Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies
Series: Comparative Politics;
- Publisher's listprice GBP 83.00
-
39 653 Ft (37 765 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 3 965 Ft off)
- Discounted price 35 688 Ft (33 989 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
39 653 Ft
Availability
printed on demand
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Edition number New ed
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 19 January 2006
- ISBN 9780199291601
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages784 pages
- Size 233x157x44 mm
- Weight 1178 g
- Language English
- Illustrations numerous tables 0
Categories
Short description:
This is the most ambitious and comprehensive account of the institutions of democratic delegation in West European parliamentary democracies. An international team of contributors provides unprecedented cross-national investigations of West European political institutions from 1945 until the present day.
MoreLong description:
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.
Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Section 1: Introduction and Theory
Parliamentary Democracy: Promise and Problems
Delegation and its Perils
Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation
Section 2: Survey
Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-National Patterns
Austria: Imperfect Parliamentarism but Fully-Fledged Party Democracy
Belgium: Delegation and Accountability under Partitocratic Rule
Denmark: Delegation and Accountability in Minority Situations
Finland: Polarized Pluralism in the Shadow of a Strong President
France: Delegation and Accountability in the Fifth Republic
Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Co-ordination, and Problems of Hidden Action
Greece: 'Rationalizing' Constitutional Powers in a Post-Dictatorial Country
Iceland: A Parliamentary Democracy with a Semi-Presidential Constitution
Ireland: 'O What a Tangled Web...' - Delegation, Accountability, and Executive Power
Italy: Delegation and Accountability in a Changing Parliamentary Democracy
Luxembourg: A Case of More 'Direct' Delegation and Accountability
The Netherlands: Rules and Mores in Delegation and Accountability Relationships
Norway: Virtual Parliamentarism
Portugal: Changing Patterns of Delegation and Accountability under the President's Watchful Eyes
Spain: Delegation and Accountability in a Newly Established Democracy
Sweden: From Separation of Power to Parliamentary Supremacy - and Back Again?
The United Kingdom: Still a Single 'Chain of Command'? The Hollowing Out of the 'Westminster Model'
Section 3: Analysis and Conclusion
Dimensions of Citizen Control
Challenges to Parliamentary Democracy
