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OverviewComparative 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Kaare Strøm (, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego) , Wolfgang C. Müller (, Professor in Department of Government, University of Vienna) , Torbjörn Bergman (, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden)Publisher: Oxford University Press Imprint: Oxford University Press Dimensions: Width: 15.70cm , Height: 4.50cm , Length: 23.30cm Weight: 1.178kg ISBN: 9780199291601ISBN 10: 0199291608 Pages: 784 Publication Date: 19 January 2006 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsList of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Section 1: Introduction and Theory 1: Wolfgang C. Müller, Torbjörn Bergman, and Kaare Strøm: Parliamentary Democracy: Promise and Problems 2: Arthur Lupia: Delegation and its Perils 3: Kaare Strøm: Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation Section 2: Survey 4: Torbjörn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Müller, Kaare Strøm, and Magnus Blomgren: Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-National Patterns 5: Wolfgang C. Müller: Austria: Imperfect Parliamentarism but Fully-Fledged Party Democracy 6: Lieven de Winter and Patrick Dumont: Belgium: Delegation and Accountability under Partitocratic Rule 7: Erik Damgaard: Denmark: Delegation and Accountability in Minority Situations 8: Tapio Raunio and Matti Wiberg: Finland: Polarized Pluralism in the Shadow of a Strong President 9: Jean-Louis Thiébault: France: Delegation and Accountability in the Fifth Republic 10: Thomas Saalfeld: Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Co-ordination, and Problems of Hidden Action 11: Georgios Trantas, Paraskevi Zagoriti, Torbjörn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Kaare Strøm: Greece: 'Rationalizing' Constitutional Powers in a Post-Dictatorial Country 12: Svanur Kristjánsson: Iceland: A Parliamentary Democracy with a Semi-Presidential Constitution 13: Paul Mitchell: Ireland: 'O What a Tangled Web...' - Delegation, Accountability, and Executive Power 14: Luca Verzichelli: Italy: Delegation and Accountability in a Changing Parliamentary Democracy 15: Patrick Dumont and Lieven De Winter: Luxembourg: A Case of More 'Direct' Delegation and Accountability 16: Arco Timmermans and Rudy B. Andeweg: The Netherlands: Rules and Mores in Delegation and Accountability Relationships 17: Kaare Strøm and Hanne Marthe Narud: Norway: Virtual Parliamentarism 18: Octavio Amorim Neto: Portugal: Changing Patterns of Delegation and Accountability under the President's Watchful Eyes 19: Carlos Flores Juberías: Spain: Delegation and Accountability in a Newly Established Democracy 20: Torbjörn Bergman: Sweden: From Separation of Power to Parliamentary Supremacy - and Back Again? 21: Thomas Saalfeld: The United Kingdom: Still a Single 'Chain of Command'? The Hollowing Out of the 'Westminster Model' Section 3: Analysis and Conclusion 22: Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, Torbjörn Bergman, and Benjamin Nyblade: Dimensions of Citizen Control 23: Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Torbjörn Bergman: Challenges to Parliamentary DemocracyReviewsAuthor InformationTab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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