Experimentalist governance in the EU: The emperor's new clothes?

Most students of the EU agree by now that it is best described as a governance system. There is far less consensus on what kind of governance the EU actually features: modern, postmodern, network, cooperative, innovative or simply new? Sabel and Zeitlin have advanced yet another concept. This paper discusses the added value of their “experimentalist governance” (EG), as presented in an edited volume published in 2010, for understanding and explaining the nature of EU policymaking, addressing four questions: First, to what extent is EG distinct from existing concepts of governance? Second, how pervasive is EG in the EU when compared to alternative forms of governance? Third, what is the effect of EG on EU policy outcomes, on the one hand, and the overall architecture of the EU, on the other? Finally, does EG solve or exacerbate the EU's democratic deficit?     

Revolution 2.0 in Egypt: Pushing for Change,Foreign Influences on a Popular Revolt

This article presents a case study of a movement for democratic change in Egypt. In particular, it reviews the uses of social media that helped to facilitate the revolution that led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime in February 2011. It looks at the movement in Egypt and the uses of social media from the perspective of public diplomacy, particularly in the context of U.S. efforts to drive public opinion in the Middle East. It reviews how the groups and individuals considered instrumental in the events that led to Mubarak's resignation are connected to the actors in U.S. “democracy promotion.” The article further discusses how social media, by dint of its characteristics, conveniently lends itself to democracy promotion. It highlights the risks involved in an instrumental approach to democracy promotion that treats the tools of social media as means to effect immediate policy gains country by country.     

Confidence and Caretakers: Some Less‐Obvious Implications of the Fixed‐Term Parliaments Act

This article explores the 2011 Fixed‐term Parliaments Act's less‐obvious implications. First, it discusses why Theresa May found calling the 2017 election so straightforward, and notes what this implies for how FTPA works. Second, it looks at executive–legislative relations. FTPA removed the government's ability to designate controversial parliamentary votes as matters of confidence, and introduced a fourteen‐day cushion between a no‐confidence vote and Parliament's dissolution. In the process, it shifted the balance of power from ministers to backbenchers, to an extent potentially greater than most observers recognise. Third, it considers the more outlandish possibilities raised by FTPA's imposition of a fourteen‐day waiting period after a government's defeat on a no‐confidence motion before a new election can be called. It is possible, for example, for rebel MPs from the governing party to use the no‐confidence procedure to force concessions from the cabinet. Finally, it assesses FTPA's long‐term survival prospects, and what repeal would involve.     

The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements

Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance cause change in judgements about such performance. Drawing on two‐wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring information following a real‐world EU decision‐making event alters citizens' judgements about the utilitarian and democratic performance of the EU. It also examines how this effect differs for people with different levels of general political information. It is found that citizens who acquired performance‐relevant information became more approving of the EU's utilitarian performance but did not change their judgements about its democratic performance. Also, individuals with moderate levels of general political information were affected most strongly by new facts about performance. The implications of these findings for EU‐level representative democracy are considered.     

Experimentalist governance in the European Union: A commentary

Sabel and Zeitlin's Experimentalist Governance offers an insight into European governance in those cases where the EU institutions do not have clear competence and where member states are not prepared to accept a unified policy on a problem at hand. Experimentalist Governance identifies four steps of action: agree on common goals, have lower levels propose ways to meet goals, then report on their meeting of goals, and, finally, periodically reevaluate the review procedures. By looking at the developments in EU policymaking through the lens of experimentalist governance (EG), one obtains an appreciation of how goals might be achieved that would otherwise not likely have been achieved through the community method. Sabel and Zeitlin highlight how EG can be effective in obtaining results, integrating peers, and incorporating deliberation, and offer a different way to deal with accountability and legitimacy. This article closes by taking the next step, namely, asking what challenges EG poses to democratic processes.     

The Coalition Programme: A New Vision for Britain or Politics as Usual?

The Coalition programme includes restructuring public provision through reforms and cuts which will take public spending in the Britain below that in the US. This article explores whether the Coalition agenda is best understood as a new approach to Britain's deep‐seated economic short‐comings or simply as the normal politics of gaining and retaining power. It analyses the current government's programme, identifies the common features across the range of policies and discusses how they are likely to develop as they encounter set‐backs.     

