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This article investigates how informal rules in the European Union change in the periods between formal treaty revisions. On the basis of a case study on the White Paper on Governance presented by the European Commission in July 2001, it shows how institutional change is driven by conflict between the Commission and the European Parliament. The conflict concerns the development of informal rules to structure the interaction of the Commission and the Parliament with Europe's civil society. The interaction with civil society organisations is very important for the EU bodies because it allows them to acquire resources that are indispensable in order to fulfil and expand their organisational role. An additional aim of this article is to examine how these institutional developments might influence the long-term development of formal treaty rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) occupy a unique space in EU governance. Both policies have supranational elements, yet their formally intergovernmental status shields them from the increased scrutiny powers granted to national parliaments after Lisbon. National parliamentary scrutiny of these policy areas has thus received relatively little attention. Using an analytical framework of ‘authority, ability and attitude’, this paper argues that attitude, meaning MPs’ willingness to scrutinise CFSP, is the most important factor in explaining the empirical variation in the quantity and quality of national parliamentary scrutiny of CFSP. Drawing on qualitative research and interviews conducted as part of the OPAL project, the paper demonstrates that formal powers do not, in practice, equate to ‘strong’ scrutiny, arguing that the strongest parliaments are those that make CFSP scrutiny a systematic, normalised and culturally accepted part of parliamentarians’ everyday work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the institutions associated with government termination in parliamentary systems: no-confidence and confidence motions, and the early dissolution of the parliament. We consider constitutional texts for all European countries between 1800 and 2019 and identify two broad trends: (1) the constitutionalisation of practices that have first emerged as the result of strategic interactions between the government and the parliament; (2) the tendency towards protecting both the executive and the parliament from mutual interference. While the first tendency has culminated with an almost universal constitutionalisation of the principle of parliamentarism in European constitutions, the second led to the protection of executives and the extension of effective legislative terms. We suggest that these constitutional developments are associated with the stabilisation of parliamentarism after World War II and conclude that although parliamentarism remains a flexible system, contemporary regimes do not function like their forebears did in the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that we believe more in the reality of climate change when we experience warmer-than-usual temperatures. This reflects a psychological process in which easily accessible information from personal weather experiences is used as a heuristic to form climate opinions. This paper replicates and extends upon a research design and results of Egan and Mullin to provide the first systematic European study of the Local Warming Effect. Based on data from 12 European countries, the analysis shows that when objective temperatures increase by two standard deviations (5 °C) relative to normal temperatures, climate opinions are strengthened by around 0.5–1.0 percentage points – comparable to the effect of a full step to the left on a 0–10 political ideology scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains regulators’ preferences concerning the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)? The paper answers this question by providing an alternative account of the creation of the SSM using an institutionalist perspective. It is argued that the creation of the SSM does not simply reflect the material interests of governments and domestic financial firms, but that regulators’ positions were also significantly affected by the institutional environment in which they operated. Two characteristics of domestic supervisory governance are identified: the institutional responsibilities of banking regulators (microprudential and/or macroprudential) and the fragmentation of supervisory and monetary policies. The empirical analysis demonstrates the relevance of these factors for shaping regulators’ preferences both within and across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the effect of national partisanship and Euroscepticism on individuals’ causal responsibility attribution in European multilevel democracies. It is particularly focused on the average differences in responsibility attribution in federal and non-federal states, as well as in countries belonging to different European Union enlargement waves. Using a pooled dataset of the 2004, 2009, and 2014 European Election Studies, results show that when poor economic outcomes are at stake, partisans of the national incumbent in federal states are more likely to assign responsibility to regional governments following a blame-attribution logic, while this logic is absent in non-federal states. Likewise, Eurosceptic individuals are more likely to assign responsibility to European authorities when they hold negative views of the economy and they belong to countries that have been European Union members for a longer period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his later writings Peter Mair expressed strong and ever more urgent concerns over the state of party politics and the future of representative politics itself. This paper uses Mair’s thesis to frame a discussion about the state of our representative system of democracy. It starts by setting out his arguments on party and democratic failure. It then considers the question of whether the evidence supports such a perspective, or whether in fact there are signs of adaptability and change. This in turn leads to a discussion about the reform agenda in established representative democracies, with particular attention to the potential of ‘mini-publics’ in enabling a role for ordinary citizens in debates over constitutional reform. The paper concludes by arguing that this reform agenda provides evidence of democracies being reconfigured rather than stripped down. