The accountability of national government has changed in the past twenty years. People’s capacity to hold their governments to account has been complicated by the rise of new communications media, the rise of a ‘permanent campaign’ and the embedding of national government in a highly complex international system.
In this policy brief, Arbuthnott argues that Europe is a key part of the solution. Comparability is the new accountability in the EU. And the heightened capacity of the EU to allow people to make meaningful comparisons between their own governments’ performance and others has subjected national politicians to an ever-higher degree of scrutiny.