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Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies
Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Torbjörn Bergman
784 pages
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numerous tables
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234x156mm
978-0-19-929160-1
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Paperback
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19 January 2006
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This item is printed to order and supplied on a firm sale basis. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
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- First-ever survey in the English language of the institutions of democratic delegation in West European parliamentary democracies
- Unprecedented cross-national investigation of governing political parties, legistlative procedures, electoral systems, and civil service accountability
- Essential reference point for all those working on the Politics of Western Europe, and will shape the debate in this field for years to come
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Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The General Editors are Max Kaase, Professor of Political Science, Vice President and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, International University Bremen, Germany; and Kenneth Newton, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.
Today, parliamentarism is the most common form of democratic government. Yet knowledge of this regime type has been incomplete and often unsystematic. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies offers new conceptual
clarity on the topic.
This book argues that representative democracies can be understood as chains of delegation and accountability between citizens and politicians. Under parliamentary democracy, this chain of delegation is simple but also long and indirect. Principal-agent theory helps us to understand the perils of democratic delegation, which include the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. Citizens in democratic states, therefore, need institutional mechanisms by which they can control their representatives. The most important such control mechanisms are on the one hand political parties and on the other external constraints such as courts, central banks, referendums, and supranational institutions such as those of the European Union. Traditionally,
parliamentary democracies have relied heavily on political parties and presidential systems more on external constraints.
This new empirical investigation includes all seventeen West European parliamentary democracies. These countries are compared in a series of cross-national tables and figures, and seventeen country chapters provide a wealth of information on four discrete stages in the delegation process: delegation from voters to parliamentary representatives, delegation from parliament to the prime minister and cabinet, delegation within the cabinet, and delegation from cabinet ministers to civil servants. Each chapter illustrates how political parties serve as bonding instruments which align incentives and permit citizen control of the policy process. This is
complemented by a consideration of external constraints. The concluding chapters go on to consider how well the problems of delegation and accountability are solved in these countries. They show that political systems with cohesive and competitive parties and strong mechanisms of external constraint solve their democratic agency problems better than countries with weaker control mechanisms. But in many countries political parties are now weakening, and parliamentary systems face new democratic challenges.
Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies provides an unprecedented guide to contemporary European parliamentary democracies. As democratic governance is transformed at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it illustrates the important challenges
faced by the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe.Readership: Scholars and students of political science, especially of parliamentary democracy; academics interested in West European politics, political behaviour, and institutions
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Kaare Strøm, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, Wolfgang C. Müller, Professor in Department of Government, University of Vienna, and Torbjörn Bergman, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden Contributors:
Rudy B. Andeweg, Professor of Political Science, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
Torbjörn Bergman, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
Magnus Blomgren, Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
Erik Damgaard, Professor of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Lieven
De Winter, Professor of Political Science, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Patrick Dumont, Political Science, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Carlos Flores Juberías, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Valencia, Spain
Svanur Kristjánsson, Professor of Political Science, University of Iceland
Arthur Lupia, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, USA
Paul Mitchell, Lecturer in European Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Wolfgang C. Müller, Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria
Hanne Marthe Narud, Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway
Octavio Amorim
Neto, Research Fellow, Brazilian Institute of Economics and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Graduate School of Economics, both at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro
Benjamin Nyblade, Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA
Tapio Raunio, Professor of Political Science, University of Tampere, Finland
Thomas Saalfeld, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Kaare Strøm, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA
Jean-Louis Thiébault, Professor of Political Science, Université Lille II, France
Arco Timmermans, Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands
Georgios Trantas, Legal
Counsellour on Constitutional and Administrative Law and Independent Researcher in Athens, Greece
Luca Verzichelli, Lecturer in Political Science, University of Siena, Italy
Matti Wiberg, Professor of Political Science, University of Turku, Finland
Paraskevi Zagoriti, Political Science, University of Athens, Greece
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List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Section 1: Introduction and Theory
1: Wolfgang C. Müller, Torbjörn Bergman, and Kaare Strøm: Parliamentary Democracy: Promise and Problems
2: Arthur Lupia: Delegation and its Perils
3: Kaare Strøm: Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation
Section 2: Survey
4: Torbjörn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Müller, Kaare Strøm, and Magnus Blomgren: Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-National Patterns
5: Wolfgang C. Müller: Austria: Imperfect Parliamentarism but Fully-Fledged Party Democracy
6: Lieven de Winter and Patrick Dumont: Belgium: Delegation and Accountability under Partitocratic Rule
7: Erik Damgaard: Denmark: Delegation and Accountability in Minority Situations
8: Tapio Raunio and Matti Wiberg: Finland: Polarized Pluralism in the Shadow of a Strong President
9: Jean-Louis Thiébault: France: Delegation and Accountability in the Fifth Republic
10: Thomas Saalfeld: Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Co-ordination, and Problems of Hidden Action
11: Georgios Trantas, Paraskevi Zagoriti, Torbjörn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Kaare Strøm: Greece: 'Rationalizing' Constitutional Powers in a Post-Dictatorial Country
12: Svanur Kristjánsson: Iceland: A Parliamentary Democracy with a Semi-Presidential Constitution
13: Paul Mitchell: Ireland: 'O What a Tangled Web...' - Delegation, Accountability, and Executive Power
14: Luca Verzichelli: Italy: Delegation and Accountability in a Changing Parliamentary Democracy
15: Patrick Dumont and Lieven De Winter: Luxembourg: A Case of More 'Direct' Delegation and Accountability
16: Arco Timmermans and Rudy B. Andeweg: The Netherlands: Rules and Mores in Delegation and Accountability Relationships
17: Kaare Strøm and Hanne Marthe Narud: Norway: Virtual Parliamentarism
18: Octavio Amorim Neto: Portugal: Changing Patterns of Delegation and Accountability under the President's Watchful Eyes
19: Carlos Flores Juberías: Spain: Delegation and Accountability in a Newly Established Democracy
20: Torbjörn Bergman: Sweden: From Separation of Power to Parliamentary Supremacy - and Back Again?
21: Thomas Saalfeld: The United Kingdom: Still a Single 'Chain of Command'? The Hollowing Out of the 'Westminster Model'
Section 3: Analysis and Conclusion
22: Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, Torbjörn Bergman, and Benjamin Nyblade: Dimensions of Citizen Control
23: Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Torbjörn Bergman: Challenges to Parliamentary Democracy
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