Suchergebnisse

This article reviews the by now extensive literature on the Europeanisation of the political systems of the EU-15, with an emphasis on parliaments and executives (i.e., governments and ministerial administrations). The Living Review highlights apparently contradictory effects of integration: de-parlamentarisation vs. re-parlamentarisation; bureaucratisation vs. politicisation; and centralisation vs. diffusion. These diverging assessments of the effects of integration do, in part, reflect diversity in the EU-15; in part, they are, however, also a result of differences in the specification of variables, research designs and theoretical approaches. Work that inquires into patterns of Europeanisation across institutional domains, countries, regions and time and which seeks to tackle the 'methodological nationalism' of the Europeanisation literature promises a clearer picture of the institutional consequences of European integration than we possess at present.

During the 1970s, analyses of state and government in Western Europe were preoccupied with crises of governability and legitimacy. The early 1980s witnessed sharply differing responses to these crises, exemplified by the socialist experiment in France and Thatcherism in the UK. By the end of the 1980s, 'governance'- in both national and European arenas-began to be regarded as the dominant institutional response to problems of governability. Considered from the perspective of comparative European government, the oft-claimed shift from government to governance appears overstated. Governance is less widespread and consequential both at national and European levels than its proponents suggest, as a survey of the propellants, conditions and national and European constellations of governance shows. Viewed historically, governance does not so much indicate a shift from government as towards government, as the core institutions of the state build up capacity to deal authoritatively and hierarchically with new governing challenges. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractWhile there is much research on the developmental trajectories of post-Communist state institutions and the external and domestic influences that have shaped their paths, much less is known about institutional performance, that is, the manner in which institutions operate and the extent to which they produce predictable patterns of effects. Academic analysis has been reluctant to shift attention from institutionalisation to effects, not least because of the fluidity of many formal institutions. The present article documents that over the last decade state institutions in East Central Europe have increasingly stabilized, especially at the macro-institutional level. The analysis highlights insights from institutional theory – notably how degrees, time, preferences and resources matter – to encourage further research in the field.

The manner in which time is institutionalized is critical to how a political system works. Terms, time budgets and time horizons of collective and individual political actors; rights over timing, sequencing and speed in decision-making; and the temporal properties of policy matter to the distribution of power; efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making; and democratic legitimacy. This book makes a case for the systematic study of political time in the European Union (EU) - both as an independent and a dependent variable - and highlights the analytical value-added of a time-centred analysis