The 2014 Local Elections in Greece: Looking for Patterns in a Changing Political System

In May 2014, municipal and regional elections were held in Greece, concurrently with European elections. This was the first electoral test after the 2012 twin earthquake elections, which marked the beginning of a radical restructuring of the Greek political system. The fragmentation and inconsistency of voting behaviour across different polls in 2014 indicate that Greek politics remains in a transitional phase whose final outcome is still contested. Other characteristics of the elections, including the high proportion of independent candidates, the radical renewal of political personnel and the emergence of Berlusconism in two major municipalities, underline the continuing lack of legitimacy of the political system.     

The Causes and Consequences of the Collegial Implementation of European Competition Law

A major achievement of the new institutionalism is the formalisation of the idea that certain policies, such as competition law, are more efficient when administered by a politically independent organisation. Based on this insight, several practitioners and scholars criticise the European Community for relying too much on a multitask, collegial, and therefore politicised organisation, the European Commission. Defining collegiality as the involvement of non‐expert commissioners in the implementation of the EC competition law, this article offers the first interdisciplinary analysis of the causes and consequences of that peculiar European institution. The central finding is that, far from being a mistake or the product of unanticipated consequences, collegiality was a necessary condition for the creation of supranational European law.     

Essential and Non-essential Measures: Delegation of Powers in EU Securities Regulation

This article examines the new regulatory process in the regulation of EU securities markets, as proposed by the Wise Men Committee and welcomed by the Council and the Parliament. The new structure involves inter alia the creation of a 'comitology' committee and recognises two layers of legislation: essential measures that will be enacted through the normal co-decision process on the one hand, and more detailed technical and 'non-essential' measures, which will be decided by the new committee and the Commission, on the other. It is believed that the new structure will respond to the need for speed, efficiency and flexibility in securities regulation. However, the starting point for discussion and the decisive question is how one can distinguish between these two levels of legislative measures. Although the Wise Men Committee does not give sufficient guidance on this issue, it is alleged that the success of the proposed regime will heavily depend on the clear definition and distinction between essential and non-essential measures. The theoretical exercise of this article involves an analysis of the delegation issues arising from the proposal and the identification of some potentially useful guiding principles and criteria derived from primary and secondary Community legislation and case law as well as from inter-institutional agreements. Its ultimate goal is a proposal for the adoption of common principles, criteria and dividing lines at EU level.     

How Democratic Is “Governance”? Lessons from Swiss Drug Policy

Public action increasingly takes place in self-organizing networks that are remote from direct governmental control. While these transformations have been subject to scrutiny in regard to their efficiency, less attention has been paid to their democratic quality. This article discusses governance-induced problems of democracy by isolating two major criticisms. Deliberative criticism argues that governance, rather than allowing for true deliberation in the public space, may lead to a loss of accountability. Participatory criticism stresses that governance impinges on participatory venues. The article discusses these criticisms theoretically and empirically, drawing from research on drug policy in Switzerland. The findings show that the criticisms are relevant, albeit not entirely justified.     

Reviews

John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, xi + 360 pp., £24.95, $29.95.

W. Lutz, S. Scherbov & A. Volkov (eds), Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991. London: Routledge, 1994, xl + 496 pp., £85.00.

Deborah Adelman, The ‘Children of Perestroika’ Come Of Age. Young People Of Moscow Talk About Life in the New Russia. Armonk, NY & London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xxii +193 pp.

Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, viii + 319 pp.     

The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Ideological Space in Portugal and Greece: A Comparison of Elites and Voters

This work addresses the dimensions and content of ideological space in Portugal and Greece after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis and the imposition of austerity policies in the two countries. By examining both elite interviews and public opinion data, the article principally attempts to determine whether the economic crisis has created a new division in ideological space by cross-cutting or completely replacing older ones. In addition, we attempt to gauge the position of crisis-related issues relative to issue divides on European integration and globalisation which, up to now, have been dormant in Southern European countries.     

The Political Communication of Independent Regulatory Agencies

Since independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) became key actors in European regulatory governance in the 1990s, a significant share of policy‐making has been carried out by organizations that are neither democratically elected nor directly accountable to elected politicians. In this context, public communication plays an important role. On the one hand, regulatory agencies might try to use communication to raise their accountability and thereby to mitigate their democratic deficit. On the other hand, communication may be used with the intent to steer the behavior of the regulated industry when more coercive regulatory means are unfeasible or undesirable. However, empirical research focusing directly on how regulators communicate is virtually non‐existent. To fill this gap, this paper examines the public communication of IRAs in four countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland) and three sectors (financial services, telecommunications, and broadcasting). The empirical analysis, based on qualitative interviews and a quantitative content analysis, indicates that the organization of the communication function follows a national pattern approach while a policy sector approach is helpful for understanding the use of communication as a soft tool of regulation.