Rob Thomson
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 93892 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Rob Thomson |
| NOMBRES | Rob |
| APELLIDO | Thomson |
| FIRMA | THOMSON R |
| AFILIACIONES | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1825-4167 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 56 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1324 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 55 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 20 |
Tales of the unexpected
According to widely held views on good democratic practice, when political parties are in government, they should generally keep the promises they made to voters during the previous election campaigns that brought them to power. But what happens when things change dramatically between the times of promising and governing? We develop and test a theory of how economic uncertainty and change affects promise keeping. We argue that when parties formul…
Understanding perceived Covid-19 changes, collectivism, and social exclusion
A governance perspective on China’s belt and road initiative
The delegation of discretionary power in international agreements
According to the transaction-costs perspective on delegation, decision-makers grant more discretion to implementers in relation to policies that are more complex and therefore require more specialist expertise to implement. Furthermore, decision-makers grant less delegation to implementers when those implementers have divergent preferences and are therefore more costly to monitor. The transaction-costs perspective has implications for the design …
Globalization and Promissory Representation
Despite the centrality of promise keeping to representation, we know little about how it is affected by economic globalization, which is one of the modern world's defining characteristics. We argue that globalization reduces governing parties' ability to keep their campaign promises. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed‐methods approach that combines a large‐n quantitative comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with a…
The Fulfilment of Election Pledges in India
The central idea of promissory representation is that parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and then fulfil those promises after elections if they have the power to do so. Until now, most comparative research on the making, breaking, and keeping of parties' campaign promises, or "election pledges," has considered Western democracies. The present study examines pledge fulfilment in India, focusing on pledges made by the two mai…
Election pledges in India
Election pledges feature prominently in the theory and practice of representation and have been examined extensively in a growing field of comparative research. However, research in this field has largely ignored non-Western democracies and the world’s largest electoral democracy, India. The present analysis begins to fill this lacuna by examining election pledges made by Indian parties at the national level over a period of two decades (1999-201…
Intergovernmental cooperation networks, national policy positions and partisan ideologies
This study describes and explains the evolution of cooperation networks among member states in the European Union. We examine the effects of similarities between states in their policy positions on specific controversial issues, the ideological orientations of their national governments, and the presence of populist parties in national governments. This builds on a prominent explanation of political ties, according to which political actors who s…
The impact of national democratic representation on decision-making in the European Union
The extent to which decision-making in the European Union (EU) is responsive to national democratic representation has profound implications for understanding how the EU works in practice and for assessing it normatively. The contributions to this special issue examine key aspects of national representation, including national public opinion, elections and partisan government control. They do so with a shared theoretical approach and a newly upda…
A comparison of two views on the European Commission
The conventional view of the Commission is that it is above the fray of national \npolitics, and that Commissioners have allegiance to pan-European interests. \nHowever, research indicates that the Commission is in many ways imbued \nwith national interests, despite being the engine of integration. This study \nexamines the national Commissioner dividend, which is the tendency for the \nCommission’s policies on any given issue to agree more with …
The uneven expansion of electricity supply in India
The Elusive Governance of Climate Change
Since the Paris Agreement of 2016, the international community’s main approach to addressing climate change is for states to determine their own commitments in a pledge and review system. Parties to the Paris Agreement formulate Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are documents that give details of their national policies and plans. They are free to formulate and present national policies as they choose, and as a result, there is su…
Don’t cry for me Britannia
We assess the impact of the United Kingdom’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union on the Council of the European Union, where Brexit is likely to have the clearest observable implications. Using concepts and models from the spatial model of politics and network analysis, we formulate and test expectations regarding the effects of Brexit. We examine two of the most prominent datasets on recent decision-making in the European Union, which incl…
Incentives to comply
Established explanations of differences in compliance outcomes highlight the policy preferences of implementers. The application of these theories to compliance with EU laws focuses on national governments and stakeholders. This study improves on existing conceptualisations of governments’ and stakeholders’ preferences by distinguishing between their incentives to deviate from, conform to and exceed the standards contained in EU laws. We apply th…
Party Mandates and Democracy
The responsiveness of legislative actors to stakeholders’ demands in the European Union
This study examines the extent to which stakeholders’ demands are represented by the Commission, European Parliament, and national governments in the Council when legislative proposals are debated. We formulate and test propositions from resource exchange theory to explain variation in the responsiveness of EU actors to various stakeholders. Our research design integrates the study of the formative and decision-making stages of the legislative pr…
