Explaining Chief Executive Empowerment: EU Summitry and Domestic Institutional Change

Abstract

One of the most prominent trends in the organisation of European parliamentary democracies is the empowerment of chief executives. This article submits that an important reason contributing to this development is summit decision-making in the European Union, which requires states to confer additional authority, discretion and resources on chief executives. The effects are long-term shifts in the domestic institutional balance of power between the executive and the legislature, as well as within the executive branch. The explanatory power of this argument is tested through a case study of chief executive empowerment in Sweden, as well as comparative qualitative evidence from a broader set of European states. The findings carry implications for research on the presidentialisation of politics, the domestic implications of international cooperation, and the Europeanisation of EU member countries.

Acknowledgements

This article is the joint product of research conducted within two different projects. We would like to thank the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Research Council for generous funding, our project colleagues for constructive cooperation, and all the people who were willing to be interviewed for generously sharing their time and insights. Earlier versions of this article were presented at a project workshop in Gothenburg in May 2008, the Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, Riga, September 2008, the Stockholm–Södertörn workshop on European politics, Saltsjöbaden, November 2008, and the annual conference of the Swedish Network for European Studies in Political Science, Gothenburg, March 2009. For insightful comments and suggestions, we wish to thank, in particular, Hans Agné, Karen Alter, Torbjörn Bergman, Carl Dahlström, Bengt Jacobsson, Hussein Kassim, Brigid Laffan, Thomas Persson, William Phelan, Thomas Poguntke, Maria Strömvik, and Åsa Vifell, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers of WEP.

Notes

1. While emphasising the functional pressures generated by summit institutions that have conferred extensive decision-making power, we do not rule out that summitry may strengthen chief executives through other logics as well. For instance, the media exposure generated by summits, possibly even declaratory/symbolic smmits, may translate into a special kind of political capital that can be used in domestic power games.