Democratic Accountability in Decentralised Governance1

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying democratic accountability in decentralised governance, and discusses critical issues about democratic accountability from a citizen's perspective. First, the concept is discussed and adapted to make it useful for studying democratic accountability in different governance structures. Second, the article scrutinises conditions for democratic accountability in decentralised governance based on three models. Third, democratic accountability is discussed with reference to a case study of public reviewers operating in four municipalities in Sweden. The study indicates that municipal auditors and the local media have the greatest impact on municipal policy. On the whole, auditors improve local governments’ internal control and systems for steering and monitoring municipal policy, whereas the media sometimes alter the policy agenda without changing the policy. Auditors maintain and support an elitist democratic orientation of democratic accountability, and the media maintain this democratic orientation and in addition promote democratic dialogue. Viewed from a citizen's perspective, the traditional accountability system does not work satisfactorily. State inspectors and municipal auditors – two important public reviewers in the current system – could improve their work to make it more useful to citizens’ democratic control. Another way discussed to develop democratic accountability is to promote participatory policy and concrete means of accountability (e.g. on‐site visits, conducted tours and different forms of democratic dialogue). The formal way to improve democratic accountability implies more transparency, monitoring and control, which may also lead to distrust and scapegoat thinking (i.e. a surveillance society), whereas concrete modes of accountability, more associated with participatory and deliberative democracy, imply mutual responsibility and trust building. Strengthening participatory policy, active citizens, collective responsibility and democratic dialogue could be an alternative to the emerging audit society.     

Housing and the Welfare State in Norway

This article discusses housing and the welfare state in Norway in 1980 and 2005 by applying Esping‐Andersen's theories of welfare state regimes to this sector. How should Norwegian housing policy be understood in light of Esping‐Andersen's conceptual framework, and what is the impact of post‐industrial change? In 1980, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by social‐democratic traits such as market regulation, substantial public expenditure and universal subsidies for both renters and a large owner‐occupied housing sector. The effects of post‐industrial changes, including deregulation of the credit and housing markets, marked a major turn in housing policy and the housing market in Norway. By 2005, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by traits that are typical of a liberal welfare regime: market economics, low public expenditure and subsidies for small, targeted groups, while other segments of the Norwegian welfare state remain characterised by social‐democratic traits. Esping‐Andersen's claim that the effect of post‐industrial transformation was different in different welfare regimes is thus not supported by the case of the Norwegian housing sector.     

Liberalization as a Development Strategy: Network Governance in the Korean Mobile Telecom Market

This study analyzes Korea's often noted yet seldom studied spectacular rise to become one of the important global players in the mobile telecommunications industry. The Korean “leap frog” occurred in the context of liberalization under the worldwide liberal telecommunications regime. This article finds that network governance—the emphasis on the use of partnerships and network transactions with global firms as well as the local private sector—is the reason for Korea's success. It examines the origins of and driving forces acting upon the liberalization policy, and discusses how the state and telecom firms cooperated to develop the mobile market. It also assesses the new governance that is taking place in Korea's telecom market by focusing on the changing roles of the state in three major aspects: provision, regulation, and foreign entry barriers into the mobile market. While the Korean government promoted a market‐conforming telecom market and private ownership, this article argues, it formulated rather different governance principles from the U.S. model of liberal governance.     

Mexican Democracy and Its Discontents

This article describes the first stage of a major research project on public opinion and democratic consolidation in Mexico. That project, the Mexico 2006 Panel Study, comprises approximately 7,000 in‐depth interviews with ordinary Mexicans over the course of the upcoming presidential campaign. Its purpose is two‐fold: (1) to assess the degree to which Mexican political attitudes are supportive of democratic governance, and (2) to understand the role played by voters, politicians, party leaders, and the mass media in shaping Mexico's political agenda. Ultimately, the project aims to assess how faithfully Mexico's new political system can be expected to respond to the desires and beliefs of ordinary citizens.     

Europe's could‐be demos: Recasting the debate

‘A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst. ... Some think it a new thing and, supposing it an accident, hope that they can still check it; others think it irresistible, because it seems to them the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history’.1 Thus wrote de Tocqueville in his much‐celebrated Democracy in America on the extension of democratic ideas across borders. This article is about a similar revolution which unfolds against the background of an ever‐more complex and sophisticated framework of political interactions: the European Union. Both processes point to the same desirable state of affairs ‐ democracy. The difference now is that we are witnessing the qualitative transformation of a system of democracies into a democratic system. Or, alternatively, of a plurality of detnoi into a pluralistic demos. It is to Europe's could‐be demos that we now turn, in an attempt to recast the debate of democracy and integration in the European Union of the 1990s.     

