Expert survey on prime-ministerial performance in Central-Eastern Europe

Abstract

This expert survey applies and measures a novel concept of prime-ministerial performance that refers to the tasks a prime minister is theoretically expected to fulfil for making parliamentary democracy work. Prime-ministerial tasks are derived from a theoretical framework, which conceives parliamentary democracy as a two-directional chain of principal- agent relationships in which prime ministers are agents as well principals. For each country under study, we asked about twenty country experts to answer these questions for all cabinets in an online survey. The survey was fielded in eleven Central-Eastern European countries between November 2018 and April 2019, with a total of 215 experts. Most experts worked in academia or as journalists and came from various academic disciplines (Political Science, History, Economics, and Sociology).