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the process of Europeanisation of party politics by examining the regulation of political parties by supranational European organisations. Despite the increased relevance of the regulation of the activity, behaviour, organisation and finances of political parties in European democracies, the supranational dimensions of this phenomenon have hitherto received relatively little systematic scholarly attention. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, combining approaches from the Europeanisation literature with legal theory and party scholarship. For the purpose of this paper, the rulings and regulations of the European Union, the various organs of the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights are analysed. The paper highlights the horizontal and vertical patterns of norm creation and diffusion and demonstrates that, despite a certain convergence of European standards, conceptions of democracy and corresponding regulatory paradigms have not become so similar as to be virtually indistinguishable from one another. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Domestic opportunity structures and political actors’ positions are widely regarded as the most important explanatory factors for EU politicisation. The euro crisis, however, has revealed cleavages across rather than within countries, suggesting structural factors as a potential explanation for politicisation. Based on the political economy literature on Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union, this contribution develops a structural approach to politicisation with respect to countries’ power and variety of capitalism. Using a content and claims analysis of business papers in Germany, France, Austria and Ireland before and during the crisis, the findings reveal a differentiated pattern of politicisation. While an expansion of actors indicates that EMU became more politicised during the crisis, polarisation remained low within countries. Countries’ variety of capitalism and their perceived power in the EU largely explain the substance and objects of politicisation. The findings encourage further research considering structural explanations for differentiated politicisation in less elite-centred settings of politicisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of the empowerment of the European Parliament over the years is due to its special role in providing a bridge connecting the public’s policy preferences on the one hand, and the legislative behaviour of elected officials on the other. As the only popularly elected EU institution, successive treaty reforms increased the EP’s political power. These reforms were accompanied by an explicit desire to see citizens’ involvement in EU politics increase and, in turn, provide support and legitimacy to the European integration project. This paper models MEPs’ track records on various political issues, and assesses the extent to which their output is in line with the positions their party campaigned on and the policy preferences expressed in public opinion. The findings suggest that there are discrete patterns of representation, where some parties are more inclined toward greater congruence with their selectorate and manifesto than others. Furthermore, the degree of congruence varies across policy issues and is shaped, to a large extent, by institutional arrangements and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an institutional approach to accountability in representative democracies. Theorising accountability comprises both settled polities with well-entrenched institutions and unsettled polities with weak or contested institutions, and it is argued that agency theory and formal principal–agent models giving priority to compliance and control usually make assumptions that are unlikely to apply to the latter type of polity. An institutional approach challenges principal–agent assumptions regarding what accountability means and implies, what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing and responding to accounts and assigning accountability, and how accountability institutions work and change. Accountability is related to fundamental issues in democratic politics and the paper treats distributions of information, normative standards of assessment, authority and power relations as endogenous to democratic politics. The paper also holds that institutions affect actors’ identities and roles through socialisation, internalisation and habitualisation, as well as through external incentives. An aspiration is to take a modest step towards understanding areas of application for competing approaches to democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do parties with different ideological origins adjust their policies in response to the binding commitments that derive from the European integration process? This paper examines whether party platforms have adapted to the ideological content of EU treaty provisions – based on ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘regulated capitalism’ – across a range of policy areas The analysis builds on existing research which has examined how party families respond to the challenges and opportunities of the integration process. This is the first study that focuses on long-term party policy adjustment across different policy areas by examining whether there has been a shift away from core ideological goals towards the direction of EU policy. The main finding is that there has generally been a shift towards the direction of EU policy across all party families in both member and non-member states. The findings have implications for the quality of representation and functioning of democracy in the member states since the deepening of the European integration process reduces ideologically distinct policy alternatives across party families and can hinder policy innovation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper models the correlates of parties’ positions on the issue of European integration, asking why some parties are in favour of European integration, while others are less favourable or even opposed to it. The paper builds on existing work which has identified three sets of