this gap through the empirical analysis of the European Network of Heads of Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA Network), drawing on a unique survey dataset and social network analysis. On the one hand, the findings uncover the EPA Network as a voluntary and informal network with a fragmented and clustered structure around key members. At the same time, several participants have recognised the network as a valuable asset to improving national implementation and developing innovative policy initiatives. Therefore, while there is significant diversity within and across the network, the network's perceived contributions and added value point to the considerable importance of these instruments in EU policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Union (EU) institutions have become increasingly involved in direct policy implementation in the member states, creating a new domain of differentiation in EU governance. What brings about such differentiation, and how does it vary across policy fields? Drawing on theories of differentiated integration, this article argues that differentiated implementation occurs at the intersection of postfunctional obstacles (politicisation) and functional pressures for joint implementation (interdependence). There are two identified dimensions of direct implementation, a territorial one referring to states' participation in such activities, and a procedural one capturing the degree of uniformity in the guidelines for organising implementation. The resulting typology is applied to direct implementation activities (DIAs) conducted by EU agencies alongside national authorities. The qualitative analysis reveals that differentiated participation is a stable feature of DIAs in politicised fields, and although there is a tendency to create more uniform procedures over time and across policy fields, higher uniformity prevails under symmetric interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has developed an ambitious tobacco policy regime. However, this area shows striking differences in national implementation. Although existing research points to some explanations for member state differences, there is still only limited understanding regarding drivers of differentiated implementation. In this study, a method of difference is followed and the article investigates two cases of 'high performers' (United Kingdom, Ireland) and two cases of 'laggards' (Germany, Austria). In order to explain the differences regarding tobacco control strictness, three explanatory approaches are combined. First, taking a party differences approach, an in-depth analysis of the party positions is conducted, using Comparative Manifesto Data. Second, using a functional approach, policy implementation is assumed to be influenced by portfolio allocation. If the competence for implementing policy lies with economic or agricultural departments, a more liberal approach is expected than if it lies with the health department. Third, a turf approach is used: if the health department has the sole competence for the implementation, stricter (and also more dynamic) regulation is expected than if two or more departments must reach a consensus. Combining administrative science and politics approaches in an innovative way, the article provides novel insights on differentiated implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) launched the European Pillar of Social Rights to improve social rights for EU citizens. However, little is known about the domestic dynamics of implementing these new rights. This article examines the implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive in three member states with different policy traditions: Denmark, Germany and Poland. Based on an actor-centred approach, the article demonstrates that two main factors were crucial in motivating national actors to shape the implementation of these rights. First, the economic costs, including new permanent costs emerging from the provisions and the administrative costs of implementing an EU directive, shaped actors' positions in all three countries. Second, the values of gender equality - whether promoting gender-equal leave or traditional family values - constituted an underlying reason for actors to customise the EU rules differently. Both factors, used as a defence or driver for change, increase differentiated policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of institutional misfit in why member states customise European Union (EU) renewable energy (RE) policies when implementing them. Institutional misfit theory posits that member states only adjust to EU policies when the adaptation pressure remains moderate and national actors' policy preferences align. Conversely, this article tests the argument that member states manage institutional misfit by adjusting - customising - EU policies, that is, through vertical EU policy change rather than domestic change. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the article compares the customisation of EU Directive 2009/28/EC in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, results suggest that institutional misfit is not a necessary condition for customised implementation. Instead, when high institutional fit meets high salience, member states may issue substantively more ambitious policies than the EU requires. Conversely, when high institutional fit meets low salience, member states have no impetus to customise EU rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differentiated integration (DI) and flexibility in implementation (FI) are two forms of differentiation that can be used to cope with heterogeneity among EU member states. Given the different ways in which they do so, this article asks whether DI and FI are alternatives for each other or whether they serve different functions in EU legislation. Based on a dataset that maps the occurrence of opt-outs and flexibility provisions in EU directives, the analysis shows that DI and FI tend to be used together. A qualitative analysis of directives that combine different levels of DI and FI shows that, within that overall pattern, DI is used to accommodate individual outliers, while FI is used to address widespread concerns among member states. This suggests that DI and FI are two forms of differentiation in the EU, which are used to address different aspects of a common underlying set of concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue analyses the patterns, causes and consequences of Differentiated Policy Implementation (DPI) in the European Union (EU). DPI is an umbrella term for the diversity in the presence and use of discretion during legal and practical policy implementation processes and outcomes in the EU. The emergent DPI research agenda emphasises differentiation in EU policy implementation beyond mere legal compliance, which is more widespread, and its role in the broader political and policy processes of EU multilevel governance. The contributions highlight anticipated implementation as one dimension of DPI, as well as legal and practical implementation. DPI serves as an alternative to differentiated integration (DI), accommodating heterogeneous national preferences, capacities and conditions, and feeding back into EU policy-making. The impact of DPI on the EU's output legitimacy and effectiveness depends on scope conditions that require more scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article takes stock of the research analysing the resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic in 31 democracies. The extant research shows that parliaments were better able to fulfil their oversight roles in states with a higher quality of democracy and where constitutional and procedural rules provided more space for parliamentary scrutiny (e.g. incongruent bicameralism). Scholars have also argued that unified executives often attempted to bypass legislative oversight, while on the contrary the checks and balances embedded in coalition governance have acted as a break on attempts to marginalise parliaments. Parliaments struggling to assert their autonomy and fulfil their scrutiny role in normal times saw these issues exacerbated during the health crisis. Finally, the resilience of parliamentary oversight also depended on the extent to which opposition parties adopted a 'rally around the flag' or a politicisation strategy, the latter appearing more likely as the pandemic progressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rarely, if ever, has a Finnish general election attracted such foreign media interest. Reporters came from across the globe, not to witness Finland become NATO's thirty-first member-state on 4 April, two days after the general election, but to see if the party-loving Social Democrat prime minister Sanna Marin could secure a second term at the helm.1 In the event, Marin became only the third prime minister in recent times to increase the party vote, albeit by not quite enough, and she promptly indicated she would stand down as party leader. The election was won by the two main opposition parties, the National Coalition and Finns Party. The National Coalition became the largest parliamentary party for only the second time in its history, whilst the Finns Party gained over one-fifth of the national poll for the first time and became the largest party on the basis of the popular vote in no less than half the 12 mainland constituencies. Despite their deep differences on major policy issues – including immigration, taxation, development aid and climate policy – the National Coalition and Finns Party ultimately formed the core of a centre-right government, although it took almost to midsummer to do so, and it was then characterised by a minor coalition party leader as an 'unhappy marriage' made out of necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do attitudes to refugees vary? An original panel is used in five EU states – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland – to explain European attitudes towards three groups of refugees following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is shown that European attitudes to Ukrainian refugees are determined by predispositions to immigration and perceptions of the war and actors involved, with European identity and contact with refugees being relatively unimportant. These findings are validated with dynamic panel models and attitudes towards the Temporary Protection Directive. A 'spill-over' effect is further demonstrated, whereby attitudes to Ukrainian refugees positively affect attitudes to Afghan and Somali refugees, and a declining 'rally-around-the-flag' effect over time. These findings contribute to the literature on attitudinal formation, showing the relative malleability of attitudes to refugees as a function of their embeddedness in broader attitudinal patterns (particularly to immigration and geopolitics), changing context (the different stages of the war), and spill-over from views towards other refugee groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A change of government or minister constitutes a stress test for the relationship between ministers and bureaucrats. The new political masters may question the loyalty of incumbent bureaucrats and seek to replace them. However, the relationship between political changes and administrative turnover is poorly understood in meritocratic systems. This article analyses how changes of either government or minister affect the turnover of permanent secretaries in Denmark and Norway (1970–2020). Whereas ministers are completely reliant on career bureaucrats in pure meritocratic systems, they are supported by political appointees in hybrid meritocratic systems. The article investigates whether the effect of political changes on administrative turnover is mediated by the presence or absence of political appointees. Changes of government increase the risk of administrative turnover in Norway (hybrid system), but there are no such effects in Denmark (pure system), suggesting that political appointees potentially undermine the permanence of career bureaucrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the electoral decline of Social democracy has received considerable attention in the literature, much less is known about how the structural changes experienced by advanced capitalist societies in the past decades have affected support for the mainstream right. In order to fill this gap, this article examines the relationship between secularisation, educational expansion and support for Conservative and Christian democratic parties in 18 West European democracies since the 1960s. The analysis reveals that secularisation is negatively associated with support for the mainstream right, but the effect is only significant for Christian democratic parties. Moreover, the findings support the expectation that social conservatism tends to damage the electoral prospects of mainstream right parties in highly educated societies. This suggests that, although engaging in cultural wars might sometimes seem like a winning strategy in the short term, it is unlikely to produce long-term positive electoral returns for the centre-right in post-industrial contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracies across the world have experienced the rise of new political parties. The dominant view of the model of (retrospective) economic voting implicitly assumes that the main beneficiary of electoral change is the established opposition. However, the rise of new political parties affects how we think of retrospective (economic) voting. This article presents a more nuanced picture of electoral change and considers when electoral turnover benefits established opposition parties, and when new political parties. The theoretical model introduces different macro-economic and macro-political motives for electoral turnover. Using a novel dataset on electoral change, covering 59 democracies worldwide, it is found that high levels of corruption discredit the entire political establishment, and promote the rise of new parties. The effect of economic hardship is more nuanced. Low economic growth mainly benefits the established opposition because voters look for an established alternative within the political system. Rising unemployment, by