National governments and the enforcement of rule of law

Abstract

Speaker: Gisela Hernández, Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC) Discussant: Daniel Naurin, University of Oslo One of the most troubling facts of EU defence of rule of law is the Council inability to act under article 7 procedures. Scholars and commentators have fired endless criticism, blaming the Council for taking no action whatsoever in relation to the crises in Hungary and Poland. To date, though, we do not have a theoretically parsimonious account on why some states may oppose enforcing article 7 whilst others are more inclined towards enforcing it. In this paper, we address this question taking into account explanations of states opposing the use of enforcement mechanisms advanced by some scholars. These point to structural conditions (i.e. those determined by the member state, such as geographical position, year of accession and timing of accession) and circumstantial conditions (i.e. those related to the government at the time, including ideology, EU integration stance and democratic compliance). We test the impact of these conditions in governments positions through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). We advance that there is often path dependency in the positions of the governments of the same member state, despite of changes in the ideology of the ruling party.