Responsible Party Government in a World of Interdependence

Abstract

This article opens up the closed model of the responsibility of a national government to its national electorate by adding constraints on its capacity to enact effective economic, national security and political policies. These constraints come from policy interdependence. The European Union exerts a denationalising influence through the Council, a multinational effect through the European Parliament, and the eurozone is designed as a transnational technocracy. Intergovernmental institutions spanning continents add further constraints. The result is a growing gap between the efforts of a national government to deliver outputs that match the preferences of voters and a reduction in the capacity of national electorates to hold accountable institutions outside their country that have a major impact on national outcomes. The conclusion considers three prospective possibilities: a growing frustration with a policy-irrelevant rotation of parties in office; institutional reform at the supranational level; and a learning process in which a recognition of the constraints of interdependence leads to a change in expectations.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on research undertaken in the author’s project on Representing Europeans, financed by the British Economic & Social Research Council RES-062-23-1892. An earlier draft was presented at the European University Institute, Florence. I benefited from comments by two anonymous reviewers

Notes

1. For the sake of clarity in exposition, this paper follows Peter Mair (2009) in grouping parties into two blocs of government and opposition.

2. This distinction is becoming increasingly salient with the contemporary influence of the Tea Party movement on Republican Members of Congress.

3. The Lisbon Treaty does contain provision for a member state to withdraw completely from the EU.

4. In this paper the term Council refers both to the European Council and the Council of the European Union, since each consists of ministers in the national governments of member states.

5. Calculated from the original data kindly provided by Robert Thomson.

6. Exceptionally, to qualify for the benefits of group membership the Conservative & Reform Group was opportunistically formed by British Conservatives and Polish Justice MEPs, plus minor allies. Its members were not even united in opposition to European integration.