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Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies
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Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies

Kaare Strøm, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Torbjörn Bergman

Abstract

Parliamentary democracy is the most common way of organizing delegation and accountability in contemporary democracies. Yet knowledge of this type of regime has been incomplete and often unsystematic. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies offers new conceptual clarity on the topic.

Keywords: accountability, central banks, corporatism, delegation, democratic governance, European Union, parliamentarism, parliamentary democracy, policy process, principal-agent theory

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780198297840
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2005 DOI:10.1093/019829784X.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Kaare Strøm, Editor
Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego
Author Webpage

Wolfgang C. Müller, Editor
Professor in Department of Government, University of Vienna
Author Webpage

Torbjörn Bergman, Editor
Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
Author Webpage

Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Contributors

Part I INTRODUCTION AND THEORY

1 Parliamentary Democracy: Promise and Problems

2 Delegation and its Perils

3 Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation

Part II Survey

4 Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-national Patterns

5 Austria: Imperfect Parliamentarism but Fully-fledged Party Democracy

6 Belgium: Delegation and Accountability under Partitocratic Rule

7 Denmark: Delegation and Accountability in Minority Situations

8 Finland: Polarized Pluralism in the Shadow of a Strong President

9 France: Delegation and Accountability in the Fifth Republic

10 Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Coordination, and Problems of Hidden Action

11 Greece: ‘Rationalizing’ Constitutional Powers in a Post-dictatorial Country

12 Iceland: A Parliamentary Democracy with a Semi-presidential Constitution

13 Ireland: ‘O What a Tangled Web. . .’—Delegation, Accountability, and Executive Power

14 Italy: Delegation and Accountability in a Changing Parliamentary Democracy

15 Luxembourg: A Case of More ‘Direct’ Delegation and Accountability

16 The Netherlands: Rules and Mores in Delegation and Accountability Relationships

17 Norway: Virtual Parliamentarism

18 Portugal: Changing Patterns of Delegation and Accountability under the President's Watchful Eyes

19 Spain: Delegation and Accountability in a Newly Established Democracy

20 Sweden: From Separation of Power to Parliamentary Supremacy—and Back Again?

21 The United Kingdom: Still a Single ‘Chain of Command’? The Hollowing Out of the ‘Westminster Model’

Part III ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION

22 Dimensions of Citizen Control

23 Challenges to Parliamentary Democracy

End Matter

Index