Why the BBC Matters: Memo to the New Parliament about a Unique British Institution

The new Parliament will be asked at some point to make critical decisions about the BBC's future at a time when it is facing full‐frontal assaults from competitors who view the BBC as a major barrier to their own advancement. Whether it be newspaper groups seeking to monetise their online activities, commercial children's channels, terrestrial competitors or the owners of music radio stations, media conglomerates rail against the BBC's size and public funding with increasing regularity. Our aim is to remind our legislators of the vital contribution this institution makes to British life: from a journalism inscribed with values of fairness, integrity and impartiality—and valued throughout the world for its professional engagement with foreign affairs—to its creative commitment to British story‐telling, music, comedy, arts and children's programmes, the BBC's contribution to our democratic and cultural welfare is immense. It is a beacon for Britain, which provides social glue for its citizens at a time of fragmenting audiences and identities, within a uniquely non‐commercial space, accountable to both Parliament and its licence payers. It may distort the market, much as the National Health Service distorts the market for health care, but is held in high esteem by the British public and is admired throughout the world. This article explains why the BBC is a national treasure that underpins our creative economy as well as our cultural vitality, and argues that it must be protected from those who argue self‐interestedly for its diminution.     

Dominant Party Strategy and Democratization

How do incumbent parties strategize against challengers when a new partisan cleavage cuts across the incumbent's electoral coalition? This article argues that a two‐dimensional extension of Riker's anticoordination thesis conflicts with Downsian extensions. It shows that when voters coordinate on a single challenger based on their shared preference on a cross‐cutting cleavage, a vote‐maximizing incumbent party should move away from the challenger on the primary dimension of competition, even at the risk of abandoning the center. The article develops this hypothesis with reference to dominant parties in competitive authoritarian regimes where challenger parties constantly attempt “heresthetical” moves by mobilizing regime issues into the partisan debate, and it tests the predictions with an original sample survey of national leaders of Mexico's Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). It also spells out the implications of the findings for dominant party survivability in democratic transitions and, more broadly, for incumbents' spatial strategies in the face of new partisan cleavages.     

Bagehot Smiling: Gordon Brown's ‘New Constitution’ and the Revolution that Did Not Happen

The MPs expenses scandal that erupted in May 2009 has certainly rekindled interest in the next stage of constitutional reform and democratic renewal in Britain. This article examines how Gordon Brown's tenure as Prime Minister has differed from Tony Blair's in relation to the ‘new politics’ narrative. It argues that despite his long‐term personal commitment to major constitutional reforms, the role of crises in recalibrating the political opportunity structure and the manner in which electoral incentives can alter elite attitudes to institutional change that Brown's tenure can be characterised by optimism followed by timidity. Gordon Brown may have flown a few kites in relation to a written constitution, electoral reform, English devolution and the future of the House of Lords but he has left things far too late for a ‘constitutional moment’. Brown may have the political inclination but he lacks the capacity to deliver far‐reaching reform; Cameron is likely to have the capacity but not the inclination.     

Democratic legitimacy and direct elections to the European parliament

The theme of ‘democratic legitimacy’ and the way it affects the institutions and development of the European Community is a recurrent one both in the literature on Western European integration and especially in debates amongst European politicians and parliamentarians. This article examines the theme within the context of the direct elections to be held to the European Parliament in 1979. It is argued that the European Parliament has certain legitimacy problems which stem from the nature of its authority, intelligibility, visibility, and the way in which it acts as the European Community's ‘grand forum’. The holding of European elections will not in themselves overcome these problems, and a number of suggestions are offered as to how the European Parliament and the European Community can achieve democratic legitimacy.¹     

Political differentiation and the problem of dominance: Segmentation and hegemony

