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West European Politics
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The Madisonian Turn: Political
Parties and Parliamentary
Democracy in Nordic Europe
David Arter
a
a
University of Tampere
Published online: 05 Jul 2012.
To cite this article: David Arter (2012) The Madisonian Turn: Political Parties and
Parliamentary Democracy in Nordic Europe, West European Politics, 35:4, 936-937, DOI:
10.1080/01402382.2012.682423
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2012.682423
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936
Book Reviews
Lyndon B. Johnson would put it (quoted by Andeweg), I warmly recommend the
book to coalition scholars and to anyone interested in learning more about the real
world of politics in Western European democracies!
Reference
Downloaded by [Illinois Wesleyan University] at 13:19 05 October 2014
Martin, Lanny W., and Randolph T. Stevenson (2001). ‘Government Formation in Parlimentary
Democracies’, American Journal of Political Science, 45:1, 33–50.
Hanna Bäck
Lund University
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2012.682422
The Madisonian Turn: Political Parties and Parliamentary Democracy in Nordic
Europe
Edited by Torbjörn Bergman and Kaare Strøm
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2011, 417 pp., $85.00, ISBN 9780472117475
(hbk)
The Scandinavians must hold the copyright on democratic auditing. A succession of
Power and Democracy commissions, dating back to the early 1980s, has created the
impression to the ‘non-Nordic’ of almost pathological navel-gazing in polities which,
from the outside, have appeared in rude democratic health, traditionally boasting
strong electoral turnout, high levels of party membership and effective ‘working
parliaments’. Providing a bonanza for established academics and doctoral
researchers alike, these Power and Democracy commissions have recently produced
curiously contrasting findings. Whereas Norway was described as a ‘disintegrating
democracy’, Danish democracy appeared fit and well. Against this backdrop, the
strength of the Bergman–Strøm edited volume is that it serves as a systemic
comparative audit of all five Nordic states, focusing on two critical aspects of
representative democracy: political parties and parliamentary government. It
provides in short a study of the contemporary challenges to parliamentary and
party government in the region. Each country chapter deploys a common analytical
framework predicated on a principal–agent perspective in which there is an
exploration of the basic links in the chain of delegation and accountability between
voters, parliament, cabinet and civil service. Following two introductory ‘theory and
background’ chapters from the editors, there are strong country contributions from
Damgaard (Denmark), Raunio (Finland), Kristjánsson and Indridason (Iceland),
Narud and Strøm (Norway) and Bergman and Bolin (Sweden). There are then three
chapters of comparative conclusions.
In essence the book juxtaposes two organising concepts or ideal-types of
parliamentary democracy. In the Westminster model parliamentary institutions are
combined with centralised, cohesive and policy-oriented political parties in a format
that fosters single-party government, alternation in executive office and robust
electoral competition. Madisonian democracy, in contrast, involves weaker political
parties, the dispersion of political authority, the separation of powers and multiple
checks and balances. It is implicit that Madisonianism involves a configuration of
institutional relationships rather than being a time-specific notion. Thus, it is noted
that Norwegian democracy was born (in 1814) Madisonian. So, too, was democracy
in newly independent Finland since the 1919 constitution counterbalanced the
sovereignty of parliament with a popularly elected president vested with legislative,
executive and federative powers who had the right to dissolve parliament and
Downloaded by [Illinois Wesleyan University] at 13:19 05 October 2014
Book Reviews
937
nominate governments. The book’s focus, however, is not on ‘historic Madisonianism’ but the ‘new millennium’ variety. This, it is contended, is largely the
consequence of the increasing importance of two external constraints on the
sovereignty of parliament – Europeanisation and the significant increase in
supranational decision-making and judicialisation and the growing power of the
courts and judges in matters of human rights and European law. The central thesis
(p.28) is that the Nordic states have shifted away from their former resemblance to a
Westminster model with consensual traits towards a form of parliamentary
democracy with more ‘separation-of-powers’ (Madisonian) features.
The book runs to well over 400 pages and paints a picture of Nordic politics up to
early 2010. Whilst impressive in many ways, it is not clear what its intended readership
is. It does not set out to present new research findings; nor is it a text-book for the
student market. Whilst the country chapters are unquestionably competent, generally
well-written and data-rich, the structure of the book makes heavy demands of the
contributors, who are obliged to synthesise a voluminous literature on voters, parties
and legislative–executive relations in a way that creates something of a ‘take it or leave
it’ impression. The informational burden is heavy and the ‘digestion process’ not
assisted by rather dry, formatted presentations which leave little room for
contextualisation and nuance in interpretation. There is little ‘relief’ for the ab initio
student of Nordic politics. More importantly perhaps, whilst many concepts – inter
alia deparliamentarisation, presidentialisation and cartellisation – are introduced, they
are not systematically explored and, crucially, that would include the impact of
Europeanisation and judicialisation which make much of the case for the ‘Madisonian
turn’. Chapter 8, Aylott’s solid but somewhat duplicative examination of the Nordic
parties and party systems, along with Chapter 9, a rather incongruous and superficial
‘potted history’ of post-war Nordic European and security policy, could, and perhaps
should, have been ‘sacrificed’ in favour of a serious study of the mechanics and
dynamics of these two core concepts and the extent to which Europeanisation and
judicialisation really have constrained national decision-making.
Although the editors acknowledge that the picture across the region is mixed, they
claim (p. 357) that ‘a cold wind – a Nordic chill – has swept over the region manifest
as a simultaneous decline of its particular mix of strong parliaments and cohesive
mass parties’. Yet Erik Damgaard (pp. 105–6) concludes on Denmark that
parliamentary parties are still important actors in almost all steps of the chain of
delegation and accountability and, further, that the Danish parliament has not
declined relative to the executive branch in its capacity to influence policy-making.
Perhaps a question mark in the title of the book would have been in order. Indeed,
the empirical evidence presented does not appear wholly to merit the unequivocal
conclusion of Narud and Strøm (p. 243) that ‘Norway is clearly becoming more
Madisonian and less Westminsterian’ or of Bergman and Bolin (p. 286) that ‘in
practice, if not formally, politics in Sweden is moving away from the Westminster
system and towards a more Madisonian model’. Despite the impressive statistics in
each chapter, the data are dated in places. For example, whilst the text purports to
discuss Nordic politics to early 2010, there are no figures for the 2009 Storting
election. There also appears to be no reference to Øyvind Østerud’s special West
European Politics issue (28:4, 2005) on Norway, in which, as chair of the Power and
Democracy Commission which reported in 2003, he brought out the deleterious
impact on Norwegian democracy of precisely the two macro-processes –
Europeanisation and judicialisation – that are said to lie at the heart of the
Madisonian turn. Curious.
David Arter
University of Tampere
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2012.682423