lecture 7

Question 1

reduced EU power of decision making due to:

Answer 1

1. lack of control on suprantional delegation in policy making
2. ruling parties are challenged by the rise of populism and eurosceptic parties

Question 2

policy and office seeking

Answer 2

Parties may need to compromise their policy preferences in coalition negotiations to secure governmental office, leading to policy dilution or moderation. They explore factors such as party size, ideological distance between potential coalition partners, and electoral incentives, influencing parties’ bargaining power and coalition preferences.
(proposed as part of national partyism)

Question 3

utility trade offs and policy and office seeking

Answer 3

trade off utility on one for utility on the
other.
If political leaders treat both sources of utility equally, their indifference
curves will be straight lines

If they value both equally, the satisfaction they lose from policy compromise is exactly offset by the satisfaction they gain from holding office.

Question 4

explain: more variation in policy-seeking interests due to transfer of policy competences.

Answer 4

When policy-making powers are transferred, there’s likely to be more diversity in the interests driving policy decisions.
This diversity can lead to more representative, innovative, and contextually appropriate policies, though it also introduces complexity and potential for conflict

Question 5

assumptions of preferences of member states

Answer 5

leaders pursue rational strategies to implement underlying latent preferences, office seeking interests to maximise their country-specific benefits by controlling
supranational offices, and the policy-seeking interests of their parties when transferrinig policy competences

Question 6

Underlying latent

Answer 6

means that the fundamentals of these preferences cannot be
directly observed but only inferred from functional positions, which political
leaders articulate for each issue at the bargaining table.