Framing yourself into a corner: Russia,Crimea, and the minimal action space

A long-held axiom, political leaders are said to favour an action space sufficiently wide to allow them, as a minimum, a face-saving exit. This makes it particularly interesting for us to study those rare cases where political leaders seem to be deliberately reducing their policy options to the point of having merely one line to pursue. The handling by Russian President Vladimir Putin of the early 2014 crisis over Crimea, eventually leading to the annexation by Russia of the Ukrainian Peninsula on 21 March 2014, seems to represent such a rare case. Through the use of state-controlled media, a highly dichotomized framing of the crisis was presented to the Russian audience, essentially leaving Putin with just the one option of acting to “save” the Crimeans from the Ukrainian Government by bringing them into Russia.     

Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy,Parliament, and the Media

A key issue for interest groups and policymakers is the ways through which organized interests voice their interests and influence public policy. This article combines two perspectives on interest group representation to explain patterns of interest group access to different political arenas. From a resource exchange perspective, it argues that access to different political arenas is discrete as it is determined by the match between the supply and demands of interest groups and gatekeepers—politicians, bureaucrats, and reporters. From a partly competing perspective, it is argued that access is cumulative and converges around wealthy and professionalized groups. Based on a large‐scale investigation of group presence in Danish political arenas, the analyses show a pattern of privileged pluralism. This describes a system where multiple political arenas provide opportunities for multiple interests but where unequally distributed resources produce cumulative effects (i.e., the same groups have high levels of arena access).     

The Negotiated Economy: Is There a Theory?

The original concept of the negotiated economy from the late 1970s provided some heuristic insights into significant developments of political, economic, and administrative processes. The later development of the concept has not brought the theory of the negotiated economy any further. This is a reply to an article published in SPS (Andersen et al. 1996) which responded to criticisms brought by me in an earlier article (1W.4). The defence of the theory of the negotiated economy is not consistent. The theory is both non-positive and positive, and normally accepted criteria for empirical confrontation are not adhered to.     

Power and Democracy in Denmark: Still a Viable Democracy

In its final report, the Danish Democracy and Power Study (1998–2004) pointed to a number of serious democratic problems such as declining political party membership, a growing gap between a competent and resourceful majority and a marginalised minority, the growing influence of the media, the transfer of power from the political to the judicial system, and the democratic deficit associated with European Union membership. However, the report also concluded that overall democratic development in the last 30–40 years has been surprisingly positive. This article assesses the development of democracy in Denmark in relation to the parliamentary chain of governance: the standard used in the final report of the majority of the Norwegian power study group. The conclusion is that, in the case of Denmark, democratic development has not – as the parliamentary committee initially expected – resulted in a systematic weakening of the parliamentary chain of governance.     

Cooperation between counterparts in parliament from an agenda-setting perspective: legislative coalitions as a trade of criticism and policy

Governments may bargain with parties in parliament to silence them. This insight follows from the agenda-setting literature, which emphasises the power of the opposition to criticise the government. The literature on legislatures points to the fear of loss of future voter support as a motivation for majority building. However, it does not name factors that can cause such uncertainty. One such factor is opposition criticism. This article argues that majority building does not only involve an exchange of policy support; governments use legislative coalitions to dampen unwanted opposition blame. By offering the opposition noteworthy policy influence in legislative coalitions, governments avoid opposition criticism in return, in addition to having initiatives passed. In order to test this argument, a large dataset is compiled on opposition criticism in parliament and the media before and after the 325 bargained legislative agreements settled in Denmark from 1973 to 2003. It is found that such agreements are more likely amidst opposition criticism and that they dampen opposition criticism.     

Does politics crowd out professional competence? The organisation of ministerial advice in Denmark and Sweden

The use of politically appointed ministerial advisors has increased noticeably in many Western countries, but we know little about how this development has affected the civil servants recruited on merit. The article asks whether political appointees accentuate or blur the line between politics and administration. Do political appointees take over political-tactical advice and leave policy advice to the permanent civil service, or do they cause permanent civil servants to be even more influenced by political considerations? And do political appointees make it easier or more difficult for the permanent civil service to be politically responsive? A Most Similar Systems Design comparison of Denmark and Sweden allows an assessment of the effects of political appointees. It is found that a large number of political appointees decreases functional politicisation of the permanent civil service; that functional politicisation tends to crowd out tasks related to more classic policy advice; and that functional politicisation increases political responsiveness.