Trust and Citizens’ Evaluations of Promise Keeping by Governing Parties
The principle that parties should make policy commitments during election campaigns and fulfil those commitments if elected is central to the idea of promissory representation. This study examines citizens’ evaluations of promise keeping and breaking. We focus on two aspects of trust as explanations of citizens’ evaluations. When trust is defined in terms of mistrust, it implies that vigilant and well-informed citizens base their evaluations on w…
The evolution of political networks
We test two of the main explanations of the formation of political ties. The first states that political actors are more likely to form a relationship if they have similar policy preferences. The second explanation, from network theory, predicts that the likelihood of a tie between two actors depends on the presence of certain relationships with other actors. Our data consist of a unique combination of actors' policy positions and their network r…
Relational mobility and close relationships
This article reviews how behaviors and psychological tendencies in close relationships differ between cultures, and proposes a socioecological framework to understand those differences. Our review of the literature finds that paradoxically, people in individualistic cultures are more actively engaged in close relationships (e.g., higher levels of social support, self‐disclosure, intimacy, and love) than those in collectivistic cultures. From an a…
The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly l…
Bicameralism, nationality and party cohesion in the European Parliament
Party cohesion in legislatures is a topic of longstanding concern to political scientists because cohesion facilitates democratic representation. We examine the cohesion of transnational party groups in the European Parliament, which is part of the EU’s bicameral system, and study the oftentimes competing pressures to which MEPs are subject from their EP party groups and national governments. Our explanation focuses on the conditions under which …
Predicting Paris
We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert surve…
Governing together in good and bad economic times
The idea that parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and then attempt to fulfil those promises if elected to government is central to the theory and practice of democracy. This study examines how economic conditions affect the fulfilment of parties’ election pledges in Ireland. We formulate and test propositions relating to two aspects of economic conditions that negatively affect the likelihood of pledge fulfilment. The first …
Greener governments
Why do some governments have more environmentally friendly policies than others? Part of the answer involves governing parties’ ideological positions on environmentalism and the constraints imposed by executive institutions. Here, this party-based explanation is elaborated and tested with uniquely comparable indicators of national environmental policies for governments in 27 countries in the European Union (EU). The findings show that governments…
Consultations with Interest Groups and the Empowerment of Executives
We examine how an executive's consultations with interest groups during the formative stage of the policy process affect its bargaining success during the decision‐making stage after it has proposed new policies to legislative actors. Our theory sets out how consultations with interest groups strengthen the executive by bolstering its formal and informal agenda‐setting power. The empirical testing ground for our theory is theEuropeanUnion (EU), a…
The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges
Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly l…
The programme to policy linkage
To what extent are the contents of party election programmes congruent with subsequent government policy actions? Existing research on the fulfilment of pre–election pledges focuses on systems of government in which executives formed by a single parties are the norm. This study extends this research to coalition systems of government. Specific policy proposals made by the main Dutch parties in their recent election programmes are identified and c…
A new dataset on decision-making in the European Union before and after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements (Deuii)
We present a new dataset on decision-making in the European Union (DEUII) that revises and expands a previous dataset. Researchers are using this new dataset to address a range of research questions regarding the inputs, processes and outputs of the EU’s legislative system. The dataset contains information on 331 controversial issues raised by 125 legislative proposals that were introduced between 1996 and 2008. For each of these controversial is…
Actor alignments in European Union decision making
What is the structure of the political space in which decision‐making actors operate in the European Union? Are there consistent alignments of actors? This article addresses these questions by examining a new data set containing information on the preferences of the Commission, the Member States and the European Parliament on 174 issues raised during talks on 70 recent Commission proposals. To a limited extent, the preference alignments can be de…
Citizens’ Evaluations of the Fulfillment of Election Pledges
The linkage between what parties promise during election campaigns and what governments deliver afterward is central to democratic theory. Research on this linkage concludes that there is a higher level of congruence between campaign promises and government actions than suggested by the conventional wisdom. This study is the first to describe and explain citizens' evaluations of the fulfillment of election pledges in a way that is comparable with…
The Paradox of Compliance
What impact does the negotiation stage prior to the adoption of international agreements have on the subsequent implementation stage? We address this question by examining the linkages between decision making on European Union directives and any subsequent infringements and delays in national transposition. We formulate a preference-based explanation of failures to comply, which focuses on states' incentives to deviate and the amount of discretio…
States' bargaining success in the European Union
This study describes and explains states' bargaining success in legislative decision-making in the European Union. We measure bargaining success by the congruence between decision outcomes and states' policy positions on a wide range of controversies. We develop and test expectations about variation in states' bargaining success from models of bargaining and legislative procedures. The analyses are based on a newly updated dataset on legislative …
