Unravelling national governments’ positions on EU rule of law enforcement: structural, semi-structural and ideological factors
研究了2016至2021年间欧盟成员国政府为何在法治执行上立场不同，发现加入时间、民主质量和预算净贡献是解释支持执行的最稳健组合，而新成员国且为净受益国则更不愿执行。
The Council’s enforcement inaction regarding the rule of law crisis has been endlessly criticised by scholars and commentators. However, there is currently no theoretically parsimonious explanation of why some national governments oppose enforcement whilst others are more inclined to support it. We address this question by considering structural (time of accession), semi-structural (contributions to, or receipts from, the EU budget and democratic quality) and circumstantial (partisanship, ideology, EU integration stance) conditions. We use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to test the impact of these conditions on governments’ positions from 2016 to 2021. Findings show relatively stable preferences on enforcement within Member States, despite changes in the ideology of the ruling party. Time of accession, having a high quality of democracy and being a net contributor to the budget emerges as the most robust combination of conditions to explain strong pro-enforcement preferences. In contrast, governments of newer Member States that are net recipients of funds tend to be more reluctant to enforce the rule of law. While ideology lacks sufficient parsimonious explanatory power, it is particularly relevant for explaining extreme anti-enforcement reactions.