Torbjörn Bergman

The European Union as the next step of delegation and accountability

The Principal-Agent approach guides a comparison of the scrutiny andimplementation records of the EU member states. The main argumentis that there is systematic co-variation. Cross-nationally, an influentialscrutiny process is associated with a strong implementation record. Butbecause both of these variables also co-vary with the North-South dimensionof EU politics, a fundamental challenge for future research is to evaluatethe importance of existing between-country variation relative to the newPrincipal-Agent relationships that are emerging within the integration process.

A Taste of Honey Is Worse Than None at All? Coping with the Generic Challenges of Support Party Status in Sweden and New Zealand

Some parties support rather than join the executive, thereby operating in a grey area between opposition and office – in governance but not in government. Previous research on the New Zealand Greens’ experience as a support party has shown that this liminal position may prove a blessing or a curse – or, more likely, a mixture of both. This article compares the experience of the Swedish Greens. While the Swedish party gained more on policy, it suffered the same frustrations as its Kiwi counterpart with regard to consultation, to the media and to a government that could potentially find support elsewhere. It, too, avoided overwhelming internal tensions, but was likewise left wanting more. Neither party broke into government at the next election, but tried to put lessons learned into practice when supporting centre–left cabinets once again. That the challenges encountered were so similar suggests the possibility that they are common to support parties elsewhere.

Why minority governments work : multilevel territorial politics in Spain : by Bonnie N. Field, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, 261 pp.

Why minority governments work : multilevel territorial politics in Spain : by Bonnie N. Field, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, 261 pp.

How Parties Govern : Political Parties and the Internal Organization of Government

Party competition is a constitutive component of modern democracies. While indispensable, the division of parliament into competing political parties at the same time creates challenges for these parties. Specifically, the challenges are providing stable government, arriving at government decisions, and making these decisions part and parcel of a coherent and effective government policy. The literature has identified a myriad of mechanisms that government parties devise to master these challenges. For instance, single-party majority governments can use powerful explicit remedies of internal coordination such as electoral manifestos and strong leaders who unite the “number one” positions of the party (party leader) and government (Prime Minister). Single-party minority governments, in turn, may either exploit their pivotal position in the legislature or resort to parliamentary support arrangements. Finally, coalition governments often rely on political institutions as coordination mechanisms or conceive tailor-made means and mechanisms of coalition governance. The literature has identified these mechanisms, outlined how they function, and tried to define the conditions that make the resorting to these mechanisms more likely. Measures of the actual effects of such mechanisms and their optimal configuration constitute the research front.

Sweden : Social Democratic Dominance in One Dimension

Five parties and two ‘blocs’ have dominated Swedish politics in the post-war era. The two blocs (socialist and bourgeois) are defined by party positions on a popularly perceived left-right dimension, and in this respect the Swedish party system follows a general Scandinavian pattern. Berglund et al. (1981) have argued that this Scandinavian model fits the Swedish case so well that the model ‘might have been generated on Swedish data alone’. ‘The Conservative, Liberal, and Agrarian or Centre parties form one cluster, the Labour (Social Democratic) and Communist parties another. This kind of configuration suggests the predominance of a socialist-non-socialist cleavage throughout Scandinavia. Party Programmes lend support to this notion as does electoral behaviour. Class is still the major determinant of voting behaviour’ (Berglund, Pesonen, and Gislason, 1982, p. 80).

A Taste of Honey Is Worse Than None at All

Some parties support rather than join the executive, thereby operating in a grey area between opposition and office – in governance but not in government. Previous research on the New Zealand Greens’ experience as a support party has shown that this liminal position may prove a blessing or a curse – or, more likely, a mixture of both. This article compares the experience of the Swedish Greens. While the Swedish party gained more on policy, it suffered the same frustrations as its Kiwi counterpart with regard to consultation, to the media and to a government that could potentially find support elsewhere. It, too, avoided overwhelming internal tensions, but was likewise left wanting more. Neither party broke into government at the next election, but tried to put lessons learned into practice when supporting centre–left cabinets once again. That the challenges encountered were so similar suggests the possibility that they are common to support parties elsewhere.

Sweden: Power to the Parliamentarians?

This final empirical chapter brings us to Sweden, the third EU member among the Nordic states. Sweden joined the Union at the start of 1995. Accession followed a referendum in October the previous year, in which the electorate approved the terms of membership by a fairly narrow margin. After that, opinion polls consistently showed Swedes to be among the EU’s least enthusiastic citizens. Although outright opposition to membership gradually diminished (Tallberg et al. 2010: 86–94), Euroscepticism remained represented in the party system.

Norway: Strong yet Marginalised Parties

This chapter turns to Norway which, like Iceland, remains outside the EU. On two occasions, in the early 1970s and the mid-1990s, the country’s government felt confident that Norwegian membership of the Union had been arranged, only to see its plans dashed by the electorate in consultative referendums. Thereafter Norway assumed the status of a semi-member state, accepting many of the constraints of membership, while — crucially for our project — lacking the political representation in EU decision-making that member states enjoy. How have the Norwegian political parties adapted to this limbo? How well does delegation and accountability in the intra-party channel work under these circumstances?

Denmark: Party Agents on Tight Leashes

In this first empirical chapter, we look at Denmark, the Nordic country with the longest-standing EU membership. The Danes joined the European Community (EC) in 1973, alongside Britain and Ireland (but not Norway, which, as we will see later in the book, declined to take up the terms of its accession). Denmark’s involvement in European integration has been far from smooth and unproblematic, however. Of all the Nordic countries, Denmark has easily the widest constitutional provision for direct democracy, and on two separate occasions Danish voters have opted to keep the country outside the most integrated parts of the modern Union. At the same time, the Danish public has been, and still is, split in its views on the EU and, as we will see, this cleavage is important for Danish political life. How has this status vis-a-vis Europe influenced the delegation and accountability that Danish political parties have been able to offer the country’s citizens?

Conclusions: Nordic Political Parties, European Union and the Challenge of Delegation

In the previous chapters of this book, we have looked at the way political parties are organised and take decisions in Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Our interest in the topic has been fired particularly by the debate about the effects of the European Union on the systems of democracy in its member states — and, indeed, in nearby states that are not actually members. Given the severe economic problems that gradually confronted much of Europe from around 2008, and the likely empowerment of European-level institutions as a response to them, the question of how democracy is to function has seldom been more current. In this concluding chapter, we reflect comparatively on what we have found.