The distribution of power among EU institutions
The codecision procedure was designed to change the distribution of power among the European Union (EU) institutions. In theory, the codecision procedure, at least the amended version introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty that came into effect in 1999, weakened the Commission and placed the Parliament on an equal footing with the Council. We assess how the codecision procedure works in practice using data on the preferences of legislative actors on …
The Council Presidency in the European Union
The extent of the Council presidency's political influence is the subject of disagreement among both practitioners and researchers. While some describe the presidency as responsibility without power, others suggest that it provides incumbent states with an opportunity to achieve decision outcomes close to their preferences. This article formulates and tests hypotheses on the conditions under which presidents influence the timing and content of de…
National Actors in International Organizations
This article examines the conditions under which the policy positions of an international organization correspond to the positions of relevant national actors. The commission of the European Union (EU) is often portrayed as an autonomous supranational actor, insulated from national interests. Recent analyses question this view, arguing that the commission is an agent in a principal—agent relationship with member states. The author formulates hypo…
Consultations with Interest Groups and the Empowerment of Executives
We examine how an executive's consultations with interest groups during the formative stage of the policy process affect its bargaining success during the decision‐making stage after it has proposed new policies to legislative actors. Our theory sets out how consultations with interest groups strengthen the executive by bolstering its formal and informal agenda‐setting power. The empirical testing ground for our theory is theEuropeanUnion (EU), a…
The nexus of bicameralism
When the chambers of a bicameral legislature must negotiate to reach a decision outcome, the bargaining strength of each side is affected by the composition of its negotiating delegations. We examine some of the implications of this proposition for legislative negotiations between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers. We develop and test hypotheses on how the bargaining success of the EP is affected by the choice of its chief…
The policy impact of leadership in committees
What impact do leaders in the European Parliament’s (EP) committees have on the EP’s opinions? This study formulates and tests expectations about the conditions under which rapporteurs influence the EP’s opinions and also about what factors motivate that influence. In line with the informational theory of legislative committees, the most important factor affecting the EP’s opinion is the policy position of the median MEP, not a characteristic of …
Information, Commitment and Consensus
Three perspectives on delegation in the European Union are presented in this article. The transaction-costs perspective focuses on information asymmetries between policy makers and implementers. According to the commitment perspective, policy makers delegate authority as a solution to commitment problems. The consensus-building perspective views the decision to delegate as a trade-off between decisiveness and inclusiveness during the bargaining p…
Actor alignments in the European Union before and after enlargement
What impact has the 2004 enlargement had on legislative decision making in the European Union (EU)? This study answers this question by examining the controversies raised by a broad selection of legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. The analyses focus on the alignments of decision‐making actors found on those controversies. Member State representatives, the European Commission and the European Parliament vary considera…
Who Has Power in the EU? The Commission, Council and Parliament in Legislative Decision‐making
What is the relative power of the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP) in the European Union (EU)? Both scholars and practitioners of EU affairs provide different answers to this seemingly straightforward question. In this article, we examine the balance of power among these three actors in the context of legislative decision‐making. We report the results of a small survey among a select group of practiti…
Winners and Losers in the European Union
This special issue examines legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). By focusing on specific examples of legislative decision-making and actors’ preferences in those situations, we aim to address questions of interest to mainstream Europeanists
Time to Comply
This paper examines variation in the timing of compliance with European directives. It formulates and tests the hypothesis that member states' policy-based incentives to deviate from the content of directives influence delay in compliance. This hypothesis is tested along with other factors that are posited to influence compliance, including the amount of discretion directives give member states, the level of misfit between national and European-l…
Opposition through the back door in the transposition of EU directives
Are member states less likely to transpose a European Union directive correctly if they disagreed with the directive at the decision-making stage? Existing research provides mixed answers to this question. Most of this research does not consider the role of the enforcement agent, the European Commission, and uses aggregate measures. By contrast, this study considers the impact of the Commission, and focuses on specific provisions in directives. I…
Trust and Citizens’ Evaluations of Promise Keeping by Governing Parties
The principle that parties should make policy commitments during election campaigns and fulfil those commitments if elected is central to the idea of promissory representation. This study examines citizens’ evaluations of promise keeping and breaking. We focus on two aspects of trust as explanations of citizens’ evaluations. When trust is defined in terms of mistrust, it implies that vigilant and well-informed citizens base their evaluations on w…
Bicameralism, nationality and party cohesion in the European Parliament
Party cohesion in legislatures is a topic of longstanding concern to political scientists because cohesion facilitates democratic representation. We examine the cohesion of transnational party groups in the European Parliament, which is part of the EU’s bicameral system, and study the oftentimes competing pressures to which MEPs are subject from their EP party groups and national governments. Our explanation focuses on the conditions under which …
