Political Accountability In Europe

The Political Accountability of EU and US Independent Regulatory Agencies is an in-depth investigation on the law and practices of the political accountability arrangements of the 35 EU and 16 US independent agencies. The comparative analysis demonstrates similarities between the political accountability arsenals and challenges to political oversight in the EU and the US. The greatest differences are revealed in the organization of the political accountability of independent agencies, i.e., ‘excessive diversity in the EU vs. uniformity in the US’, and the design of accountability obligations. Based on comparative insights, the book concludes with three recommendations on how the EU agencies’ political accountability could be adjusted in the ongoing reform on agencies’ creation and operation.

The European Union's growing accountability deficit threatens to undermine its legitimacy; accordingly, member states have agreed to negotiate a new set of Treaty changes in 2004. These essays consider various aspects of accountability and legitimacy in the European Union.

There seems to be a growing tendency, as prominently shown by the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999 and expressed more recently in the Constitutional Treaty, to construe the relationship between the Commission and the European Parliament as a parliamentary system. In a parliamentary system the government gives account of its action to Parliament and, where appropriate, suffers the consequences, takes the blame, or puts matters right if errors have been made. The government remains in office only as long as it has the confidence of the majority in Parliament and until Parliament votes a motion of censure or the government resigns. This study further develops a European concept of political accountability. The basic assumption of the project is that such a concept must be firmly rooted in the longstanding constitutional traditions of the Member States. From this perspective, it is relevant to try to identify what political accountability precisely means in the various Member States. This proves to be far from evident. The concept of political accountability substantially differs from country to country. For example, political accountability in Italy and France primarily seems to focus on resignation of ministers whereas political accountability in the United Kingdom or the Netherlands aims at the process of giving account. In order to analyze the various approaches and to try to identify common principles, this book brings together 12 distinguished constitutional lawyers and political scientists who have analyzed the concept of political accountability from their national perspectives. The book also includes a final comparative chapter that examines the parallels and the differences between the national systems and explores to what extent common ground can be found in Europe.

In recent years there has been a considerable effort in some transnational organizations and institutions to confront a crisis of legitimacy by promising more accountability and openness. This volume takes as its central focus the role of accountability in democratic governance, and attempts to position a broad understanding of the notion of accountability within the overall context of the evolving political system of governance in Europe and in particular of the European Union. Bringing together new work by some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume considers the relationship between accountability and a wide range of other themes in European governance such as problems of representation, transparency, bureaucracy, and transnational relations. The volume also deals with the role of accountability in multi-level governance, and its relationship to both direct democracy and civil society. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

An examination of executive actors' accountability for EU economic decisions in the aftermath of the euro crisis.

This book examines accountability in the EU from different perspectives and considers whether EU citizens have real opportunities for holding decision-makers accountable. This book critically analyses five arguments which claim there are sufficient means for holding decision-makers to account in the Union. The main conclusion is that the current institutional set-up and practice of decision-making in the EU is one that merely creates an illusion of accountability. Using a strict framework focusing on the difference between formal mechanisms and actual opportunities for accountability, this highly coherent volume will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, especially those interested in the democratic foundations of the European political system. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415480994_oachapter1.pdf

This volume examines the theorization of democratic accountability and what accountability processes tell us about political order and orderly change.