explanatory factors predicting parties’ positions on integration: the electorate, parties and party system characteristics. By employing multilevel modelling using data on over 220 parties in 14 Western EU member states for the years 1984 to 2006, the effects of party- and context-level predictors of parties’ positions on EU integration are assessed. The findings demonstrate that parties’ positions are primarily influenced by EU preferences of the general electorate, parties’ left–right ideological extremes and incumbency status. The results also show that the impact of party characteristics is moderated by the electoral context in which parties operate. Moreover, the interaction between both levels offers further insights as to the nature of these associations. Specifically, party size is a robust predictor of integration position only when accounting for the levels of party system's fractionalisation and polarisation. Additionally, parties oriented towards the centre of the ideological spectrum are even more likely to favour European integration within highly polarised systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. Withthe exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention inresearch on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to addressthat and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men's parties' – partiesled and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women andwomen's concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical rightparties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is nowevidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibitan active political involvement of women and engage in some representation ofwomen's concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised' political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recentgendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academicand political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies possible micro-mechanisms for the operation of Lipset and Rokkan's freezing hypothesis and suggests that their effects do not disappear altogether with the decline of cleavage politics but are sustained by any persistent social or attitudinal divide between the electorates of different parties. A multi-level analysis of survey data from the 2004 European Election Study supports the expectation that political involvement should be consistently higher and volatility lower than otherwise expected among citizens who are predisposed to support particular parties because of their enduring attitudinal and social characteristics. This paper argues that this fact powerfully biases the choices of established parties towards appealing to those citizens who vote in a way that maintains existing political divides among groups in the electorate. This provides a new explanation of why the mobilisation of enduring social and attitudinal divides in the electorate makes party systems reflect past divides even when the conflicts that gave rise to them have lost some or all political relevance, for instance, because of a shift from the national to the European electoral arena. The analysis also provides additional insights into why European elections fail to produce a European party system and why sources of political participation and interest vary across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the politicisation of European tax governance in mass media. Although taxation is commonly assumed to remain a national prerogative, European institutions have extended their reach far into national tax regimes. Whether this expansion of EU authority towards one of the core functions of the nation state is accompanied by politicisation is the question to be addressed in this article. To analyse the causal nexus between growing EU authority – measured in terms of formal authority and tax legislation – and the politicisation of EU tax governance, the paper compares public debates in Germany, Ireland and Switzerland over a time period of 30 years between 1981 and 2011. Based on a newspaper content analysis, the empirical results demonstrate that EU tax governance is increasingly politicised in all three countries. Varying levels and content of politicisation across time and space are explained by national economic and socio-cultural conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This reveals a gap between the normative theoretical assessment of EU politicisation and empirical sociological analysis of this phenomenon. To reconcile this discrepancy, this paper develops three actually-existing trajectories of politicisation: the remote conflict, the international conflict and the domestic conflict. Each trajectory carries unique challenges and opportunities to the democratic legitimacy of the Union. It is argued that the domestic conflict trajectory is most promising from a normative democratic perspective. Paradoxically, this does not necessarily imply a renationalisation of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Parliamentarians and their party groups can employ many different instruments to communicate policy statements to their electorate (debates in plenary, presentations of committee reports, oral questions, written questions, and interpellations). Therefore, the design of these instruments should be analysed in one common framework. This paper seeks to provide a first step towards this goal by mapping and explaining the centralisation of parliamentary policy statements in all western European countries with a parliamentary system. It is argued that, on a theoretical level, there are two different causes for a stronger or weaker centralisation of the instruments of parliamentary policy statements: the electoral connection and efficiency. Empirically, it is shown that there are striking differences in centralisation both within and between countries which are worth exploring further. Moreover, the results of the statistical models suggest that the electoral connection is the driving factor behind the centralisation of the instruments of parliamentary policy statements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political initiatives promoting a far-right agenda have gained significant political influence in Western European democracies. This has occurred despite apparent broad-based public rejection of Europe's Nazi past. This is a puzzle, since