Under de drygt två hundra år som förflutit sedan det moderna forskningsuniversitetet såg dagens ljus i dåtida Preussen har vetenskap bevisligen gjort världen bättre. Fyra k:n – kunskap, kreativitet, kritikoch kollegialitet – har utgjort nyckeln till denna exempellösa framgång. Akademins framsteg har dock inte vilat på den demokratisk-politiska logik som genomsyrar dagens samhälle, utan på en parallell och alldeles egen verklighet där ett fritt sökande upprätthållits genom att forskare drivits av sitt engagemang och sin nyfikenhet. När denna anda får råda inom vetenskapen blir det också bra för samhället i stort. Men i det projektsamhälle som alltmer tar form och där tiden, resultaten och utvärderingen är centrala, framstår akademins och vetenskapens sätt att fungera som provocerande. Liksom stora delar av den offentliga verksamheten lever i dag akademin under trycket av kortsiktig resultatleverans.Hur kunde det bli så, och vad gör vi åt det?
Denna problematik är temat för Det hotade universitetet, som är redigerad och författad av engagerade forskare, tidigare universitetsrektorer och ämbetsmän som är förskräckta över en utveckling där djup kunskap, vildsint kreativitet, kritiska samtal och kollegialt ansvar kastas på sophögen. Denna utveckling kan inte, och får inte, fortsätta. Då rycker vi undan mattan för mänskliga framsteg och ett civiliserat samhälle. Det är hög tid att försvara de värden som akademin har stått för sedan lång tid tillbaka – inte för att de är traditionella, utan för att de är det modernaste vi har.
This article examines patterns of oppositional behaviour in the German Bundestag’s Committee on European Union Affairs (EAC) for two separate legislative periods (2005–2009 and 2009–2013). The study makes two contributions to previous research. It, first, shed some much-needed empirical light on political opposition in the Bundestag by examining how much and what kind of opposition exists in the German EAC. Secondly, the article examines the differences in oppositional behaviour of the Members of Parliament between the two legislative periods following an institutional reform in 2009 that afforded the Bundestag with increased opportunity structures in Europen Union affairs.
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 authors examine:
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.
This article explores the under-researched issue of how constitutional change is brought about in modern democracies. Despite the fundamental importance of constitutions, we know surprisingly little about whether constitutional change is achieved by changing the explicit wording of the constitutional document, or by way of changing the meaning of the constitution while leaving the constitutional text unaltered. Which is the more common method and what variations in the use of these different methods are there in democratic political systems? This study systematically compares the use of explicit and implicit constitutional change in European Union (EU) Member States. The results show that implicit constitutional change is the more frequently used method, but also reveal substantial differences between EU countries. The article closes by discussing the road towards a theory of constitutional change. It does so by presenting five testable propositions that could lay the foundation for a theory of constitutional change.
Negotiations in Amsterdam 1996 and Nice 2000 resulted in deadlocks impossible to break. The failure of these Intergovernmental Conferences gave rise to demands for a new and improved process of treaty reform. The answer offered by the European Council in Laeken was to create a Convention with a mandate to prepare the next reform of the treaties. The broad composition of this Convention raised hopes for a process not exclusively defined by bargaining on behalf of national interests, but rather a more open process where actors would be prepared to listen to each other's arguments. Today, we find two divergent images of deliberation in this body. The first sees the Convention as a deliberative success story; the second argues bargaining dominated the proceedings. However, this far the empirical evidence in support of either claim has been inconclusive. On the basis of interviews with 28 conventioneers, this article ventures a 'final verdict' on the matter, arguing that deliberation was, indeed, a defining characteristic of the proceedings.
As the interdependence of political entities has increased, the capacity of single nation-states to solve important problems has diminished. Within the fields of crime, migration, the economy, and the environment, for example, it appears that co-operation among nation-states offers the only effective means of dealing with pressing issues. New sites of governance beyond the nation-state have thus been established to compensate for the loss of problem-solving capacity at the national level. The greater the significance of these new sites of governance, the greater the need for democratic processes to render their decisions legitimate. But is it possible to implement and sustain democratic and legitimate governance beyond the nation-state?