contrast, promotes the rise of new parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, many parliamentary democracies have experienced bargaining delays when forming governments. The previous literature has attributed protracted government formation processes to a high degree of preference uncertainty among the political parties and a high level of bargaining complexity. The article draws on such theories, but also adds a third theoretical mechanism, commitment problems, and highlights two explanatory variables that have not received much attention so far. The first is pre-electoral coalitions, which are declarations by parties stating that they intend to collaborate with each other after the election. The second is familiarity, which is the mutual trust between parties that comes from having worked together in the past. By combining a large-N study of government formation processes in 17 West European parliamentary democracies (1945–2019) with an in-depth case study of the prolonged Swedish government formation process in 2018–2019, it is shown that pre-electoral coalitions that fail to win a majority can sometimes delay, not speed up, government formation. In addition, a lack of familiarity may sometimes lead to a breakdown of negotiations and drawn-out government formation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the biggest challenges parties in multiparty governments face is making policies together and overcoming the risk of a policy stalemate. Scholars have devoted much attention to the study of how various institutions in cabinet and parliament help coalition parties with conflicting policy preferences to be efficient in the policy-making process. Coalition agreements are one of many instruments coalition partners can use to facilitate policy making. However, many scholars describe such agreements' actual role as cheap talk, due to their legally non-enforceable nature. Do coalition agreements make a difference in the policy-making productivity of multiparty governments? To address this question, this article focuses on governments' policy output and investigates whether coalition agreements increase the policy-making productivity of multiparty cabinets. Its central argument is that written agreements between coalition partners strengthen the capacity of coalition governments to make policy reforms, even when there is a high degree of ideological conflict among partners. To evaluate this argument, the article analyzes data on economic reform measures adopted by national governments in 11 Western European countries over a 40-year period (1978–2017), based on a coding of more than 1000 periodical country reports issued by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results show that while coalition agreements foster policy productivity in minimal winning cabinets, they play a weaker role in minority and surplus governments. Coalition agreements limit the negative effect of intra-cabinet ideological conflict on reform productivity, suggesting that such contracts help parties overcome the risk of policy stalemate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which party controls which cabinet posts is an important determinant of how multi-party governments work. Existing research shows that parties' attention to policy domains in election manifestos is a key predictor of portfolio allocation. However, election manifestos are broad documents and typically published months before an election. This research note argues that policy emphasis in the last few weeks before the election matters for portfolio allocation, because parties can focus their message, react to exogenous events and use campaign communication as a commitment device. A test of this argument makes use of a novel dataset on party representatives' campaign statements. The findings show that the policy focus of campaign statements, especially those stating positions rather than referring to valence, predicts who will control a ministerial portfolio associated with the respective policy domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the government formation process, coalition partners make decisions about the inner workings of their future government. However, whether the initial allocation of competencies has the desired effects is uncertain, and deals may therefore be subject to change when the government is in office. This study analyses the frequency of changes in portfolio design (i.e. the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders) for 112 coalition governments in eight West European democracies (1970–2015). Its central argument is that in uncertain and complex bargaining situations, coalition partners have greater difficulty finding mutually beneficial deals, and changes to the initial allocation of payoffs are therefore more likely. The results indicate that preference divergence and strenuous coalition negotiations make portfolio design reforms more likely, but show no consistent effect of the familiarity among government parties. These findings show how the bargaining context during government formation foreshadows coalition governance over the cabinet's life-cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the politicisation of European tax governance in mass media. Although taxation is commonly assumed to remain a national prerogative, European institutions have extended their reach far into national tax regimes. Whether this expansion of EU authority towards one of the core functions of the nation state is accompanied by politicisation is the question to be addressed in this article. To analyse the causal nexus between growing EU authority – measured in terms of formal authority and tax legislation – and the politicisation of EU tax governance, the paper compares public debates in Germany, Ireland and Switzerland over a time period of 30 years between 1981 and 2011. Based on a newspaper content analysis, the empirical results demonstrate that EU tax governance is increasingly politicised in all three countries. Varying levels and content of politicisation across time and space are explained by national economic and socio-cultural conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Does European soft law matter? In order to answer this question, the article investigates the processes through which the European Union (EU) affects domestic politics and policies in the eHealth sector in France, Austria and Ireland. More precisely, it shows how the hardening of EU soft law creates a new rationale for the use of European instruments by domestic actors, thus expanding their strategic opportunities for policy making at the national level. Despite the empirical diversity of the cases, similar patterns of variation in Europeanisation mechanisms emerge over time, and the data show how the varying structure of European soft instruments (i.e. their degrees of 'hardness') accounts for these changes. This comparative analysis includes multiple process-tracing cases of eHealth public policy making in France, Austria and Ireland in which Europeanisation processes are at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain institutional