Il n’y a pas de question idiote? Les questions des députés européens à la Commission européenne et au Conseil depuis 1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes questions from the European parliament (EP) to the Commission and Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU). The exponential increase in the number of questions since the first direct election of the EP in 1979 is testimony to the changing pattern of inter-institutional relations in the EU and to the growing involvement of the EP in a variety of policy areas. At the individual level, the members of the EP strategically use questions either for the purposes of specialization or in order to connect with their voters. Analyzing parliamentary questions is therefore relevant for a better understanding of representation in a supranational setting.     

National democratization theory and global governance: civil society and the liberalization of the Asian Development Bank

Contributing to a growing literature on democracy beyond the nation-state, this article draws on aspects of national democratization theory in order to analyse empirical processes of democracy. By combining insights from transition theory and the theory of political opportunity structures, the article examines the case of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). While the ADB for a long time has been described as a closed, unresponsive and unaccountable international organization, a recent evaluation praised the Bank for its good practices concerning transparency, participation and accountability. The article uses the analytical framework to highlight the interaction between hard-liners and soft-liners within the ADB and explores the role of different transnational civil society actors in the processes that seem to have strengthened the democratic credentials of the ADB. While finding significant divisions within the ADB as well as amongst civil society actors targeting the bank, overall the article argues that transnational civil society actors, interacting with soft-liners within the ADB, have contributed to the implementation of reforms, which in turn create political opportunities for further civil society activism. The reform processes, however, are best described as processes of liberalization – rather than democratization.     

Accountability and evidence-based approaches: theory and research for juvenile justice

As part of the ‘accountability movement’ in juvenile justice, policy-makers, funding agencies, and the general public have called for greater accountability from agencies and organizations involved with youthful offenders. Within this context, performance measurement and monitoring, and use of evidence-based programs and practices, have emerged as recommended aspects of juvenile justice system operations nationwide. Little is known empirically, however, about the actual performance of juvenile justice systems or the real changes brought by contemporary reforms, and theory and research on the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based approaches have been slow to emerge. This paper will review the key aspects of the modern accountability movement in juvenile justice, and then discuss a recently proposed theory that may be useful in future examinations of juvenile justice system improvement efforts. A suggested research agenda also is presented.     

LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISCRETION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN TURKEY

After ratification of the European Charter of Local Self‐Government in 1993, Turkey has witnessed major local government reform efforts in 2000s. The policy objectives of these reforms were granting more political, administrative and fiscal discretion to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and strengthening accountability linkages between citizens and local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyse the impact of these reforms. We argue that reforms have achieved limited success in improving decision‐making autonomy and accountability of local governments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

FIGHTING CORRUPTION WITH SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS' POTENTIAL TO REDUCE CORRUPTION IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Given the poor track record of traditional anti‐corruption initiatives, donors and governments are increasingly looking at how civil society can fight corruption in public administration. Social accountability mechanisms intend to perform this role by holding officials directly accountable through citizen engagement. However, this article argues that social accountability mechanisms are only capable of reducing corruption systemically if they activate horizontal accountability and sustain it through the sanctioning mechanisms of electoral accountability. A comparative case study analysis using the cases of the Ugandan Public Expenditure Tracking Survey and the Bangalore Citizen Report Card is applied to test this hypothesis. The Tanzanian Public Expenditure Tracking Survey and an example of citizen engagement in Mumbai are employed as shadow cases to provide additional evidence for the hypothesis. The results indicate that social accountability mechanisms must be inclusive, broad, with public effect and embedded in other accountability relationships to fight corruption effectively. Electoral accountability is key, and support to social accountability mechanisms should therefore always be well placed within a broader agenda aimed at strengthening democratic governance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reconsidering individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting

This paper proposes a general theory of individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting based on the perspective that the strength of the relationship varies with factors that influence the relevance of the economic evaluation to the vote choice. We posit that the electoral relevance of the economic evaluation increases with the strength of partisanship as well as political sophistication. Given the strong correlation between partisanship and sophistication, this theoretical perspective casts doubt on extant evidence that more sophisticated voters are more likely to hold the incumbent party electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance since this result might be an artifact of failing to control for the economic evaluation being more relevant to the vote choice of stronger partisans. Our statistical investigation of this question finds no significant evidence that sophistication conditions the economic voting relationship once the conditioning effect of partisanship is included in the model. This finding suggests that individual-level heterogeneity in the strength of the economic voting relationship is largely due to stronger partisans voting more consistently with their national economic evaluation than to more sophisticated voters being more policy-oriented by holding the incumbent party more electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance.     

When Liberal Peacebuilding Fails: Paradoxes of Implementing Ownership and Accountability in the Integrated Approach

As a consequence of the popularity of integrated and nationally owned peace processes, aligning external actors to a national peacebuilding strategy has become part of the recipe for success. Using the case of Sierra Leone, this article engages with the question of what constructing such unified peacebuilding agenda in fragile states means politically. Contrasting the purpose of peacebuilding with the practices through which it is carried out, the article argues that the implementation of a unified peacebuilding agenda to a large extent undermines the liberal pretences of peacebuilding. While the integration of government, civil society and donors works to portray a more ordered society in countries where the lack of such order has been a manifest security problem, it also works to undermine the crucial autonomy of and accountability between them.     

香港高官问责制:成效、问题与对策

高官问责制自从 2 0 0 2年 7月 1日在香港特别行政区实施以来 ,引起了各方面的关注 ,它取得了一定的成效 ,也存在不少的问题。本文对香港高官问责制的背景、成效、问题及其成因进行了较为深入的分析 ,并对其完善进行了初步的探讨     

Centralisation versus regionalisation: Designing the Sixth National Mental Health Plan

In response to the recent Productivity Commission report into mental health, the previous Federal Government announced its intention to produce a new national agreement that lays the platform for Australia's sixth national mental health plan. It has been recommended mental health move to a more regional model of governance and planning, away from a centralised, top-down approach, partly in response to broader reforms affecting health care, and partly in direct response to consistent inquiry evidence that the mental health system remains in crisis. The past 30 years of mental health planning have been centralised. Successive national plans set a broad framework, with real decisions about mental health funding and service allocation made in the health departments of our capital cities. Will the next plan sponsor or inhibit regionality in mental health planning? This paper assesses Australia's historical approach to health planning particularly as it affected mental health and the costs arising. In learning these lessons, we propose the necessary ingredients to facilitate a regional, innovative, and effective approach to decentralised planning, for better mental health outcomes. We cannot afford to replicate the failed planning approaches of the past.