there are affinities between the old and the new far right. This article addresses that puzzle. Theoretically, the article distinguishes between broad and narrow interpretations of what it means to reject Europe's Nazi past. Empirically, it shows how a well-established survey experimental template reveals substantive variations in public political tolerance of the far right. For citizens in five key Western European democracies, rejecting the Nazi past only means rejecting initiatives explicitly identified as neo-Nazi. For other far-right initiatives, political tolerance is more common and increases in accordance with these initiatives' institutionalisation in the party system. For far-right parties fully institutionalised in the party system, public political tolerance is at the same level as for other political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The divide in the Eurozone between a small set of core economies with strong international financial positions (North) and a set of debtor states that show periodic vulnerability in international financial markets (South) remains a core feature of the area. Our understanding of that schism, however, remains incomplete. Comparative political economists have emphasised differences in labour market institutions – in particular wage setting – to explain the split. This article takes issue with that view, suggesting that the case for a wage-driven explanation of creditor and debtor states' positions in the Eurozone remains weak. Instead, it emphasises the role of capital flows and the uneven impact these had on domestic demand across Eurozone states both before and after 2008. This macro-economically centred explanation – in which financial, rather than labour market, dynamics play the central role – has important implications for our evaluation of Eurozone reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the partisan foundations of education policies leads to ambiguous expectations with regard to the predominant cleavage structures in party competition on this topic. There is disagreement as to whether leftist or rightist parties are responsible for increasing spending on education, while others claim that educational expansion has become a consensual topic. This paper analyses the cleavage structure of party competition over the topic of educational expansion, relying on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. It identifies political parties as ‘issue-owners’ and ‘issue-ignorers’, respectively, and finds considerable variation with regard to cleavage structures of party competition between countries and across time. One tentative conclusion from the analysis is that policy legacies play an important role in shaping cleavage structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Issue Yield model predicts that parties will choose specific issues to emphasise, based on the joint assessment of electoral risks (how divisive is an issue within the party support base) and electoral opportunities (how widely supported is the same issue outside the party). According to this model, issues with high yield are those that combine a high affinity with the existing party base, together with a high potential to reach new voters. In previous work, the model showed a remarkable ability to explain aggregate issue importance as reported by party supporters, as well as issue emphasis in party manifestos. This paper tests the implications at the individual level by comparing a conventional model where issue salience is determined from manifesto data with a revised model where issue salience is determined by issue yield. The empirical findings show that issue yield is a more effective criterion than manifesto emphasis for identifying the issues most closely associated with party support in the minds of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theories of electoral institutions and representation suggest that majoritarian and proportional systems will produce distinct patterns of party–voter congruence, with the centripetal incentives of the former pulling parties to the ideological centre and reducing, by comparison with the latter, congruence with voters to the right and left. Recent scholarship, however, has found little contemporary empirical evidence for this pattern but no satisfactory explanation has been advanced to account for these non-findings. This paper develops a new theoretical account of the impact of electoral institutions on congruence that takes into account the increasingly dealigned character of voters. The central argument is that the impact of institutions is conditional on the balance between partisans and independents in the electorate. It is this conditional nature of the influence that seems to account for the absence of the anticipated relationship of institutions to congruence nowadays. This theory is tested using a unique data set of party positions in 24 European states and its consequences are drawn out for the relative representational effectiveness of electoral systems in contemporary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous studies suggest, and common wisdom holds, that government participation is detrimental for new parties. This paper argues that the opposite is true. Drawing on a large-N analysis (111 parties in 16 countries) in combination with two case studies, it demonstrates that new parties generally benefit organisationally from supporting or entering a government coalition. Compared to established parties, new parties have the advantage that their leadership is more able to allocate effectively the spoils of office, and can change still malleable rudimentary party structures so as to respond to intra-organisational demands, as well as the functional demands of holding office. The authors conclude by setting their finding in wider perspective and elaborate on its implications for contemporary West European politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies on the European Parliament have largely overlooked the impact of the inter-institutional context on its internal organisation. This paper argues that the stronger legislative powers of the Parliament vis-a-vis the Council of Ministers under the co-decision than under the consultation procedure affect the intra-parliamentary allocation of different types of legislative report. The analysis of the period 2004-07 shows that