reforms that redistribute institutional power between the parliamentary majority and minority? This paper proposes an informal theoretical model to explain such reforms in European parliaments based on congressional literature and inductive explanations from case studies. The article argues that political parties as the relevant actors pursue institutional reforms based on their substantive goals, their current and expected future government status, transaction and audience costs of reforms, second-order institutions that regulate the relative influence of actors in changing parliamentary rules, and the institutional status quo. Hypotheses derived from this model are tested with a qualitative case study of all standing order reforms in the Austrian parliament from 1945 to 2014. The empirical analysis finds support for various hypotheses and their underlying causal mechanisms. As Austria constitutes a least-likely case, the evidence provides strong support for the theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Parliamentarians and their party groups can employ many different instruments to communicate policy statements to their electorate (debates in plenary, presentations of committee reports, oral questions, written questions, and interpellations). Therefore, the design of these instruments should be analysed in one common framework. This paper seeks to provide a first step towards this goal by mapping and explaining the centralisation of parliamentary policy statements in all western European countries with a parliamentary system. It is argued that, on a theoretical level, there are two different causes for a stronger or weaker centralisation of the instruments of parliamentary policy statements: the electoral connection and efficiency. Empirically, it is shown that there are striking differences in centralisation both within and between countries which are worth exploring further. Moreover, the results of the statistical models suggest that the electoral connection is the driving factor behind the centralisation of the instruments of parliamentary policy statements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasingly, scholars of legislative politics propose comparative analyses of parliamentary voting behaviour across different countries and parliaments. Yet parliamentary voting procedures differ dramatically across parliamentary chambers and ignoring these differences may, in the extreme, lead to meaningless comparisons. This paper presents a first glimpse at a comprehensive data collection effort covering more than 250 parliamentary chambers in 176 countries. Focusing on European legislatures it assesses what explains the differences in the rules among chambers. It is found that incentives linked to MPs’ visibility contribute to explain the transparency of the adopted voting procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Campaigns raise public interest in politics and allow parties to convey their messages to voters. However, voters’ exposure and attention during campaigns are biased towards parties and candidates they like. This hinders parties’ ability to reach new voters. This paper theorises and empirically tests a simple way in which parties can break partisan selective attention: owning an issue. When parties own issues that are important for a voter, that voter is more likely to notice them. Using survey data collected prior to the 2009 Belgian regional elections it is shown that this effect exists independent of partisan preferences and while controlling for the absolute visibility of a party in the media. This indicates that issue ownership has an independent impact on voters’ attention to campaigns. This finding shows that owning salient issues yields (potential) advantages for parties, since getting noticed is a prerequisite for conveying electoral messages and increasing electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interest groups are crucial for the representation of interests in politics. An important aspect is not only which groups are formed, but also which groups survive over time. This paper outlines and empirically investigates hypotheses about which factors explain interest group survival. The empirical literature on survival has been limited by the lack of actual survival data and has instead relied on self-assessment data on the likelihood of survival. The article examines survival using a unique dataset that covers a population of interest groups, spans over three decades (1976–2010), and contains data on interest group characteristics and information about whether the groups survived. As expected, resources such as members and employees increase the probability of survival. However, a privileged position in the decision-making process, a largely neglected factor in previous studies, also affects survival. This implies that insider groups are likely to be overrepresented in interest group populations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous studies identified several determinants that help explain candidate states’ compliance with EU accession conditionality. However, one influence has largely been neglected so far: states’ spatial dependency. Is it possible to observe diffusion to the extent that states’ interlinkages allow their compliance with theacquis communautaireto be assessed? Are candidate states more – or perhaps even less – likely to comply with EU law when other candidates do? The paper seeks to address these questions. By building on existing research on policy diffusion, it develops a theoretical framework for studying candidates’ compliance with EU law over the accession process according to their spatial dependence. The theoretical argument focuses on ‘competitive learning’ and is tested with quantitative data. The results suggest that candidates’ levels of compliance are indeed driven by spatial interlinkages; however, free riding seems more prevalent than enhanced compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The eurozone crisis suggests a significant reinforcement of executive dominance in EU policy-making. Opaque emergency decisions taken at European summits as well as treaties established outside of the EU legal framework facilitate the side-lining of democratically elected chambers. This development entails the risk of a new wave of de-parliamentarisation in EU policy-making. An effective scrutiny of crisis management by national parliaments is, however, indispensable for taking national ownership of the reforms in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper investigates national parliaments’ involvement in the development of instruments to combat the crisis. Based on a quantitative dataset of crisis-related parliamentary activities in 2010–2012, the article observes a very uneven engagement in the scrutiny of crisis management. Institutional prerogatives in EU affairs as well as macro-economic factors can partly explain the observed variation. Surprisingly, however, crisis-related parliamentary activity is not a reaction to Eurosceptic attitudes either in parliament or among the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]