Answering Questions in Parliament During Budget Debates: Deliberative Reciprocity and Globalisation in Western Europe

摘要

Much time is spent asking questions during parliamentary debates. To what extent are they answered? This paper investigates this question by examining budget debates in post-1945 France, Sweden, and the UK as well as in the European Parliament from 1996 to 2001. The purpose is to introduce an empirical approach to a theoretical discussion of whether globalisation weakens deliberative democracy within nations while strengthening it between them. It is found that deliberative reciprocity was unexpectedly stable within nations in the course of post-1945 Western globalisation, and that questions are more often answered in national parliaments than in the European Parliament. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings for competing visions of political debate as a means for reaching consensus or as an expression of irresolvable conflict.