legislators from the centre-right party group coalition and loyal party group members are privileged in the allocation of co-decision reports. In contrast, legislators with outlying special interests and experts are given systematic access to drafting only consultation reports. The higher competition for co-decision versus consultation reports left unchecked by the formal EP rules has thus been exploited by party group leaders to promote group cohesion and coalition-building, producing clear winners and losers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the European Parliament, different coalitions form from one vote to the next. To understand the process of coalition formation it is necessary to consider the inter-institutional context in which decisions are made. This paper develops hypotheses regarding how changes in the relations between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers affect coalition formation in the European Parliament. The hypotheses are tested using roll-call data from the fifth parliamentary term. In line with expectations, it is found that coalition patterns are more consistent in relation to final decisions under the co-decision procedure (when both institutions come to an agreement) than they are under the consultation procedure. Furthermore, the closer relations between the institutions have increased the importance of the median party group on the left-right dimension in coalition formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and 'informal policies' towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking into account the attempts to render the European integration process a new cultural and value-based quality on the one hand, and the prevalence of sceptical positions on the other, the role of religion as a factor shaping the process of European integration and its accompanying features such as Euroscepticism deserves special attention. It may be argued that the entire EU is a project inaugurated and pushed along primarily by Christian Democratic forces and inspirations. However, the EU is currently characterised by an advanced state of secularisation in most of its member states and high levels of religious and cultural pluralisation. This article raises the question to what extent religious, in particular Christian, actors such as religious parties and the churches have strayed from this integrationist past and contributed to Euroscepticism. Furthermore, the second question is whether a confessional pattern of Euroscepticism can be identified. The paper addresses these questions by empirically and comparatively analysing the positions and influence of religious actors on Euroscepticism in a selected group of EU member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates religiosity in relation to party choice in European Parliament elections. Conventional wisdom tells us that as Europe has secularised, the effect of religion on party choice should also have diminished. Yet, this cross-national and cross-temporal study of religious voting in European elections from 1989 to 2004 paints a more nuanced picture. It shows that a) the effect of religion has been declining, but has increased in recent years, b) religion matters in particular for voting for Christian Democratic parties and Conservative parties, c) while generational replacement reduces the overall effect of religion on electoral decisions, the effect of religion has recently increased within each generation, and d) the impact of religion depends on the religious context in which citizens live so that religion plays a bigger role in fractionalised societies. These findings are discussed in the light of a revived importance of religion for European politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks why the European Commission lost control over the policy process in one of the most contested areas of policy-making in the European Union in recent years. The article finds that after years of vigorous political controversy over the framing of the issues at stake, the EU finally shifted into a Schattschneiderian mode of politics. The policy conflict expanded dramatically and a previously unrelated set of actors and interests united along new lines of policy debate. The analysis underscores how the political mode of EU decision-making can shift during the process of policy-making. In particular, it stresses how policy conflicts affect the mobilisation and demobilisation of political contestants and the realignment of political actors in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (Frontex) was founded. Contrary to the widely used principal-agent approaches, it is more promising to analyse Frontex through the lens of experimentalist governance. This paper has two lines of argument. First, it argues that Frontex may only succeed if Frontex has a sufficient degree of organisational independence and enjoys appropriate and steady support by all member states. This is especially virulent when many member states fail to provide significant contributions in terms of material and human resources as well as time, leading to a suboptimal reduction of duration, scope and operational impact of Frontex's missions. The second argument is concerned with the accountability of Frontex. Contrary to the experimental approach, this article takes a sceptical stance, arguing that important (supra-)national actors are sidelined and relevant legal rules are ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the EU regulatory state expands into fiscal surveillance and what conflicts arise in the process. That the EU should have gone down the route of regulating budgets is puzzling. In Majone's original concept, the regulatory state is meant not to interfere with member states' budgetary redistributive policies. Yet the revision of the Pact strengthened the regulatory content of fiscal surveillance by reformulating the policy problem, strengthening delegated monitoring by the Commission, with Eurostat rather than DG Ecfin at its helm, and by extending control through specialised information. The analysis implies that the revision of the Pact in March 2005 cannot simply be dismissed as a watering down of its fiscal rules. However, there are limitations to regulatory expansion. One limitation is the inherent tension between the requirements of control and the economic justification of fiscal rules, another