Same effects in different worlds
This study examines variation in the timing of national transposition of European Union (EU) directives. It specifically addresses the central proposition of the worlds of compliance typology. The proposition is that the direction of the effects of key explanatory variables of compliance, such as the fit between new EU directives and existing national arrangements, differs by cultural context or ‘world of compliance’. Contrary to this proposition…
Incentives to comply
Established explanations of differences in compliance outcomes highlight the policy preferences of implementers. The application of these theories to compliance with EU laws focuses on national governments and stakeholders. This study improves on existing conceptualisations of governments’ and stakeholders’ preferences by distinguishing between their incentives to deviate from, conform to and exceed the standards contained in EU laws. We apply th…
The evolution of political networks
We test two of the main explanations of the formation of political ties. The first states that political actors are more likely to form a relationship if they have similar policy preferences. The second explanation, from network theory, predicts that the likelihood of a tie between two actors depends on the presence of certain relationships with other actors. Our data consist of a unique combination of actors' policy positions and their network r…
Bargaining in the European Union and Shifts in Actors’ Policy Positions
Although shifts in policy positions are a fundamental feature of the European Union (EU) bargaining process they have not yet been studied systematically. This article provides evidence on the extent to which position shifts occur and tests alternative models of the bargaining process that predict such shifts. We examine a subset of the DEU data set that contains information on shifts in actors’ positions on issues raised by 28 Commission proposa…
Green Gold
The programme to policy linkage
To what extent are the contents of party election programmes congruent with subsequent government policy actions? Existing research on the fulfilment of pre–election pledges focuses on systems of government in which executives formed by a single parties are the norm. This study extends this research to coalition systems of government. Specific policy proposals made by the main Dutch parties in their recent election programmes are identified and c…
Conclusions
Is Implementation Distinct from Political Bargaining
Two approaches to research on policy implementation are compared in this article. In the first approach, corresponding with the multi-stage view, implementation is understood as a sub-process requiring specific tools of analysis such as principal-agent theory. In the other approach, which we label the political bargaining view, implementation is seen as an integral part of the policy debate that occurs when political decisions are taken. Using da…
Models of Collective Decision-making
Decision making often requires the application of a procedure and the exercise of power, resulting in an authoritative allocation of values
Who do young adult victims of physical assault talk to about their experiences
Many victims of physical assaults do not report the assault to the police. In this study we examine whom these victims talked to and how satisfied they were with the help they received. A sample of 374 participants of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS) who had been assaulted in the preceding 12 months, were asked questions about an assault that had the greatest impact on their life and who they had talked to about …
Winners and Losers in the European Union
This special issue examines legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). By focusing on specific examples of legislative decision-making and actors’ preferences in those situations, we aim to address questions of interest to mainstream Europeanists
Bargaining in the European Union and Shifts in Actors’ Policy Positions
Although shifts in policy positions are a fundamental feature of the European Union (EU) bargaining process they have not yet been studied systematically. This article provides evidence on the extent to which position shifts occur and tests alternative models of the bargaining process that predict such shifts. We examine a subset of the DEU data set that contains information on shifts in actors’ positions on issues raised by 28 Commission proposa…
Actor alignments in European Union decision making
What is the structure of the political space in which decision‐making actors operate in the European Union? Are there consistent alignments of actors? This article addresses these questions by examining a new data set containing information on the preferences of the Commission, the Member States and the European Parliament on 174 issues raised during talks on 70 recent Commission proposals. To a limited extent, the preference alignments can be de…
The Effect of Topic of Discussion on Gendered Language in Computer-Mediated Communication Discussion
Gendered language in computer-mediated communication (CMC) is more than just a function of the gender of the participants because people are very flexible in the language style they use. In these studies, the use of gender-preferential language was examined in postings on public discussions where the topic was gender-stereotypical or gender-neutral. It was found that both men and women in discussions about gender-stereotypical topics were more li…
Who Has Power in the EU? The Commission, Council and Parliament in Legislative Decision‐making
What is the relative power of the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP) in the European Union (EU)? Both scholars and practitioners of EU affairs provide different answers to this seemingly straightforward question. In this article, we examine the balance of power among these three actors in the context of legislative decision‐making. We report the results of a small survey among a select group of practiti…
The Paradox of Compliance
What impact does the negotiation stage prior to the adoption of international agreements have on the subsequent implementation stage? We address this question by examining the linkages between decision making on European Union directives and any subsequent infringements and delays in national transposition. We formulate a preference-based explanation of failures to comply, which focuses on states' incentives to deviate and the amount of discretio…
Time to Comply
