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Both political theorists and scholars working on populism with an ideational approach have frequently noted that populists are averse to compromise. However, the negative relationship between populism and compromise has not been analyzed in detail. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive account of the reasons behind this oft-repeated conflict between populist narratives and the practice of compromise, disentangling the various dimensions of such incompatibility and exploring their connections. We rely on theoretical and empirical research on populism, supplemented by illustrative examples and references to political theory with an anti-pluralist coloration and the opponents thereof. We compare populist objections with Baume and Papadopoulos’s typology of objections to political compromises. We demonstrate that populist objections only partly overlap with those inventoried in the typology, notably along the moral and antagonistic dimensions, while the populist claim that compromises denature the unmediated expression of the popular will has not been considered before. Through an exploratory case study, we further reflect on how populists justify compromises when they are in power, notwithstanding their ideological reluctances. Our paper enriches the study of the ideational elements of populism while advancing research on the perception of compromises in democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marked by convergence as well as the resilience of national differences. The concept of accountability style is adopted to describe and interpret how and why accountability practices differ between administrative systems. It does so by analyzing practices of accountability of public sector agencies in four European democracies with different state traditions: the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK. These countries vary with regards to state strength (interventionist propensity) and administrative concentration (high or low centralization). The analysis focuses on the accountability of arms' length agencies which lends itself for comparisons across counties. The paper shows that the national political-administrative context crucially shapes practices of accountability and accountability regimes of agencies. The Norwegian accountability style is characterized as 'centralized and convenient'. The UK-style is equally centralized yet not so convenient as it incurs high accountability-process costs on agencies. Switzerland is marked by limited hierarchical accountability. And the Dutch accountability style is comparatively 'broad and informal'. State strength and administrative concentration explain some of the variance while historical legacies explain additional national variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper opens up the black box of agencies' accountability relationships and zooms in on their top managers and the perceptions of accountability thereof. So far, very few studies have examined how agency managers perceive and experience attempts to control the public sector organizations that they manage. The paper seeks to address this gap through a focus on "felt" accountability, denoting (1) a manager's (more or less high) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived, (2) to have (more or less) the expertise, and (3) to be (more or less) in a legitimate position to assess those decisions. We empirically explore in two steps (using quantitative and qualitative data) agencies' felt accountability to the parent department in Switzerland, which presents a puzzling case of relatively low accountability according to a survey of agency managers in seven established democracies (Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). Our findings point to the differences between regulatory and non-regulatory agencies and show that the former's perception of being weakly accountable largely stems from the passive attitude of the parent ministry as official accountability forum. Agency managers interpret this attitude as a manifestation of respect for the agencies' independence, but also as a consequence of the forum's lack of time and expertise. In some cases, the parent ministry is not even considered to be the relevant accountability forum, suggesting that this accountability relationship is just one facet of the accountability regime in which agencies are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic mapping of objections[2] to compromises developed within the field of contemporary political theory[3] and evaluates different kinds of rebuttals to these objections. COMPROMISE AND ANTIRELATIVISM The objection The first objection considered in this typology originates from an antirelativist perspective: compromise is devalued if achieved to the detriment of principles considered good, and this "good" is "knowable, objective, rational, and essentially, at its core, universal" (Menkel-Meadow, [56], p. 3).[11] This is quite a common objection (Benditt, [7]; Kuflik, [41]) that can be presented briefly, but a strong one that deserves a detailed and differentiated discussion. 2 We refer here to Walton's ([87]) broad definition, according to which an "objection does not necessarily have to be a counterargument posed against an original argument" (p. 2). 3 Because "much of the debate over the desirability of compromise in politics is set within the context of democratic theory" (Carens, [11], p. 132), we do not discuss objections to compromises in international relations or peace-building processes, as does Margalit ([51]), for example. COMPROMISE AGAINST PLURALITY The objection The last objection we have singled out was also formulated by Ruser and Machin ([76]). The pertinence of rebuttals to objections, in the sense of Walton's ([88]) definition of a rebuttal as "an argument directed against another argument to show that the first argument is somehow defective" (p. 61), is discussed directly after the presentation of each objection to evaluate their soundness. [Extracted from the article]