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Karremans investigates the concern that financial considerations are more important than people's demands through the comparative study of five countries - Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain - and explores how governments maintain a balance between institutional responsibility and democratic responsiveness.

Since the early 2010s, budgetary policy-making in EU member states has been subject to tighter European constraints. While recent research shows the relevance of intergovernmental negotiations for setting European policy priorities, little is known about how much political alternation in government still matters for national budgetary agendas. This paper investigates this question in Germany, one of Europes most powerful and financially stable countries. Drawing on original data, the paper first shows how political alternation in German cabinets changes governments budgetary agendas. Secondly, it shows how this alternation also influences the formulation and adoption of European policy recommendations. Based on these findings, the paper argues that governments in financially stable countries can pursue alternative policy agendas, but that these need to find consensus at both the national and European level. The range of alternatives is therefore inevitably contingent upon the national institutional framework and countrys relative strength within the EU. ; (VLID)4920926

Defence date: 31 March 2017 ; Examining Board: Professor Pepper Culpepper, formerly EUI/University of Oxford (Supervisor); Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI (Co-Supervisor); Professor Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg; Professor Maurits Van der Veen, College of William & Mary ; This dissertation deals with the question of how the partisan nature of government still matters in the current globalized and post-industrial world. In particular, it compares the representativeness of two contemporary centre-left governments with that of two centre-left executives from the 1970s in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. According to the more provocative theories about the state of contemporary representative democracy, these countries should be forerunners of a general European trend in which governments care more about technical competence rather than political representation and responsiveness. These tendencies are expected to particularly affect the partisanship of Labour ministers. In order to test these theories, I do a comparative content analysis of how Labour finance ministers/Chancellors justify the yearly government budget in front of the parliament. The justifications are divided into those that characterize the government as representative of the partisan redistributive preferences (input-justifications) VS those that profile it as a competent caretaker of public finances (output-justifications). Following the above-mentioned theories, the hypothesis is that today the output-justifications are more important than in the past. As this approach is relatively novel with regards to the study of responsiveness, the thesis also dedicates one chapter to the justification strategies of a technical and a neoliberal government. The purpose of this extra comparison is to have more empirical evidence of what renders an output-justification different from an input-justification. By incorporating these two cases, thus, I get a deeper comparative insight into what is a typical left-wing/partisan discourse characteristic and what constitutes governmental/institutional talk. This extra comparison, consequently, allows me to reflect more deeply on the findings emerging from the overtime comparison of Labour governments. The findings of my research tell a two-sided story. On the one hand, contrary to my hypothesis, the contemporary cases feature slightly more input-justifications than the governments from the 1970s. On the other, the logic of the discourses suggests that, while in the 1970s the responsiveness to social needs was presented as a policy goal per se, today the input-justifications tend to be more subordinated to justifications about economic and financial considerations. The findings thus speak both to theories according to which today we are not witnessing a decline of political representation, but simply a change in kind, as well to the theories speaking of a gradual hollowing out of political competition. In the iv conclusion of my dissertation I reflect on what is right and wrong on the two sides of the debate.

The last European elections of 2014 were characterized by a concrete effort to increase public participation to the European political debate. However the overall electoral turnout remained disappointingly low. In this paper I deal with the problem of the formation of a European electorate and argue that a better representation on the European integration dimension should substantially contribute to the formation of a transnational electorate. Often, there is the fear that European political conflict framed on this dimension would lead to a radical bipolar conflict between pro- and anti-EU parties. In this paper I show that, if citizens' preferences are properly represented, this does not have to be the case. What I show is that citizens' preferences on European integration are distributed in three roughly equivalent blocs: pro-EU, anti-EU and a neutral position. The point I make is that a proper representation of the neutral position should ensure that the conflict does not become too radical, as the parties representing the neutral position would be the necessary coalition partners of both pro- and anti-EU parties. An important shortcoming of the current European parliament, I argue, is that the neutral position on European integration is not represented and that consequently there is a disproportionate high presence of pro-EU parties. This misrepresentation in the long run may increase the public appeal of Euro-sceptic parties. The data on which my argument is based are from the 2014 Eurobarometer survey.

