Checks or Toothless Tigers? Powers and Incentives of External Officeholders to Constrain the Cabinet in 25 European Democracies

BY THE END OF OCTOBER 2009, 26 OF 27 EU COUNTRIES HAD RATIFIED the Treaty of Lisbon. Supporters and opponents of the treaty closely observed the ratification process in the Czech Republic and in particular the behaviour of two actors. On 3 November the Constitutional Court ruled that the treaty accorded with national constitutional demands, leading the EU-sceptic head of state, Vaclav Klaus, to give up his resistance and finally ratify the treaty. Thus, a fundamental political decision affecting almost 500 million EU citizens ultimately depended on two actors outside of parliament and cabinet, who were not directly elected even by the Czech people. We can easily find other examples in which such actors make farreaching decisions or influence political competition. Central banks autonomously set interest rates that critically affect financial markets and economic policy. Constitutional courts can declare government proposals unconstitutional and frustrate a government’s reform agenda, as for example in the case of the socialist cabinet in France during the early 1980s. Audit institutions uncovering financial misconduct by the government can affect electoral competition, as in the case of the Canadian sponsorship scandal