At first glance, one might view the political differentiation in the European Union as a reflection of the autonomy of its member states, signifying flexibility and the dispersion of democratic control. However, under conditions of complex interdependence and economic integration, political differentiation can undermine the fundamental conditions for democratic self‐rule. Political differentiation may cause dominance. It is argued in this article that we must move beyond Philip Pettit's conception of dominance as the capacity to interfere with others on an arbitrary basis, in order to properly identify the undemocratic consequences of differentiation. Political freedom is also a question of institutional provisions to co‐determine laws. From this vantage point, differentiation raises the spectre of dominance in the form of decisional exclusion and the pre‐emption of political autonomy. Drawing on a re‐conceptualisation of dominance, the effects of differentiation on the possibility of self‐rule are examined, and two systematic effects of political differentiation are identified. It is argued that segmentation is the systemic effect of differentiation in the vertical dimension of integration. Here, dominance occurs in the form of exclusion from decision‐making bodies and the denial of choice opportunities. In the external horizontal dimension, the systemic effect of differentiation is hegemony. Some states are vulnerable to arbitrary interference and the pre‐emption of public autonomy. The article discusses developments within the Eurozone as a case of segmentation and the statues of associated non‐members as a case of hegemony. With regard to the latter, we are faced with the phenomenon of self‐incurred dominance.     

What can deliberative mini-publics contribute to democratic systems?

Can deliberative mini-publics contribute to deepening the democratic dimensions of electoral democracies? The question is framed in this article using a problem-based approach to democratic theory–to count as democratic, political systems must accomplish three basic functions related to inclusion, communication and deliberation, and decision making. This approach is elaborated with an analysis of a real-world case: a deliberative mini-public with a citizens’ assembly design, focused on urban planning convened in Vancouver, Canada. This example was chosen because the context was one in which the city's legacy institutions of representative democracy had significant democratic deficits in all three areas, and the mini-public was a direct response to these deficits. It was found that Vancouver's deliberative mini-public helped policy makers, activists and affected residents move a stalemated planning process forward, and did do so in ways that improved the democratic performance of the political system. Depending on when and how they are sequenced into democratic processes, deliberative mini-publics can supplement existing legacy institutions and practices to deepen their democratic performance.     

Post‐Democratic Party Politics

In recent years many scholars have diagnosed a crisis of party politics. This article considers recent changes in the UK and Europe that appear to challenge this idea. Exploring Colin Crouch's notion of ‘post‐democratic’ party politics and considering his diagnosis of shifts in parties' agenda setting, organisation and communication, the article considers evidence of post‐democratic politics and the possibility for future renewal.     

The limits of autocracy promotion: The case of Russia in the ‘near abroad’

In recent years, observers have raised concerns about threats to democracy posed by external support for authoritarianism coming from regional powers such as Russia, China and Venezuela. This article assesses the efficacy of autocracy promotion through a close examination of Russian efforts to shape regime outcomes in the former Soviet Union. It finds that while Russian actions have periodically promoted instability and secessionist conflict, there is little evidence that such intervention has made post‐Soviet countries less democratic than they would have been otherwise. First, the Russian government has been inconsistent in its support for autocracy – supporting opposition and greater pluralism in countries where anti‐Russian governments are in power, and incumbent autocrats in cases where pro‐Russian politicians dominate. At the same time, the Russian government's narrow concentration on its own economic and geopolitical interests has significantly limited the country's influence, fostering a strong counter‐reaction in countries with strong anti‐Russian national identities. Finally, Russia's impact on democracy in the region has been restricted by the fact that post‐Soviet countries already have weak democratic prerequisites. This analysis suggests that, despite increasingly aggressive foreign policies by autocratic regional powers, autocracy promotion does not present a particularly serious threat to democracy in the world today.     

Deliberative participatory budgeting: A case study of Zeguo Town in China

The search for a better practice instrument of civic engagement has led to participatory budgeting and deliberative polling in recent years. Participatory budgeting stresses empowerment and citizens' struggle against the establishment and unequal social structures, whereas deliberative polling works within the system and focuses on improving democratic decision‐making processes by applying credible social science methods. Often, these two processes are presented as being in conflict with each other, which is to the detriment of the search for best practice in deliberative governance. This paper develops a theoretical analysis of deliberative participatory budgeting which is distinguished from unrepresentative and non‐deliberative but self‐selected participatory budgeting; that is, it considers how the quality of participatory budgeting can be improved through deliberative polling. This theoretical analysis is backed by an empirical study of deliberative participatory budgeting in Zeguo Township, Zhejiang Province, China. It explores whether, how, and under what conditions it is possible to combine deliberative polling and participatory budgeting. It details four experiments and assesses the successes, failures, limitations, and problems of the experiments. The case of Zeguo offers scholars, activists, and officials lessons about how to pursue best deliberative practice in both authoritarian states and democratic societies.