that economic justifications remain ambiguous and contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European state aid control, a part of competition policy, typically follows the logic of negative integration. It constrains the potential for member states to distort competition by reducing their ability to subsidise industry. In addition, this paper argues, ambiguous Treaty rules and heterogeneous member state preferences have enabled the European Commission to act as a supranational entrepreneur, not only enforcing the prohibition of distortive state aid, but also developing its own vision of 'good' state aid policy. In order to prevent or to settle political conflict about individual decisions, the Commission has sought to establish more general criteria for the state aid that it still deems admissible. These criteria have been codified into a complex system of soft law and, more recently, hard state aid law. The Commission has thus created positive integration 'from above' and increasingly influences the objectives of national state aid policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when the literature on political parties is brimming with health and vitality, the parties themselves seem to be experiencing potentially severe legitimacy problems and to be suffering from a quite massive withdrawal of popular support and affection. This article addresses one key aspect of the problems facing contemporary parties in Europe, which is the challenge to party government. I begin by reviewing the changing pattern of party competition, in which I discuss the decline of partisanship in policy-making and the convergence of parties into a mainstream consensus. I then look again at the familiar 'parties-do-matter' thesis and at the evidence for declining partisanship within the electorate. In the third section of the paper I explore the various attempts to specify the conditions for party government, before going on in the final section to argue that these conditions have been undermined in such a way that it is now almost impossible to imagine party government in contemporary Europe either functioning effectively or sustaining complete legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past 15 years or so, the claim of a rise of the regulatory state in Europe has been a dominant theme in public policy research. This paper critically reflects on this claim and the associated scholarship by considering four key questions. First, what is the significance of the supposed rise of the regulatory state for the state in Europe and how can this trend be explained? Second, what insights have been gained from the study of phenomena associated with the regulatory state, both in terms of EU and national levels of government as well as in terms of process and organisational understandings of policy analysis? Third, does the regulatory state represent a stable arrangement or does it suffer from its own peculiar dilemmas that fundamentally affect the nature of European states? Fourth, and finally, this article develops three scenarios - those of withering away, plodding along, and rejuvenation - for the future of the (study of the) regulatory state in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional literature on interest group behaviour presumes that private interests develop lobbying strategies based on the principle of effective allocation of resources. However, nearly 400 private interest groups actively lobby the Council of Europe, a classical intergovernmental organisation with weak decision-making powers, where no significant policy pay-off is expected to occur. This analysis aims to explain the seeming puzzle of private interest groups seeking to influence an institution which is generally perceived as having no strong decision-making powers in European political space. It does so by exploring three explanations from the existing literature, namely ‘policy overlap’, ‘venue shopping’ and ‘epistemic community’, and considers another explanation not hitherto fully developed, suggesting that the ‘ideological motivation’ of interest groups helps to explain their behaviour. Taking the ideological motivation of interest groups into account when analysing lobbying strategies can in fact shed light on certain lobbying preferences that would otherwise appear to defy the logic of interest representation. This paper therefore suggests that an ‘ideological motivation’ explanation potentially plays a crucial role in the analysis of the behaviour of any interest group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been growing interest in the role of discourses of globalisation and European integration in shaping political outcomes. As a variety of authors have suggested, these discourses may play a powerful causal role in determining the trajectory of policy change and, as such, should be treated as objects of enquiry in their own right. Yet, while much recent scholarship has pointed to the need for systematic empirical analysis of policy-making discourses, little such analysis has yet been undertaken. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to this task, by mapping contemporary appeals to globalisation and European integration in two EU states: Britain and the Irish Republic. We present findings from the discourse analysis (using QSR NVivo) of over 100 speeches backed by supplementary interviews in both cases. Building upon, extending and updating an earlier discussion, we develop a theoretical schema for the classification and mapping of a range of different discourses of globalisation and European integration. These we categorise in terms of the contingent or inevitable character attributed to the process in question and the positive, open-ended or negative connotations it is seen to entail. What becomes apparent is the highly strategic ways in which such discourses are used, the articulation of which depends greatly upon the context in which they are deployed and the audience for which they are intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Otto Kirchheimer's conception of the catch-all party was part of his more comprehensive theory of party transformation, encompassing four interrelated political processes. By tracing the development of the catch-all thesis and placing it within the wider context of Kirchheimer's complete work, it is possible to reconstruct a more precise