The European Union is the most powerful of the new sites for governance beyond the nation-state. The EU has evolved from an international regime into an economic, social, and political union. Through a number of treaty reforms, the institutions of the Union have been entrusted with a wide range of legislative, executive, and judicial competencies. But has the democratic quality of EU decision-making improved as the powers of its institutions have increased?
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the democratic status of the EU political system and the Union's alleged legitimacy crisis. It also examines six different positions on how to address the EU's democratic deficit. Three of these defend the status quo, while the others are calling for democratisation. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of these positions, this book contributes to our understanding of whether it is possible and desirable to democratise the European Union.
This study examines how European Union member states have undertaken constitutional change to adjust to the new conditions that follow from membership in this supranational organization. The article seeks to explain what factors determine why constitutional reform induced by EU membership is sometimes brought about by changing the wording of the constitutional document (explicit change), and sometimes by changing the meaning of the constitution while leaving the constitutional text itself unaltered (implicit change). The current study provides new insights regarding constitutional change by formulating and testing a number of rival hypotheses about what explains cross-national variation in the use of different methods for achieving constitutional reform. The results show that three factors stand out as important determinants for EU-induced constitutional change: constitutional rigidity; public opinion; and the number of cabinet parties.
Scholars have argued that the Convention method has democratised the process of treaty reform and increased the legitimacy of EU constitutionalization. This study finds that the Convention method has contributed to a slightly more democratic process, but has not in any fundamental way improved the democratic status of the EU’s treaty reform process. We should accordingly not be too concerned over the future fate of the Convention method. From a democratic perspective we should be more worried over the possible scenario that future changes to the EU’s institutional structure will come about through implicit constitutional change without any formal changes being made to the treaties. The cumbersome ratification process could thereby be bypassed. This, however, would deprive EU citizens of the only real opportunities they have of influencing decisions on the overall design of the integration project.
Constitutional change can be achieved either by changing the explicit wording of the constitutional document, or by way of changing the meaning of the constitution while leaving the constitutional text unaltered. This study systematically compares the use of these different modes of constitutional change in the new EU member states. The results show that implicit constitutional change is the more frequently used method, but also reveal substantial differences between member states. By comparing constitutional change trajectories in the Baltic States, this study reveals that public opinion, constitutional rigidity and constitutional courts stand out as important determinants for EU-induced constitutional change.
This study provides new insights regarding how the EU dimension relates to the left-right dimension in national politics. It does so by examining to what extent parties’ oppositional behaviour in EU affairs in parliament is a function of their distance to the government, other parties, the voters and party supporters on the EU dimension and the left-right dimension, respectively. The results suggest that oppositional behaviour is determined by two parallel dynamics: When expressing opposition, political parties are receptive both to the positions of the government and other parties on the EU dimension, and to the positions of voters and supporters on the left-right dimension. Our results thus indicate that the politicization of EU affairs in national parliaments primarily is an elite phenomenon. In their relation to the voters and supporters, parties still primarily navigate along the traditional left-right dimension.
Is oppositional behaviour in legislatures gendered? Despite a growing literature on gender and legislative behaviour, there is a conspicuous absence of research on differences between female and male members of parliament (MPs) when it comes to one of the key aspects of parliamentary debates: the voicing of opposition. This article connects the literature on gender and legislative behaviour with opposition scholarship. We examine the role of gender for oppositional behaviour in four legislatures with a focus on debates concerning European Union affairs. Our results show that female MPs generally are equally likely to express opposition as their male colleagues. This result, however, is conditioned by government status. Whilst there is no significant difference between the proportion of opposition expressed by female and male MPs from opposition parties, we find that male MPs representing government parties express more than twice as much opposition as their female colleagues.