The Politics of Problem-Solving: Democratic Responsiveness and Political Accountability

Abstract

The ‘governance structure’ of the democratic state is an important feature of the politics of problem-solving. The way and the extent to which party-government has ‘room to manoeuvre’ are essential to finding agreement regarding the solution of public problems that are contested in the political arena. Throughout this book we have argued that the politics of problem-solving revolves around the interaction between the behaviour of actors and the institutional design of West European democracies. The way this interplay takes shape will strongly influence the extent to which societal conflict can be transformed into political consensus in plural and divisive societies. This complex political process has been assessed in this book by explicitly focusing on various parts of the so-called ‘Political Chain of Democratic Control’ (see Fig. 1.1). This descriptive model guided our comparative analysis of both institutions and actors operating within the parliamentary democracies of continental Western Europe.