understanding of what Kirchheimer meant by the catch-all concept, which itself remains highly contested. Kirchheimer's anxiety about modern democracy originated with what he saw as the vanishing of principled opposition within parliament and society, and the reduction of politics to the mere management of the state. This leads to collusion of political parties and the state, severing of the societal links of party organizations, and erosion of the classic separation of powers. Vanishing opposition, cartelization and professionalization of politics pits citizens against a powerful state, which increases political cynicism and apathy. Kirehheimer's comprehensive approach remains relevant to much of the contemporary debate about the transformation of Western political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The turbulent ratification of the Treaty of European Union has given a new sharpness to old debates about democratic representativeness in the European arena. The crisis of representation after Maastricht was, however limited in terms of who and what was criticised: Maastricht was a crisis of intergovernmentalism. There are several alternative ways for establishing links between the citizen and Europe. This paper focuses on the role of subnational intermediaries in day-to-day policy making. The first part of the paper places subnational mobilisation in a broader understanding of the Euro-polity. Three competing conceptualisations: a state-centric model, a supranational model, and multi-level governance make distinct predictions about the features, opportunities and constraints for subnational mobilisation. Next, the contemporary variety of subnational mobilisation is compared with each model. The final section points at some implications for representative democracy in the Euro-polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism has experienced a resurgence across Europe since 1980, and one common explanation for this resurgence is that the backlash to European integration aids radical right parties, which prioritise cultural protectionism in the form of anti-immigration and anti-ethnic minority appeals. In contrast, this article argues that, through the policy-making avenues available to certain parties, but not others, European integration encourages a different form of nationalism in highly regionalised countries: ethnoregionalism, which seeks either greater autonomy or independence for a sub-national unit. By examining how nationalist parties combine both cultural protectionism and ethnoregionalism, and the relative saliency that they attach to each, this article provides a novel way to disentangle the EU's different potential effects on nationalism. Through a quantitative analysis of party manifestos across 33 European countries for 1980–2019, this article finds that European integration has a significantly stronger effect on the saliency of ethnoregionalism than cultural protectionism. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: [DOI]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study confirms the existence of a substantial gender gap in internal political efficacy in contemporary European democracies with survey evidence from the ESS08 and 09 waves. This gap is rooted in gendered patterns of socialisation according to which men are more likely than women to be socialised in ways that emphasise psychological traits such as assertiveness, predisposition to risk, competition, or self-promotion. Findings show that those who perceive themselves as ready to take risks are more likely to feel able to play an active role in politics. Using mediation analysis, this article shows that part of the gender gap in internal political efficacy is a result of the lower inclination of women to take risks in comparison to men. These findings confirm the masculine character of the political realm. A realm that is often perceived by citizens to be more in line with gender stereotypes about men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical right parties have gained access to government across Europe, yet scholarly work on how they shape welfare states remains scarce. Therefore, this article examines how radical right parties affect family benefits. Combining pro-natalist views with a commitment to traditional gender roles, these parties seek to support family incomes without altering the traditional intra-family division of labour. Radical right governance should therefore correlate positively with spending on family allowances, but negatively with childcare expenditures. However, generous family allowances may become less attractive and childcare spending more attractive to the radical right as immigrant populations increase. An analysis of 26 European countries between 1980 and 2015 shows a negative, yet noisy, effect of the radical right on childcare expenditures. By contrast, effects on family allowances are negligible. Further analysis also uncovers that radical right governance is associated with larger gaps between spending on family allowances and spending on childcare. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1936944. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to stabilise the post-Soviet region, the European Union seeks to transform the domestic structures of the Newly Independent States. In light of high adaptation costs, the lack of a membership perspective, and low levels of democracy, the prospects of Europeanisation appear to be limited. The Southern Caucasus belongs to the most corrupt countries in the world. While being least likely cases, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have responded to the EU's demands for good governance introducing formal institutional changes. Moreover, despite their differences in statehood, democracy, and power (a)symmetries with the EU, domestic institutional changes look very similar. This double puzzle is explained by differential empowerment. Instead of liberal reform coalitions, which are largely absent in the Southern Caucasus, the incumbent regimes have instrumentalised the EU, selectively implementing anti-corruption policies to gain and consolidate political power. As a result, the EU stabilises rather than transforms its neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on interest group participation in European Union politics has mushroomed since the end of the 1990s. What role