In federal countries, competence for policy matters is often shared between various levels of government. As only overall outcomes are observed, this might blur accountability by decreasing voters' ability to infer information about the performance of their leaders. In this article, we analyse...

In federal countries, competence for policy matters is often shared between various levels of government. As only overall outcomes are observed, this might blur accountability by decreasing voters' ability to infer information about the performance of their leaders. In this article, we analyse...

In this paper we critically reassess the standard account of political representation, in order to question the mythical foundation of its premises and explain why it can no longer serve as an adequate explanatory framework in the modern political context. We argue that representation was not...

The aim of this article is to analyse the development of the concepts of equal opportunities between men and women and gender mainstreaming with regard to a new policy approach taken outside the traditional community method and to raise the question to what extent these policy instruments can be...

Comitology committees are often accused of not being accountable. This paper aims to provide building blocks to analyze the validity of this claim. After briefly discussing the meaning and aims of accountability, it is discussed where the actual accountability problems can be expected....

European Governance is more than just a policy instrument without legal significance. Its regulatory sub-divisions, such as Comitology, the Lamfalussy procedure, and the growing number of European administrative agencies, have colonized substantive parts of the law-shaping and law-making...

The notion of 'Administrative Authority' has several dimensions in EU law. From a functional perspective, administrative authority may be exercised according to three patterns: indirect administration by member states' governmental institutions - the typical Community pattern - direct...

The establishment of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 1999 has led to the creation of a whole range of bureaucratic bodies in Brussels and the national capitals. These bodies support the crisis management operations of the European Union. This review article presents the state...

Although one of the arguments for involving national parliaments in the European Union (EU) is to make EU politics more accountable, the literature has made few attempts to analyse under which conditions their involvement does have this impact. This article argues that it is not the sheer level...