Suchergebnisse

This article investigates under which conditions it is possible to overcome the inherent interest divergence among chancellors, ministers and experts. Following a model of Fang and Stone (2013), the existence of a reform-prone minister is a necessary condition for chancellors to trust experts' reform recommendations. Using data on the recommendations for the German Hartz reforms, I find that the political parties put emphasis on the topics of this reform neither in their programmatic manifestos for the 2002 election nor in their coalition agreements. However, I show that the Economic Expert Council changed its recommendation strategy in its annual report of 2002/03 after the reform-prone minister Wolfgang Clement came into office. The government incorporated the recommendations in the following 2003 economic report and implemented the Hartz reforms until 2005. Adapted from the source document.

In a ten-year long phase of reform and expansion of the higher education system from the mid-1960s on, the discipline of political science was established and institutionalized in Austria. But which scientific concepts were available back then, and which were actually applied? Focusing on their epistemological characteristics, this article argues that different suggestions were brought forward, some of them stemming from an autochthonous genealogy, while others were genuinely acculturated. Adapted from the source document.

40 years since its inception in Austria, political science is well-established at universities and as a research field. Staff, resources and budgets remain scarce, though. And what exactly is the discipline political science in Austria? This discussion article argues that "project" political science somehow got lost out of sight. For the discipline as a whole, the article claims, it is necessary to open up space for debate. Adapted from the source document.

This paper reviews the progress of research on the European Union's legislative process over the past 10 years, describing such research as a challenging task, resolving methodological problems & countering pitfalls, especially in the collection, storage, & preparation of data. Konig speaks from experience since he, with Heiner Schulz, conducted two of the early studies on EU legislation process (1997 & 2000), which motivated & influenced Jonathan Golub's studies of the decision-making process (specifically, the time lag from the first formal proposal to the adoption of the legislative act), based on his sample of 1,141 EU directives. Konig critically examines Golub's work, focusing on his most recent paper, "Survival Analysis and European Union Decision-Making" (2007), & contends that certain of his claims are plainly incorrect. He is also wrong in defining the content of EU directives. It is concluded that rather than conduct another analysis on directives, Golub would do better to document the data collection process & cross-validate the data. KoFUMnig suggests that more collaborative, labor-intensive work would help in testing rival approaches & thus in understanding the factors influencing the legislative decision-making process. Tables, Figures, References. S. Stanton

This is the first study which provides a strategic view on the empowering of the EP by the member states. Compared to the consultation procedure, in which the Council adopts Commission proposals, the EP has become a co-legislator in the codecision procedure, in which it usually promotes an integrationist position favouring policy change. According to this supranational scenario, most scholars conclude that member states intend to increase the legitimacy of the EU rather than their benefits from legislative outcomes. For some authors the empowering of the EP is even a significant example of the limits and deficits of rational choice theory. From a strategic perspective, however, this study clarifies that member states can benefit from introducing the codecision procedure in the supranational scenario. When the parliament can hardly figure out the complex configuration in the Council, member states can strategically misrepresent their pivotal member's 'true' position and present a minority proposal in the conciliation bargains that is more closely located to the status quo. Under these conditions, the introduction of the codecision procedure has several advantages for the member states; in particular it improves the benefits of member states vis-a-vis solutions under the consultation procedure, in which a better informed Commission makes a proposal that must find the support only of a qualified majority of member states. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making process through a quantitative analysis of all Commission proposals initiated between 1984 and 1999. Using the positions of Member States, the analysis is innovative in two respects: the identification of the relative importance of institutions and preferences for the process of EU legislative decision making, and the empirical evaluation of the ongoing theoretical controversy between constructivists and spatial analysts about the converging or diverging effect of Member State positions. The findings reveal that the process of EU legislative integration is significantly slowing down, even though Council qualified majority voting facilitates decision making while parliamentary participation modestly increases the duration. Against the constructivist claims of convergence, the results show that the divergence of Member State positions significantly determines the duration of the legislative process, in particular in the key domains of EU integration: the larger the distance between the Member States' positions, the longer the EU decision-making process takes. This suggests that the accession of countries with diverging positions will slow down the EU's legislative process, but institutional reform of the Council's decision-making threshold is a promising solution for coping with this effect. Adapted from the source document.