citizens should play in the political process - should they participate through elected representatives or through interest groups and so-called 'civil society organisations'- has taken a central place in political and academic debates surrounding the alleged EU's democratic deficit. Here I critically analyse the literature dealing with the potential value of interest groups and 'civil society organisations' to the development of democracy in the EU. The existing empirical case studies lead to the conclusion that the elite characteristics of these actors question their capacity to increase democratic legitimacy. Finally, future research should be designed around large-scale quantitative and qualitative empirical studies that investigate participation designs and effective participation in the EU and other political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Europe have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the movement of their citizens. In this article, we analyse whether the level of compliance with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political resistance, often, though not always, from populist movements: are localities that support populist movements more likely to ignore social distancing measures? Secondly, economic security: do localities with higher levels of income and wealth have higher levels of social distancing? We combine anonymised movement data from people's mobile phones drawn from the Google Community Mobility surveys with subnational economic and demographic data to answer these questions. It is found that across Europe, social distancing patterns correlate strongly with populist attitudes and economic security. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: http://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1917154 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with recent claims of increased intergovernmental dynamics, this article asks what exactly is intergovernmental about the EU's major crisis-induced reforms. Drawing on central claims of both New Intergovernmentalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism, it is demonstrated that the Eurozone reform and the asylum reform differ significantly regarding the role played by the European Council (NI) and the role of institutional expertise provided by supranational actors (LI). While the European Council played a central facilitating role in the Eurozone crisis and worked effectively with the Commission, which provided important technical expertise, expertise in the area of asylum still largely lies with the member states. The Commission therefore acted as a political stakeholder, thus estranging the European Council that subsequently acted as a reform blocker. This article is a first attempt to assess empirically the micro-level foundations of different types of intergovernmentalism and to nuance claims on the weakened role of supranational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party competition over European integration is structured by two main dimensions of political conflict: a socio-economic dimension (market liberalisation vs. a more regulated economy) and a socio-cultural dimension (libertarian, cosmopolitan values vs. authoritarian, nationalist values). This article investigates the relationship between these conflict dimensions and parties' positions towards EU issues across time and space, in particular focussing on two 'critical junctures' in the European unification process. For this purpose, analysis is made of the election manifestos of parties competing in European Parliament elections (Euromanifestos) from 1979 to 2014. First, it is found that the key moment of the Maastricht treaty significantly reshaped party competition over Europe. After Maastricht, positions towards European integration have become less connected to the economic dimension and much more related to the cultural dimension in Western Europe. Second, it is contended that the Euro crisis has not dramatically restructured political conflict over European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The referenda conducted in France and Denmark in 1992 to ratify the Maastricht Treaty are often seen as giving evidence of 'true' attitudes towards Europe. In this paper we dispute this assumption, presenting evidence that shows referenda in Parliamentary systems with disciplined party governments to be subject to what we call a 'lockstep' phenomenon in which referendum outcomes become tied to the popularity of the government in power even if the ostensible subject of the referendum has little to do with the reasons for government popularity (or lack of popularity). In the case of the Maastricht referenda in France and Denmark, the apparent unpopularity of the European project in fact appears to have been nothing of the kind, but instead to have reflected the unpopularity of ruling parties in both countries. A referendum conducted at about the same time in Ireland, where the government was more popular achieved a handsome majority, as did the referendum conducted a year later in Denmark after a more popular government had taken office. The mechanisms involved are elucidated by means of survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on 'issue yield' theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017–2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the role of the EU institutions in the process leading up to the EU–Turkey Action Plan and EU–Turkey Statement. The EU–Turkey deal is the proverbial 'orphan' in EU crises management, with none of the key actors and institutions eager to claim ownership. Yet when judged from the perspective of process management, the deal resulted from effective inter-institutional collaboration, which stands in stark contrast to the EU's handling of the relocation schemes or the Dublin reform. Using insights from the informal governance literature, the article maps the inter-institutional network that managed this process, traces the activities within the network, and determines the effects these had on the final outcome. On an analytical level, the mechanism contains five key elements of informal institutional governance: linking, bridging, shielding, laying out the tracks and creative fixes. The conclusion reflects on the wider applicability and scope conditions of this mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]