This essay introduces a collection of papers dealing with the responsive–responsible dilemma of party government. The political developments surrounding the Eurozone crisis attest that the duties of government and the demands of political representation may at times be in sharp contrast with one another. In such contexts, it becomes hard for parties in government to combine responsiveness with responsible policy-making. Late Peter Mair theorized this phenomenon as the increasing bifurcation between the growing complexity of governing in a world of interdependence and the need to respond to often polarizing electoral demands. The key question is whether and how in such contexts parties find the balance between their representative and governing duties. The papers included in this special issue deal with this question in the context of the Eurozone crisis and present evidence about parties' behavior, rhetoric, and policy outputs. In introducing the contributions here, we illustrate how this collective endeavor helps advance the debate on the major challenges to contemporary representative democracy. More specifically, we first discuss how the framework of the responsive–responsible dilemma helps understanding contemporary political developments. We then critically reflect on the distinction between responsiveness and responsibility. Finally, we present how each individual contribution approaches the question of how parties manage the tension between electoral incentives and governmental duties.

This essay introduces a collection of papers dealing with the responsiveresponsible dilemma of party government. The political developments surrounding the Eurozone crisis attest that the duties of government and the demands of political representation may at times be in sharp contrast with one another. In such contexts, it becomes hard for parties in government to combine responsiveness with responsible policy-making. Late Peter Mair theorized this phenomenon as the increasing bifurcation between the growing complexity of governing in a world of interdependence and the need to respond to often polarizing electoral demands. The key question is whether and how in such contexts parties find the balance between their representative and governing duties. The papers included in this special issue deal with this question in the context of the Eurozone crisis and present evidence about parties behavior, rhetoric, and policy outputs. In introducing the contributions here, we illustrate how this collective endeavor helps advance the debate on the major challenges to contemporary representative democracy. More specifically, we first discuss how the framework of the responsiveresponsible dilemma helps understanding contemporary political developments. We then critically reflect on the distinction between responsiveness and responsibility. Finally, we present how each individual contribution approaches the question of how parties manage the tension between electoral incentives and governmental duties. ; (VLID)5100630

Published on 1 May 2020 ; This essay introduces a collection of papers dealing with the responsive–responsible dilemma of party government. The political developments surrounding the Eurozone crisis attest that the duties of government and the demands of political representation may at times be in sharp contrast with one another. In such contexts, it becomes hard for parties in government to combine responsiveness with responsible policy-making. Late Peter Mair theorized this phenomenon as the increasing bifurcation between the growing complexity of governing in a world of interdependence and the need to respond to often polarizing electoral demands. The key question is whether and how in such contexts parties find the balance between their representative and governing duties. The papers included in this special issue deal with this question in the context of the Eurozone crisis and present evidence about parties' behavior, rhetoric, and policy outputs. In introducing the contributions here, we illustrate how this collective endeavor helps advance the debate on the major challenges to contemporary representative democracy. More specifically, we first discuss how the framework of the responsive–responsible dilemma helps understanding contemporary political developments. We then critically reflect on the distinction between responsiveness and responsibility. Finally, we present how each individual contribution approaches the question of how parties manage the tension between electoral incentives and governmental duties.

This article investigates the changing face of governmental responsibility through a comparative content analysis of the yearly budgetary presentations of the French ministers of economy and finance. The cases analysed are the governments under the Hollande (2012–2017) and first Mitterrand (1981–1986) presidencies. In both cases, there were strong external pressures that hindered the pursuit of expansionary budgetary policies and that forced the executives to pursue more restrictive measures. The analysis consists in a comparison of how the ministers in the two different time periods justified this policy course, hypothesizing that international institutional constraints played a more prominent role during the Hollande than during the Mitterrand presidency. By distinguishing between responsive and responsible justifications, we find that institutional constraints are indeed more prominent in the justifications provided by more recent ministers. These findings have important repercussions for understanding how the national democratic cycle functions under the conditions of European integration. In particular, they indicate that the accountability stage has a significant impact as governments do no longer take full credit for their measures, but rather present themselves as spokespersons for a web of institutions. These findings, we argue, are likely not to be peculiar to France but rather relate to a general trend in European politics.