COVID‐19 and European Multi‐Level Democracy
In: Journal of common market studies: JCMS, Band 60, Heft S1, S. 137-149
ISSN: 1468-5965
In: Journal of common market studies: JCMS, Band 60, Heft S1, S. 137-149
ISSN: 1468-5965
In: European political science: EPS, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 430-442
ISSN: 1682-0983
In: West European politics, Band 44, Heft 5-6, S. 1003-1024
ISSN: 1743-9655
In: Goetz , K H & Martinsen , D S 2021 , ' COVID-19 : a dual challenge to European liberal democracy ' , West European Politics , vol. 44 , no. 5-6 , pp. 1003-1024 . https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1930463
This article introduces a special issue of West European Politics on the COVID-19 crisis. It first sets out the dual challenge to democratic principles and democratic performance that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed to European liberal democracies. Three bodies of scholarship are especially relevant in framing this dual democratic challenge: those that provide accounts of policy, institutional and legitimacy crises; accounts of the governance of emergencies and of emergency politics; and accounts of political turbulence and organisational and policy responses. The articles that comprise the special issue provide comparative empirical insights into first reactions, with a focus on the responses by political decision-makers, European publics and the EU. Assessments of the likely longer-term, potentially transformative effects of COVID-19 on the principles and performance of European liberal democracies will need to draw on both sectoral and systemic perspectives, with a focus on the organisation and operation of public authority and the state.
BASE
In: Political studies: the journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Band 70, Heft 2, S. 443-464
ISSN: 1467-9248
In recent decades, many international organizations have become almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Much existing literature suggests that major donors use their funding to refocus international organizations' attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors' geostrategic interests. We investigate this claim in the context of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), examining whether donor influence negatively impacts mandate delivery and leads the organization to direct expenditures more toward recipient countries that are politically, economically, or geographically salient to major donors. Analyzing a new dataset of UNHCR finances (1967–2016), we find that UNHCR served its global mandate with considerable consistency. Applying flexible measures of collective donor influence, so-called "influence-weighted interest scores," our findings suggest that donor influence matters for the expenditure allocation of the agency, but that mandate-undermining effects of such influence are limited and most pronounced during salient refugee situations within Europe.
In: Journal of public administration research and theory, Band 32, Heft 1, S. 111-129
ISSN: 1477-9803
AbstractThis contribution theorizes on the emergence of affective styles in the accountability reporting of public agencies. Under conditions of multiple accountability towards heterogeneous stakeholders, public agencies are expected to make increased use of sentiment in their reporting. Agencies' differentiated modulation of positive and negative sentiment results in four ideal-typical affective styles: technocratic, political, alarming, and self-praising. The plausibility of this framework is demonstrated for the case of a major international public agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which serves several million Palestine refugees. We conduct a dictionary-based sentiment analysis of UNRWA annual reports published between 1951 and 2020, a corpus of 1.47 million words. Additional evidence from interviews with UNRWA officials and diplomats is also considered. Over time, the agency's use of sentiment has increased in response to diversifying stakeholders and its affective style of reporting has changed repeatedly. Contrary to established theoretical expectations, multiple accountability not only increases positive reporting and self-praise. Rather, with increasing levels of negativity, the alarming and political styles of communication have played a much stronger role. These findings demonstrate that agencies' chief goal in accountability reporting is not simply to elicit positive assessments from their respective accountability forums through self-praising language. Agencies may also aim to achieve "negativity congruence" with accountability forums by increasing negative sentiment, thus compelling stakeholders to acknowledge the operational challenges agencies face.
In: Oxford handbooks online
In: Political Science
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.
In: Transformations in Governance Ser.
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political Science
In: Transformations in governance
In: West European politics, Band 42, Heft 3, S. (iii)-(iii)
ISSN: 1743-9655
In: European political science review: EPSR, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 267-284
ISSN: 1755-7747
AbstractThe staggered renewal of parliamentary mandates is widespread in upper chambers, yet little understood. Comparative work has found that all members of a chamber are affected by upcoming elections, not merely those whose terms are up for renewal. In this study, we explore for which activities, and under which conditions, staggered membership renewal is associated with class-specific parliamentary activity, defined as systematically differing behaviour across two or more classes of members. We examine these questions with data on the French Senate. Drawing on insights from the study of political business cycles, legislative cycles, and previous scholarship on staggering, the article shows that behaviour varies over the course of senators' mandates, and that class-specific behaviour exists. However, staggering produces a different pattern of parliamentary activity than might be expected: proximity to elections reduces parliamentary activity of the class of senators facing re-election; by contrast, senators 'not up next' become more active. This effect, we argue, reflects the electoral system under which senators are elected.
This paper analyses how the size and socio-economic diversity of their electorate affect parliamentarians legislative behaviour. We study the Australian senate, which wields considerable legislative influence and is marked by large differences in the size and socio-economic makeup of the districts that senators represent. We demonstrate that as the size of their district increases, senators ask more questions and introduce more bills and amendments. By contrast, senators become less active as the diversity of their electoral district increases. The paper thus establishes that size and diversity of electorates have significant effects on legislative behaviour. ; (VLID)5205911 ; Version of record
BASE
In: West European politics, Band 41, Heft 4, S. 825-845
ISSN: 0140-2382
Abstract: "This article introduces a collection of papers devoted to the study of secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains. Academic interest in secret politics - those aspects of public activity intentionally concealed from the public eye - and the governance of secrecy - the political processes and regulatory frameworks governing secret keeping - is growing. This interest reflects technological, social and political developments that appear to signal the end of privacy and the rapid expansion of political secrecy in European multi-level settings. As a consequence, the tensions between democratic accountability, with its transparency requirements, and political secrecy, which is typically justified on grounds of effectiveness of state action, have become more marked and more politicised. Engaging with these developments, the contributions to this collection draw on actor- and interest-centred perspectives that focus on actors' motivations in secret politics; institutional perspectives that focus on contestation over secrecy norms; and organisational perspectives that emphasise the diversity of secrecy cultures. Further research will benefit from paying special attention to a diverse range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational secrecy settings; to political contestation over secrecy and the regulatory regimes that govern it; and to the refashioning of public-private secrecy architectures." (Seite 825)
World Affairs Online
In: West European politics, Band 41, Heft 4, S. 825-845
ISSN: 1743-9655