CPO3103 European Politics Final Study Guide Characteristic of Democracy Standards of Democracy Democracies have free and fair elections As well as reasonable chance of government turnover which is the idea that an opposing party or group can reasonably get elected and be allowed to rule So in short elections are key to true democracy When the EC was first established it didn t meet these requirements There were no direct elections and therefore no chance of turnover To fix this they made the EP reforms Democratic defict 5 main categories explaining why there is a deficit in democracy Increased executive power has taken power away from national parliaments Weak EP the EP is not sufficiently powerful enough to compensate for the increase in executive power In other words the only democratically elected branch is not strong enough Elections are still fought based on national issues There are no true European elections There are elections to the Parliaments but not directly to legislation Distant from citizens the citizens are far removed from their European Parliamentarians Average citizen doesn t understand the EU fully not much is public High degree of policy drift the EU often adopts policies that not a lot of citizens actually support Citizens elect national governments that elect legislators who draft legislation based on other factors not necessarily the citizens themselves so there is a lot of policy drift Credibility crisis v Democratic deficit Politicization would result in Pareto Efficient outcomes Pareto efficient means it provides the most amount of benefits for the most amount of people But some people say it is a credibility crisis that it should be more transparent Permissive Consensus First order contests Second order contests o Permissive consensus occurred in the early stages of creating the EU When the citizens of the EU and prior incarnations EC ECSC allow their governments to make decisions for them and assume they will act in their interests o Second order contest v first order contest EP elections treated as second order contest First order are national elections Any other treated as secondary EP Elections the hope was that EP elections would fix these problems But what happens is the following Second order contest v first order contest EP elections treated as second order contest First order are national elections Any other treated as secondary Second Order Contests There is a significantly lower voter turnout rate for EP elections These elections often used as an opportunity to express their support of a national government or as an opportunity to cast sincere votes rather than strategic voting Arguments against second order voting Attitudes influence turnout and party support people tend to vote with the party they support at the national level Persistence of second order claim say that it is democratic Referendum voting government popularity tends to be a good indicator of referendum votes Doesn t let individuals express their opinions on policy just a yes or no to treaty changes or adding a new member state So the EU has made things more democratic on paper but it hasn t really worked o Strategic voting is voting for a candidate that has similar enough values but has a o Sincere voting simply voting sincerely for a candidate that is the closest to your Strategic voting better chance of winning Sincere voting own values Affective support Utilitarian support Affective v Utilitarian individual support for a policy typically one of these two Affective is an emotional response or gut reaction Theory of affective utilitarian support utilitarian derived from the belief that some policy is benefitting you as an individual Could be economic social etc David Easton political scientist has a framework of both affective and utilitarian support Says there is a base level of affective support If a bad policy comes in the base level will go down The affective is the reservoir and utilitarian is the one that fluctuates Goals of regulatory policy o Goal to correct market failures o Regulatory Politics The hope is to produce Pareto efficient outcomes They are supposed to correct market failure Democratic politics leads to redistributive outcomes Regulatory politics corrects market failures Positive v normative regulation positive frameworks seek to explain outcomes based on the logical and mathematical treatment of evidence positivism If a politician wants to be reelected they are going to act favorably toward groups that want regulatory policies o The normative framework focuses on what should be It argues that independent institutions should create regulatory policy Kind of moral based but basically just says that the policies should be created by non political institutions o Neither takes into account the constraints of institutions Areas of deregulation Deregulation the single market Deregulation Competition Policy In order to regulate they first had to deregulate Occurred in 4 primary areas next few bullet points numbered Aimed at ensuring that anti competition policies aren t distorting that market Commission Power Antitrust regulation prevents agreements between countries that would affect the continent as a whole Regulation of state aid Deregulation Services integration Financial v non financial services Lamfalussy Procedure only used for financial regulations European Securities Committee forms to work with Commission to fill in legislative details about the proposal The Commission proposes and this committee helps them hash out the details But they keep the EP informed Committee of European Securities and Regulators has the responsibility of implementing the policy and how it proceeds Once it s implemented the commission resumes its role of supervising the policy s implementation 4 Deregulation Open Method of Cooperation Basically established to try to promote the political and social goals of the EU The Lisbon Agenda released in 2000 Wanted to establish better EU level policies that would deepen the common market Also modernizing the EU social model Creating macroeconomic policy that would secure sustainable growth OMC work independently toward goals Set goals for individual countries as well as the whole EU Naming and shaming other countries in order to promote compliance Merger control o Competition policy deregulation o Merger control this is where the Commission has a lot of power They can assess any merger of corporations where revenue turnover is 5bn