Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-19-929160-1
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 784 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 1167 g

Reihe: Comparative Politics

Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The General Editors are Max Kaase, Professor of Political Science, Vice President and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, International University Bremen, Germany; and Kenneth Newton, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for
Political Research.

Today, parliamentarism is the most common form of democratic government. Yet knowledge of this regime type has been incomplete and often unsystematic. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies offers new conceptual clarity on the topic.

This book argues that representative democracies can be understood as chains of delegation and accountability between citizens and politicians. Under parliamentary democracy, this chain of delegation is simple but also long and indirect. Principal-agent theory helps us to understand the perils of democratic delegation, which include the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. Citizens in democratic states, therefore, need institutional mechanisms by which they can control their
representatives. The most important such control mechanisms are on the one hand political parties and on the other external constraints such as courts, central banks, referendums, and supranational institutions such as those of the European Union. Traditionally, parliamentary democracies have relied heavily
on political parties and presidential systems more on external constraints.

This new empirical investigation includes all seventeen West European parliamentary democracies. These countries are compared in a series of cross-national tables and figures, and seventeen country chapters provide a wealth of information on four discrete stages in the delegation process: delegation from voters to parliamentary representatives, delegation from parliament to the prime minister and cabinet, delegation within the cabinet, and delegation from cabinet ministers to civil servants.
Each chapter illustrates how political parties serve as bonding instruments which align incentives and permit citizen control of the policy process. This is complemented by a consideration of external constraints. The concluding chapters go on to consider how well the problems of delegation and
accountability are solved in these countries. They show that political systems with cohesive and competitive parties and strong mechanisms of external constraint solve their democratic agency problems better than countries with weaker control mechanisms. But in many countries political parties are now weakening, and parliamentary systems face new democratic challenges.

Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies provides an unprecedented guide to contemporary European parliamentary democracies. As democratic governance is transformed at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it illustrates the important challenges faced by the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe.

Zielgruppe

Scholars and students of political science, especially of parliamentary democracy, academics interested in West European politics, political behaviour, and institutions

Autoren/Hrsg.

Strom, Kaare

Strøm, Kaare

Muller, Wolfgang C.

Müller, Wolfgang C.

Bergman, Torbjorn

Bergman, Torbjörn

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie

Über Autor(innen)

Kaare Strøm, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, Wolfgang C. Müller, Professor in Department of Government, University of Vienna, and Torbjörn Bergman, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Contributors: Rudy B. Andeweg, Professor of Political Science, University of Leiden, The Netherlands Torbjörn Bergman, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden Magnus Blomgren, Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden Erik Damgaard, Professor of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark Lieven De Winter, Professor of Political Science, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Patrick Dumont, Political Science, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Carlos Flores Juberías, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Valencia, Spain Svanur Kristjánsson, Professor of Political Science, University of Iceland Arthur Lupia, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, USA Paul Mitchell, Lecturer in European Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Wolfgang C. Müller, Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria Hanne Marthe Narud, Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway Octavio Amorim Neto, Research Fellow, Brazilian Institute of Economics and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Graduate School of Economics, both at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro Benjamin Nyblade, Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA Tapio Raunio, Professor of Political Science, University of Tampere, Finland Thomas Saalfeld, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK Kaare Strøm, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA Jean-Louis Thiébault, Professor of Political Science, Université Lille II, France Arco Timmermans, Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands Georgios Trantas, Legal Counsellour on Constitutional and Administrative Law and Independent Researcher in Athens, Greece Luca Verzichelli, Lecturer in Political Science, University of Siena, Italy Matti Wiberg, Professor of Political Science, University of Turku, Finland Paraskevi Zagoriti, Political Science, University of Athens, Greece