Party competition and dual accountability in multi-level systems

ABSTRACT

Sub-national self-governance is on the rise across European democracies. This increasing decentralization changes party competition in multi-level governance systems, and has broad implications for voters’ ability to assign political responsibility and to hold politicians accountable. Regarding the interplay between party competition and dual accountability – that is, the attribution of accountability to the relevant level – in multi-level governance systems, we propose to distinguish conceptually between an electoral and a governmental arena. Whereas dual accountability in the electoral arena is challenged by varying degrees of party system nationalization, the governmental arena is characterized by a trade-off between the wish for clear-cut dual accountability and the need for political stability. We discuss these challenges in detail and link the various contributions in this special issue to these challenges. We add to the existing literature that increasingly deals with the theoretical and empirical challenges of electoral accountability in ever more institutionally complex systems of multi-level governance.

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This article is part of a series including:

One or two arenas? The break-up between national and regional elections

Unnatural partners: coalescence in Israeli local government

Party policy diffusion in the European multilevel space: what it is, how it works, and why it matters

Government termination in multilevel settings. How party congruence affects the survival of sub-national governments in Germany and Spain

‘Party competition and dual accountability in multi-level systems’ the independence echo: the rise of the constitutional question in Scottish election manifestos and voter behaviour

Ideological proximity and voter turnout in multi-level systems: evidence from Spain

Introduction

The increasing proliferation of sub-national self-governance as well as the varying patterns of party competition between the national and the sub-national level have raised the political stakes at the regional level in many European countries. As a result, sub-national elections have gained more and more importance for national politics in multi-level governance systems over the last decades (Hooghe, Marks, and Schakel 2010; Schakel 2013). A prominent example are the regional elections in Spain, where regionalist parties have not only been electorally successful at the regional level but have also capitalized on this electoral strength in national politics by being crucial in supporting various governments. Another well-known example is the importance of state elections in Germany, where most of these elections have the potential to change the majority structure in the second chamber, the Bundesrat, thus affecting national politics by either facilitating or hampering the government's decision-making. Consequently, understanding these intricacies for national and sub-national party competition is of utmost importance to paint a full picture of party politics in multi-level governance systems.

Multi-level governance systems are “a set of general-purpose or functional jurisdictions that enjoy some degree of autonomy within a common governance arrangement and whose actors claim to engage in an enduring interaction in pursuit of common good” (Enderlein, Wälti, and Zürn 2010, 4), and they are a characteristic feature of decentralized (and decentralizing) parliamentary democracies. Proponents of multi-level governance systems have typically assumed dual accountability, i.e. voters assessing the performance of elected officials at different levels independently. According to this ideal perception, dual accountability can only be expected if party systems, party competition and the policy offers parties make to voters at the subnational level differ from the ones at the national level, i.e. if nationalization is low (Rodden and Wibbels 2011). With this introduction, we contend that dual accountability is best conceptualized as an interplay between levels in an electoral arena and in a governmental arena.

The state of the art and the contribution of this special issue

The potential consequences of multi-level system structures for party competition and government formation, as well as their effects on dual accountability, are still not sufficiently reflected in the existing scholarly research, which is mainly concerned with vertical contamination and spill-over effects of European multi-level systems for individual voting behaviour. Accordingly, the literature has come to different conclusions on the actual functioning of dual accountability (Rodden and Wibbels 2011; Thorlakson 2016) and the institutional conditions under which it is most likely to develop (Golder et al. 2017; León and Orriols 2016; Rico and Liñeira 2018).

The special issue sets out to explore how multi-level governance systematically affects party competition and dual accountability, both in the electoral arena and in the governmental arena. Key requirements for dual accountability lie in both of, as well as in the interactions between, these arenas: if voters are to evaluate regional against national party branches prior to elections, this requires discriminable party positions and discriminable government outputs. Even though data availability on sub-national party positions increased in the last years (see e.g. Alonso, Gómez, and Cabeza 2013; Benoit, Bräuninger, and Debus 2009; Gross and Jankowski 2020) and provided scholars with the opportunity to analyse these positions comparatively (Müller 2013; Stecker 2015), only recently scholars started to carefully consider the interactions between the national and sub-national level with regard to party positions, the level of decentralization and electoral systems’ incentives (see e.g. Baumann, Debus, and Klingelhöfer 2017; Cabeza, Gómez, and Alonso 2017; León 2014).

