Abstract:
Political scientists have traditionally pointed out the main challenges facing political parties as the declining ‘responsiveness’ between the will of voters and what parties actually do once they are in power, and the policy convergence of parties within the same system. The European financial crisis has led governing parties to face at least two additional challenges. The first is related to the role of political parties in democratic competition: what is there to compete for if government leaders can be substituted with appointed technicians? The second, related to the first, involves the drastic limitation of the margin of manoeuvrability governments now have, be they elected or appointed. This is the consequence of a process we call the cartelisation of political agendas: that is, where the decision-making power of parties in government is more and more limited by the imposition of an unaccountable, supra-national agenda set by financial and allegedly non-political powers.
Details / PDF:
The full-text PDF of this article can be downloaded from Informit. You can purchase the article, or access Informit for free via a public library account, such as the State Library of Victoria.