"Strong" vs. "weak" governments and the challenge of economic reforms

The project studies the politics of economic reforms in EU member states since the 1980s. It investigates which governments are willing and able to introduce reforms, responding to economic challenges (e.g. stagnation). The project focuses on various types of government that are theorised to display varying degrees of "strength". It investigates whether and under what conditions governments can reform decisively and successfully, thereby enhancing our understanding of the feasibility of reform politics in multi-party democracies. The project is based on a large-scale comparative data collection on reform ambitions and reform measures in the EU countries.

We focus on governments and their willingness, capacity, and strategies to introduce economic reforms and investigate whether partisan preferences, the internal organization and power distribution in cabinet and parliament, as well as macroeconomic conditions foster or hinder the introduction of reform measures. Empirically, the project studies reform making in 22 Western and Eastern European countries over 30 years (1980-2010). For that purpose, we have built an unprecedented comparative reforms dataset, which contains more than 12 000 important government reform measures (from Economist Intelligence Unit and OECD country reports) and reform ambitions (policy promises from government declarations) in the social, labor, taxation, and economic policy areas.