We propose to distinguish more clearly between features of dual accountability in both the electoral arena and the governmental arena. Here, we add to the current stream of literature that increasingly deals with the theoretical and empirical challenges of electoral and governmental accountability in ever more institutionally complex systems of multi-level governance. The contributions to this special issue address some of these challenges and are a suitable starting point to a better understanding of party competition and dual accountability in multi-level governance systems. In the following, we outline the individual contributions along the two dimensions in which dual accountability may be challenged, i.e. along the electoral and the governmental arena.

Challenges for dual accountability in the electoral arena

The literature on party system nationalization shows that regional and national party competition in European multi-level systems are getting increasingly similar over time (see e.g. Cabeza, Gómez, and Alonso 2017; Caramani 2004; Schakel 2013). Consequently, one challenge for voters’ ability to hold politicians accountable in systems of multi-level governance are converging patterns of party competition at the various government levels. Highly nationalized sub-national party systems are one of the main reasons why regional politicians primarily cater to the needs of national constituencies during election campaigns (Stecker 2015), thus hampering accountability at the sub-national level. If sub-national party systems are more regionalized, i.e. if parties compete with varying strength at the sub-national level or if there are even regionalist parties running for sub-national elections without (successfully) campaigning at the national level, then voters have a higher chance to clearly assign responsibilities and hold politicians accountable. However, low degrees of nationalization and the separation of governmental bodies by political levels are little more than a necessary condition for dual accountability. Importantly, weaker influences from the national to the regional level do not automatically translate to enhanced accountability at the latter. For that reason, the contributions focusing on the electoral arena go beyond looking at the (institutional) prerequisites for dual accountability and explore the complex interplay between a decentralized institutional framework, party strategies and party system features.

The contribution by Jurado, León and Amat (in this issue) shows that the level of decentralization and the electoral strength of regionalist parties moderate the effects of national elections on regional level election results, thus distorting regional-level accountability between regions and across time. The contribution by Navarrete (in this issue) argues that the calculus of voting, and thus voters’ decision to turn out, depends on party system constellations cross-cutting the regional and the national level. Both articles insightfully demonstrate that dual accountability cannot simply be considered as the sum of accountability on two independent levels, but rather that accountability at the two levels is intertwined.

The contribution by Greene and McMillan points out that decentralization or devolution – for the case of Scotland – may even be endogenous to party competition, such that decentralization, which is generally perceived as an institutional prerequisite, actually results from party competition in the electoral arena. Yet, the article also indicates that strong regionalization may result in voters’ inability to hold the national level executive accountable: The strong disparity between electoral systems and regional and national level party systems implies that Scottish voters are unable to hold the United Kingdom's government accountable for obviously unpopular decisions, such as Brexit or the denial of further independence referenda.

Yet, party competition does not only happen between different political layers within one country but also transfers to the supranational level of the European Union (EU). This has implications for dual accountability on a vertical and a horizontal level, first by directly impacting (sub-)national party competition in European Parliament elections (Braun, Gross, and Rittberger 2020), and secondly, by the fact that political actors from various levels try to learn from each other regarding election campaigning, party organizational features or policy-making, to name a few (see e.g. Böhmelt et al. 2017; Ezrow et al., Forthcoming; Gilardi and Wasserfallen 2019). This “party policy diffusion” is conceptually addressed by Wolkenstein, Senninger and Bischof (in this issue) by specifically focusing on the European-national level nexus and by distinguishing between features of party organization and party strategies. Their ideas raise interesting questions for our thinking about party competition and dual accountability in multi-level governance systems: for example, does party policy diffusion across countries further decrease voters’ ability to correctly assign political responsibilities and hold politicians accountable? To what extent are parties’ policy- and office-seeking strategies hampering dual accountability if party competition at the European level actuallybecomes “European” at the end of the day?