This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, which is discussed in the jurisprudential literature as another source of democratic deficit. Directives must be transposed into national law, but lengthy deadlines raise normative questions about the extent to which governments of today can politically and reliably commit domestic majorities of tomorrow. The potential for discontinuity is analysed using transposition data in 15 member states and preference indicators over the last 20 years. The findings reveal that parliaments are largely excluded from this process and that the preferences of the previous and the newly elected representatives often differ considerably, particularly in countries where public support for European integration has declined in recent years. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2007.]

This article investigates the potential for decisive policy change after the 2005 German election. Using party manifestos, the analysis concentrates on the size of the winset of the Grand Coalition in legislation with & without mandatory Bundesrat consent. One of its innovative aspects is the systematic distinction between political parties as unitary actors on the one hand & as collective actors (with varying levels of cohesion) on the other. If parties are treated as unitary actors, the conventional view suggests that the Grand Coalition is likely to have only a moderate potential for policy change in both types of legislation. Relaxing the unitary actor-assumption reveals a different strategic situation: the less cohesive the government parties, the larger the potential for policy change. At the same time, however, the self-imposed time-limit of the Grand Coalition promotes defection, because the parties' behaviour is less likely to be disciplined by the existence of a 'shadow of the future'. Under these conditions, policy change also seems to depend on the distribution of gains between the coalition partners. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

The evaluation of formal models generates questions about the unit of analysis, the nature of the policy space & the kind of criteria to be applied for comparative testing. Do we study decision-making at the proposal level or do we explore the policy space of a set of proposals across multiple sectors? Can we reduce the policy space of the unit of analysis & if so, how do we reduce it? & how do we test formal theories -- should we use point predictions offering multiple criteria or do we have proceedings which control for robustness & the level of assumptions? 13 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2005.]

The utility of the Domestic Structures and European Integration framework in measuring European Union member-states' support for a European Constitution is discussed. An overview of the Domestic Structures and European Integration framework is provided, emphasizing the preliminary studies that form the foundation of its design, its examination of domestic & international considerations upon constitution-building, & its research objectives. Attention is subsequently directed toward exploring the various instruments employed within the Domestic Structures and European Integration framework, the significance of calculating actors' support for constitution-building, the framework's ability to actually predict support for the European Constitution, & the mechanism's potential contributions to generating backing for a regional constitution. 7 References. J. W. Parker

It is argued that the rejection of the EU constitution treaty by French & Dutch voters in referendums held in the Spring of 2005 does not render integration theories obsolete. Comparative analysis results from the research project "Domestic Structures and European Integration" (DOSEI) reported earlier (Konig, 2005; Konig & Hug, Simon, 2006) are reproduced to illustrate the interplay of interests, positions, & actors involved in drafting, signing, & ratifying the EU constitution treaty, signed by the 25 member states in Rome in October 2004. Although the treaty was rejected in referendums held in France on 29 May 2005 & the Netherlands on 1 June 2005, it was ratified by 16 other EU members, either in parliamentary or plebiscitary procedures. Ratification was postponed in Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the UK, & Poland; the treaty faces most opposition in the two latter countries. The DOSEI results demonstrate that the constitutional convention led by former French president Giscard D'Estaing was very effective in accommodating the positions of so many states with diverging interests, although the veto & negotiation restrictions imposed during the drafting of the constitution may be responsible for the increased risk of the document's rejection during the ratification stage. The DOSEI results also prove that integration research can contribute to the explanation of historical events propelled by the national vs supranational dynamics. References. Z. Dubiel

The author discusses the theory of liberal nationalism of the prominent Canadian political theorist Will Kymlicka. According to Kymlicka, liberal nationalism is a necessary ingredient of developed liberal democracy, because social justice, deliberative democracy, & individual freedom are most efficiently achieved within national political units. Kymlicka defines his theory as liberal culturalism, a doctrinal variety able to unify nationalism & multiculturalism. The author analyzes the main arguments on which Kymlicka's theoretical claims are based & maintains that Kymlicka's justification of nationalism has serious deficits: It uses a too abstract notion of liberal culturalism, neglects alternative theoretical approaches & counter-arguments, & wrongly presupposes nationalism as a functional prerequisite of democracy, welfare state, & individual liberties. In conclusion, it is emphasized that Kymlicka's theory can be described as morally & politically opportunist: It supports the contemporary hegemonic political practice, which only superficially claims to be multiculturalist, but it has little to offer to contemporary political philosophy. 43 References. Adapted from the source document.