This paper examines variation in the timing of compliance with European directives. It formulates and tests the hypothesis that member states' policy-based incentives to deviate from the content of directives influence delay in compliance. This hypothesis is tested along with other factors that are posited to influence compliance, including the amount of discretion directives give member states, the level of misfit between national and European-l…
National Actors in International Organizations
This article examines the conditions under which the policy positions of an international organization correspond to the positions of relevant national actors. The commission of the European Union (EU) is often portrayed as an autonomous supranational actor, insulated from national interests. Recent analyses question this view, arguing that the commission is an agent in a principal—agent relationship with member states. The author formulates hypo…
Election Pledges and their Enactment in Coalition Governments
This study examines election pledges and their enactment in Ireland. Much previous research focused on countries where single‐party governments are the norm (the United Kingdom, Canada and Greece), and the presidential system of the United States with separation of powers. The present research draws on evidence from existing studies of pledge enactment in Ireland and the Netherlands. In addition, it adds new evidence on election pledges and their…
The Council Presidency in the European Union
The extent of the Council presidency's political influence is the subject of disagreement among both practitioners and researchers. While some describe the presidency as responsibility without power, others suggest that it provides incumbent states with an opportunity to achieve decision outcomes close to their preferences. This article formulates and tests hypotheses on the conditions under which presidents influence the timing and content of de…
States' bargaining success in the European Union
This study describes and explains states' bargaining success in legislative decision-making in the European Union. We measure bargaining success by the congruence between decision outcomes and states' policy positions on a wide range of controversies. We develop and test expectations about variation in states' bargaining success from models of bargaining and legislative procedures. The analyses are based on a newly updated dataset on legislative …
Actor alignments in the European Union before and after enlargement
What impact has the 2004 enlargement had on legislative decision making in the European Union (EU)? This study answers this question by examining the controversies raised by a broad selection of legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. The analyses focus on the alignments of decision‐making actors found on those controversies. Member State representatives, the European Commission and the European Parliament vary considera…
Same effects in different worlds
This study examines variation in the timing of national transposition of European Union (EU) directives. It specifically addresses the central proposition of the worlds of compliance typology. The proposition is that the direction of the effects of key explanatory variables of compliance, such as the fit between new EU directives and existing national arrangements, differs by cultural context or ‘world of compliance’. Contrary to this proposition…
The policy impact of leadership in committees
What impact do leaders in the European Parliament’s (EP) committees have on the EP’s opinions? This study formulates and tests expectations about the conditions under which rapporteurs influence the EP’s opinions and also about what factors motivate that influence. In line with the informational theory of legislative committees, the most important factor affecting the EP’s opinion is the policy position of the median MEP, not a characteristic of …
Opposition through the back door in the transposition of EU directives
Are member states less likely to transpose a European Union directive correctly if they disagreed with the directive at the decision-making stage? Existing research provides mixed answers to this question. Most of this research does not consider the role of the enforcement agent, the European Commission, and uses aggregate measures. By contrast, this study considers the impact of the Commission, and focuses on specific provisions in directives. I…
Resolving Controversy in the European Union
How does the EU resolve controversy when making laws that affect citizens? How has the EU been affected by the recent enlargements that brought its membership to a diverse group of twenty-seven countries? This book answers these questions with analyses of the EU's legislative system that include the roles played by the European Commission, European Parliament and member states' national governments in the Council of Ministers. Robert Thomson exam…
The nexus of bicameralism
When the chambers of a bicameral legislature must negotiate to reach a decision outcome, the bargaining strength of each side is affected by the composition of its negotiating delegations. We examine some of the implications of this proposition for legislative negotiations between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers. We develop and test hypotheses on how the bargaining success of the EP is affected by the choice of its chief…
Information, Commitment and Consensus
Three perspectives on delegation in the European Union are presented in this article. The transaction-costs perspective focuses on information asymmetries between policy makers and implementers. According to the commitment perspective, policy makers delegate authority as a solution to commitment problems. The consensus-building perspective views the decision to delegate as a trade-off between decisiveness and inclusiveness during the bargaining p…
Citizens’ Evaluations of the Fulfillment of Election Pledges
The linkage between what parties promise during election campaigns and what governments deliver afterward is central to democratic theory. Research on this linkage concludes that there is a higher level of congruence between campaign promises and government actions than suggested by the conventional wisdom. This study is the first to describe and explain citizens' evaluations of the fulfillment of election pledges in a way that is comparable with…
Political science (50 obras) · Law (40 obras) · Economics (39 obras) · Law (36 obras) · Politics (33 obras) · European Union Policy and Governance (30 obras) · European union (25 obras) · Public Administration (24 obras) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (23 obras) · International trade (19 obras)