Challenges for dual accountability in the governmental arena

It is federalized countries with joint decision-making powers that show the most pronounced interactions between governmental actors across political levels (see e.g. Kropp and Behnke 2016). In addition, it is also federalized countries that are characterized by a higher share of citizens not being capable of unambiguously attributing responsibility to the appropriate level of government and holding politicians accountable (Däubler, Müller, and Stecker 2018; Hobolt, Tilley, and Banducci 2013). Therefore, the question of dual accountability cannot be exclusively evaluated within the electoral arena but must be extended to the governmental arena. Ideal conditions for dual accountability in this arena exist, if various levels of government have “mutually exclusive spheres of authority”, so that voters have the highest chances to “assign responsibility to the appropriate level of government” (Rodden and Wibbels 2011, 632). However, in this arena dual accountability forms a trade-off with government stability. On one side, a strong connection between regional and national governments may lead to additional stability at the regional level. On the other side, spill-overs between levels may compromise stability based on effects that did not originate on the same level. The two contributions focusing on the governmental arena start from the literature on regional and local government formation, which shows that potential coalitions are more likely to form if they are congruent to the party constellation governing at the national level (Bäck et al. 2013; Däubler and Debus 2009) – and congruence is more likely to be achieved when regional party systems are very similar to the national ones.

Research on sub-national party competition in the governmental arena only recently gained momentum. Scholars increasingly focus on the incentives for political actors stemming from the interplay between different political levels in multi-level systems in government formation (Bäck et al. 2013; Däubler and Debus 2009; Debus and Gross 2016; Falcó-Gimeno, Forthcoming; Gross and Debus 2018; Stefuriuc 2013).

The contribution by Tuttnauer and Friedman (in this issue) adds new findings to this literature by focusing on a case that “fl[ies] in the face of the prevalent theories” (ibid., 21) in the government formation literature, namely, Israel's municipal level. Using a mixed-methods approach they find that, despite operating in a highly centralized political system, local government formation is not influenced by national considerations. While this would generally mean beneficial conditions for dual accountability, the predominance of oversized coalitions might enhance stability, but simultaneously reduces the level of competition and therefore accountability at the local level. Again, decentralization – or the independence between levels in a centralized system – does not automatically translate to effective dual accountability.

The literature on government survival at the sub-national level is very scarce (see e.g. Gross 2018), and has so far overlooked potential multi-level factors impacting the likelihood of governments being terminated early. Martínez-Canto and Bergmann (in this issue) fill this lacuna by evaluating whether government survival is affected by party congruence between different levels, i.e. between the regional and national level, and within levels, that is between peer-governments at the regional level. For Spain and Germany, the authors find that between-level congruence decreases the likelihood of early government termination at the regional level. While such congruence increases regional government stability, it might come at a cost regarding dual accountability: early government terminations may be caused by developments at the federal level, while negative developments at the regional level may go unsanctioned.

Conclusion

European multi-level governance systems decisively affect party competition and present a key challenge for electoral accountability. As the nationalization of sub-national party systems increases and party policy positions at the national and sub-national level converge, voters are increasingly challenged to attribute political responsibility to the relevant level. Yet, another challenge results from the joint decision-making of national and sub-national executives, which again exacerbates holding political actors accountable at the relevant level. Hence, if voters are to evaluate regional and national political actors prior to elections, this requires discriminable party positions and discriminable government outputs.

In this special issue we suggest distinguishing conceptually between an electoral and a governmental arena for the study of dual accountability in multi-level governance systems. First, this distinction helps in clarifying key challenges political actors are facing when participating in party competition across different layers of multi-level governance systems. Secondly, the conceptualization provides an essential instrument for scholars in judging where and when multi-level governance systems inhibit voters from holding their elected representatives accountable. We believe that the conceptual distinction between an electoral and a governmental arena provides the basis for future research in the field of party competition and dual accountability in multi-level governance systems.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).