Within the broader debate on the Greek crisis, the theory of 'populist democracy' postulates that populism is fundamental to the sustenance of the Greek political system and is at the heart of Greece's endemic domestic weaknesses. This article tests this assumption empirically through the use of a sophisticated framing analysis of speeches delivered by the leaders of the five parties in the Greek parliament in the period 2009-11. The findings confirm that populism: (a) is expressed through the narratives of political actors; (b) is observed across the party system; (c) is expressed in the forms of blame-shifting and exclusivity; and (d) differs depending on position in the party system. The article contributes to the debate by testing and building on the theory of democratic populism, providing a novel way of measuring and operationalizing populism and identifying a new typology that distinguishes between mainstream and fringe populism.* We thank Claudio Radaelli, the LSE Hellenic Observatory and the three anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Common Market Studies. Any remaining errors or omissions are our own.
Why do some policies adopted by a wide margin fail to be implemented? Highlighting the role of policy entrepreneurial strategies within the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA), we examine the implementation of Greek higher education reform in 2011 to argue that when policies adversely affect the status quo, successful entrepreneurial strategies of issue‐linkage and framing, side payments, and institutional rule manipulation are more likely to lead to implementation failure under conditions of crisis, centralized monopoly, and inconsistent political communication. The findings clarify MSA by specifying the conditions that increase the coupling strategies’ chances of success or failure and illuminate the role ambiguity and conflict play in policy reform and implementation.
In this article, we contribute to the debate on research design and causal analysis in European integration studies by considering the sub-field of Europeanization. First, we examine the awareness of research design issues in the literature on Europeanization through a review of the debate on causality, concept formation and methods. Second, we analyse how much of the discussion of the trade-offs in causal analysis in mainstream political science has percolated into Europeanization studies. We therefore construct a sample of the Europeanization literature, comparing it to a control group of highly cited articles on European integration. This enables us to control if some patterns are specific to the Europeanization literature or reflect a more general trend in European integration. We then look at trade-offs in the Europeanization sample and in the control group. Our findings indicate that awareness of research design is still low. Europeanization articles differ from the control group in the focus on mechanisms (rather than variables) and the qualitative aspects of time in politics. Complex notions of causality prevail in Europeanization but not in the control group and the cause-of effects approach is preferred to effectsof-causes in the control group but not in Europeanization -in both cases, however, the difference is slight. We conclude by explaining differences and similarities and make proposals for future research.* We would like to acknowledge the support of the Jean Monnet Programme. An earlier version of the article was delivered to the 4th ECPR General Conference in Pisa in September 2007. We would like to thank Susan Banducci, Fabrizio De Francesco, Fabio Franchino, Oliver Fritsch, Simon Hix, Thomas Plümper, Stephen Wilks and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments -the usual disclaimer applies. The full set of tables and dataset is available on the Journal's website. 2 RESEARCH DESIGN IN EUROPEAN STUDIES: THE CASE OF EUROPEANIZATIONThe academic analysis of European integration set out to investigate dynamics and causes of the integration process, trying to explain the reasons behind the process and the outcomes that it entailed. During the past decade, this field has witnessed the emergence of research questions around the impact of European integration on the domestic level, in terms of policies; the transformation of domestic institutions; and party politics. This is nowadays an almost classic focus for Europeanization studies.But a second strand of the Europeanization literature, often tangential and connected to empirical concerns about measurement and causality, has taken an interest in methods and research design. Specifically, this strand looks at issues in causal analysis. Scholars have discussed concept formation, mechanisms, the interplay between ideational and structural variables, and causal models, particularly the difference between top-down recursive models versus bottom-up research designs. In this paper we contribute to this second strand.One argument raise...
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