Who's to blame? How financial crises and technocrats change (or not) the welfare state in Europe

Since the 2008 financial crises the appointments of technocrats in parliamentary cabinets has more than doubled. At the same time most European governments adopted fiscal austerity with important consequences for their welfare states. How much of this effect is due to the financial crisis and how much is it due to the specific ministerial appointments? Using data from 13 European countries since 1980 and two-stage least square models, I test the effects of financial crises and of technocratic appointments on a battery of social welfare indicators. Initial results indicate that technocrats appointed in the finance portfolio have real effects on social welfare policy, controlling for financial crises. However, experienced ministers with a background in economics are also associated with cuts in social welfare expenditure

Who governs? Professional politicians, Wall Street or the people? The professional and political background of cabinet ministers in 18 parliamentary democracies

This paper asks to what extent changes in the profiles of politicians reflect changes in party ideology over time. Do individual politicians drive party policy or the other way around? These are critical questions for understanding political representation and political party transformation over time. To answer these questions I have collected data that map changes in the professional, educational and political backgrounds of cabinet ministers over time. This new dataset has unique biographical information of cabinet ministers in 18 parliamentary democracies from 1945 to 2012. Specifically, I have collected and coded information on the educational and professional background of cabinet ministers, their partisan affiliation and seniority in their political party, their political professional experience in the parliament and parliamentary committees as well as their experience in government cabinets. Preliminary results show that over time, ministerial professionalization has increased, measured in terms of years in the parliament as well as years in the legal profession. In addition, more economics ministers have corporate background and fewer have working-class background. These changes strongly correlate with a right-ward shift in political party ideology, as measured by political parties’ electoral manifestos

The politics of economic adjustment : technocratic appointments and representation in economically advanced parliamentary democracies

During the current debt crisis in Europe a number of unelected ministers and even prime- ministers have been appointed to government to resolve the economic crisis. Commentators argue that such appointments hurt democracy and are unlikely to succeed. However, appointments of un-elected technocrats are not unique to the current economic crisis. Nonetheless to this day, we have very little understanding of the economic and political impact of unelected ministers and prime-ministers. Does it make a difference for representation whether ministers and governments are technocratic instead of partisan? With a couple of notable exceptions, the discipline lacks systematic knowledge on the causes and effects of unelected technocrat ministers. When are technocrats more likely to be appointed and how do their appointments affect the government’s policy decision and, in turn, effective representation of the electorate? Using a new dataset on ministers in eighteen economically advanced democracies, I address this question by studying whether critical economic events predict technocratic appointments. The findings of this paper shed light to the complex interdependence of pre-electoral commitments, policy outputs and representation in parliamentary democracies

Voice Syncretism Crosslinguistically: The View from Minimalism

Voice syncretism is widely attested crosslinguistically. In this paper, we discuss three different types of Voice syncretism, under which the same morpheme participates in different configurations. We provide an approach under which the same Voice head can convey different interpretations depending on the environment it appears in, thus building on the notion of allosemy. We show that, in all cases under investigation, allosemy is closely associated with the existence of idiosyncratic patterns. By contrast, we notice that allosemy and idiosyncrasy are not present in analytic passive and causative constructions across different languages. We argue that the distinguishing feature between the two types of constructions is whether the passive and the causative interpretation comes from the Voice head, thus forming a single domain with the vP or whether passive and causative semantics are realized by distinct heads above the Voice layer, thus forming two distinct domains.Peer Reviewe

Why strong leaders often end up damaging their parties in the medium term

Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party’s organisation, policy development, and electoral campaigns.. But does that control come with a price? Despina Alexiadou and Eoin O’Malley hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25-year period, and a qualitative case study, they find some evidence for the theory

Platforms, portfolios, policy : how audience costs affect social welfare policy in multiparty cabinets

When and why do electoral commitments enhance parties’ ability to implement their preferred policy in multiparty governments? We propose an audience costs theory whereby strong platform commitments enhance parties’ negotiating positions in multiparty cabinets but only when they are on a salient policy issue for core voters and the party controls the policy-relevant portfolio. Utilizing new data on portfolio allocations in eight parliamentary democracies over 40 years, we show that absent a strong platform commitment, control of the portfolio of social affairs by social democrats, alone, is not associated with changes in welfare generosity. Notably, our findings are independent of party size and hold in most multiparty legislative systems not dominated by three parties

Technocratic government and economic policy

The recent surge in the appointments of technocrats to the top economic portfolios of finance, and even the formation of fully technocratic governments in Europe raises questions regarding the role of technocrats and technocratic governments in economic policy in democracies. Who are the technocrats? Why are they appointed in the first place? What is their impact on economic policy and finally what their sources of policy influence

Appointing ministers to multiparty cabinets

How does intra-party competition affect governance in multiparty cabinets? For a long time scholars have recognized that intra-party competition and the strength of factions can affect governance through the selection of cabinet min- isters or through policy negotiations among coalition partners. Yet, there has been very little, if any, quantitative work to test these expectations, primar- ily due to lack of data that could either measure party cohesion or ministerial types. Using novel data on both accounts, this paper investigates how intra- party ideological cohesion affects ministerial appointments in four European countries with multiparty governments: Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland. We make two important contributions in this paper. First, we pro- vide a theory of ministerial appointments predicting that when there is intra- party conflict over policy, more ideologically extreme ministers are appointed. This prediction holds even in multiparty cabinets, going against one’s expec- tations that more moderate ministers should be appointed in multiparty cab- inets Second, utilizing unique data on ministers’ background, we show that intra-party conflict predicts the appointments of ministers with more extreme policy preferences

Policy coordination and energy efficiency

Is the organisation of ministerial portfolios associated with governments' policy output? Political agendas and preferences alone cannot fully explain policy choices; the organisational design is also critical (Hall 1996). Governments cannot formulate coordinated strategies unless they facilitate such coordination through the organisation and design of ministerial portfolios. This 'political/policy game' should have direct effects in policy continuity and effectiveness. We investigate this problem in the context of energy efficiency policy. Do policies targeting energy efficiency in residential buildings vary depending on where the portfolios of Energy and Environment sit? Poorly insulated houses contribute significantly to countries' CO2 footprint and lead to higher levels of energy poverty in industrialized countries. Effective solutions exist in theory but often remain evasive in practice, at least in part because governments’ policy strategies are often uncoordinated. Using unique new data on the structure of ministerial portfolios in fifteen European countries over thirty years, we test the hypothesis that when the departments of Energy and the Environment are major portfolios and have been in place for longer period of time (spanning government changes), they will be associated with a higher number of policy initiatives aiming at higher levels of energy efficiency. In contrast, when the department of Energy is a minor portfolio under Business or Economics, policies for improving energy efficiency are likely to be fewer and less ambitious