National Parliamentary Control of EU Policy: The Challenge of Supranational Institutional Development

The history of the EU is characterised by rapid and complex institutional development. This leaves European Affairs Committees (EACs) in national parliaments with a moving target problem in their endeavours to control the government's EU policies. This paper investigates how EACs react to this challenge. Building on the rational delegation literature, it is argued that EACs are likely to adapt control instruments in tandem with institutional changes at the supranational level. Using McCubbins and Schwartz (1984, American Journal of Political Science, 28, 165–179), it is further argued that EACs are likely to want to impose both police patrol and fire alarm control on the government. These arguments are investigated in the case of Denmark during the 50-year period since the first Danish application for EU membership in 1961, and considerable support is found for the authors' hypotheses.     

NATO's Response Force: finally getting it right?

Abstract

At the Riga Summit in November 2006, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) declared the NATO Response Force (NRF) a fully operational capability. Yet only 8 months later – and behind closed doors – the Alliance's military authorities rescinded the declaration as it became increasingly clear that member states were unwilling to make the necessary commitments to the force. To this day, the force has been a qualified failure: while many allies have benefited from participating in the NRF, lack of concrete troop commitments and disagreement as to the force's operational role have largely eroded its credibility. This could change with the allies' recent adoption of a revised NRF-construct. However, as NATO is still in a state of strategic confusion, the NRF is likely to continue to be different things to different nations.     

Academic faculty governance and recruitment decisions

We analyze the implications of the governance structure in academic faculties for their recruitment decisions when competing for new researchers. The value to individual members through social interaction within the faculty depends on the average status of their fellow members. In recruitment decisions, incumbent members trade off the effect of entry on average faculty status against alternative uses of the recruitment budget if no entry takes place. We show that the best candidates join the best faculties but that they receive lower wages than some lesser ranking candidates. We also study the allocation of surplus created by the entry of a new faculty member and show that faculties with symmetric status distributions maximize their joint surplus under majority voting.     

Politicians' Ideas of Ideal Politicians: Findings from German and Austrian State Parliaments

In recent years, both the individualisation and the mediatisation of politics have accelerated a process of political personalisation, a process which has attracted considerable attention from empirical analysts. But in comparison with media-related and citizen/voter-related studies, studies focusing on political actors are rare. As a consequence, little is known about the perceptions of politicians or their attitudes towards personalisation. These perceptions are presumed to be vital for the relationships between citizens and MPs, specifically with regard to leadership, representativeness, and responsiveness. Against this backdrop, an empirical analysis was conducted of the perceptions of German and Austrian MPs regarding the politics- and public performance-related attributes of ‘ideal’ politicians. Differences were found related to age, sex, and country and, foremost, an amalgamation of attributes which are labelled ‘role-near’, political attributes, and ‘role-distant’, that is media and communication skills.     

The Role of Land Use Consolidation in Improving Crop Yields among Farm Households in Rwanda

Relative to other developing regions, the role of land consolidation in increasing crop yields is poorly understood in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines the role of land use consolidation on agricultural productivity among smallholder farmers in Rwanda. Household-level data are used to estimate a fixed-effects model with matched control groups to mitigate selection bias. The study finds a positive association between land use consolidation and crop yields, but only among farm households with landholdings greater than one hectare, which is well above the average farm size in Rwanda. Findings also point to the importance of non-organic fertilisers and irrigation as there appear to be significant benefits associated with further increases in their use among the consolidated farms.     

Preferences for International Redistribution: The Divide over the Eurozone Bailouts

Why do voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries? Despite the prominence of public opinion in the ongoing debate over the eurozone bailouts, voters' preferences on the topic are poorly understood. We conduct the first systematic analysis of this issue using observational and experimental survey data from Germany, the country shouldering the largest share of the EU's financial rescue fund. Testing a range of theoretical explanations, we find that individuals' own economic standing has limited explanatory power in accounting for their position on the bailouts. In contrast, social dispositions such as altruism and cosmopolitanism robustly correlate with support for the bailouts. The results indicate that the divide in public opinion over the bailouts does not reflect distributive lines separating domestic winners and losers. Instead, the bailout debate is better understood as a foreign policy issue that pits economic nationalist sentiments versus greater cosmopolitan affinity and other‐regarding concerns.