Aleksandra Maatsch

University of Wroclaw | WROC · Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies

As a result of the Euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester—the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states—being the most prominent example. This poses an accountability challenge: While budgetary powers in the Semeste...

This article examines parliamentary ratification of the Prespa Agreement in Greece and North Macedonia. Given the decisive role of national parliaments in the process, the article investigates to what extent this specific institutional setting influenced the structure and the outcome of the dispute concerning the bilateral agreement. The article po...

Do populist governments disempower parliaments? If so, which strategies do they employ to do it? The empirical analysis here concerns two legislative periods in Poland: T1 2011–2015 (centre-right coalition, populist actors in the opposition) and T2 2015–2018 (populist government). The article traces changes in formal rules regulating scrutiny and l...

Over recent years, probably no other phenomenon has received greater academic attention amongst scholars of political science than populism. While the meaning of the term continues to generate deep controversies , there is a broad consensus on populism constituting one of the most serious challenges to contemporary politics. This special issue inve...

Has the high-profile public opposition to recent EU trade agreements supplanted the traditional socioeconomic pattern of competition in European trade policy with a value-driven one? This article draws on new data analysing the outcome of the ratification process of a mixed free trade agreement (CETA) in the European Parliament and in all national...

As a result of the euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester (the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states) being the most prominent example. With the Commission and the Council being the main actors, and the European...

Over recent years, probably no other phenomenon has received greater academic attention amongst scholars of political science than populism. While the meaning of the term continues to generate deep controversies , there is a broad consensus on populism constituting one of the most serious challenges to contemporary politics. This special issue inve...

This project examines parliamentary ratification of the Prespa Agreement in Greece and North Macedonia. Given the decisive role of national parliaments in the process, the article investigates to what extent this specific institutional setting influenced the structure and the outcome of the conflict concerning the bilateral agreement. Key-words:...

Which factors explain domestic consent or contestation of EU policy guidance issued within the framework of the European Semester (ES)? In order to address this question, this article analyses national parliamentary party positions on EU policy guidance in two cycles of the ES (2014 and 2015) in Austria, France, Germany, and Ireland. Whereas parlia...

https://www.routledge.com/Parliaments-and-the-Economic-Governance-of-the-European-Union-Talking/Maatsch/p/book/9781138230033

What were the effects of the recent European economic crisis on parliamentary democracy in the European Union? Were national parliaments negatively affected? In the aftermath of the crisis these questions generated a very lively academic discussion. In her forthcoming book, PADEMIA member Aleksandra Maatsch makes a significant contribution to that...

Title: Parliaments and the Economic Governance of the European Union Subtitle: Talking Shops or Deliberative Bodies ISBN: 9781137409706 Global Long (Jacket) Description This book analyses how national parliaments and parliamentary parties performed their legislative, representative and control functions during the reform of European economic gover...

The article examines the factors that determined the attitude of parliamentary parties towards eurozone anti-crisis measures. Using a statistical logit model, it demonstrates that, while all governing parties supported such measures, opposition parties were divided. The support of the former is explicable in terms of international obligations. The...

This paper investigates how the intergovernmental reform process of European economic governance affected national parliaments’ oversight of this policy area. Which parliaments became disempowered and which managed to secure their formal powers – and why? The dependent variable of the study is operationalized as the presence or absence of “emergenc...

The article examines the factors that determined the attitude of parliamentary parties towards eurozone anti-crisis measures. Using a statistical logit model, it demonstrates that, while all governing parties supported such measures, opposition parties were divided. The support of the former is explicable in terms of international obligations. The...

This paper investigates how the intergovernmental reform process of European economic governance affected national parliaments’ oversight of that policy area. Which parliaments became disempowered and which managed to secure their formal powers – and why? The dependent variable of the study is operationalised as the presence or absence of “emergenc...

This article examines national parliamentarians' approval of the increased budgetary capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in autumn 2011. Following the analysis of vote outcome and plenary debates in 11 euro states, it is found that the financial position of a state (creditors versus debtors) does not explain the patterns of...

Which factors account for positioning of national parliamentary parties on anti-crisis measures implemented in the bailout states of the eurozone? The literature suggests that parties representing the economic ‘left’ are more likely to advocate Keynesian measures, whereas parties representing the economic ‘right’ tend to support the neoliberal ones...

Review of the book: Journal of Common Market Studies, vol 50(2), 2012: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2011.02234_2.x/full

According to Blondel (1973, p. 2), ‘Legislatures pose perhaps the most fascinating problem of all structures of government, for they have been and continue to be both the most decried and the most revered, the most hoped for and often the least successful institution in contemporary governments.’ In the contemporary European Union, this statement i...

The previous chapter analysed how the German, Hungarian and Polish national citizenship laws changed between the late 1980s and 2007. Contrary to the popular ‘liberal convergence’ thesis, national citizenship legislation of these countries has not, in general, become more liberal. Rather, it has been established that the legislation regulating migr...

The previous chapter presented the findings from analyses of parliamentary debates in Germany, Hungary and Poland. Among other things, it was established that Europeanization, particularly horizontal, played quite a prominent role in the reforms of the national citizenship laws in the countries under study. This was contrary to the existing contrib...

In a migratory world, citizenship is no longer a symbol of exclusivity and permanence; rather, it has become portable, exchangeable and multiple. As Kim Barry observed, ‘Migration decouples citizenship and residence disrupting tidy conceptions of nation-states as bounded territorial entities with fixed populations of citizens. Today states are cons...

This chapter presents a comparative legal analysis of the national citizenship reforms enacted in Germany, Hungary and Poland from the late 1980s until 2007. The aim of this chapter is not only to describe legal reforms but also to show a trend in these changes. In order to achieve that aim, the findings will be evaluated on a two-dimensional scale...

The paper analyses national parliamentary plenary debates on the Constitutional and the Lisbon Treaty in the six European states; Germany, France, Great Britain, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The comparative qualitative and quantitative discourse analysis of the plenary debates presents the patterns of support and rejection of the Treatie...

This article analyses the Polish debate on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) as reflected in mass media coverage of the ratification, crisis and reflection periods between October 2004 and October 2005. Despite the importance of the institutional reforms that the TCE introduced and the ratification referendum envisaged for Pol...