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In this paper I analyze to what extent the Eurozone crisis has affected the

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The economic crisis within the EU has had a significant impact on domestic politics in the member states, affecting the links between parties and citizens and accentuating the tensions parties face between governing responsibility and being responsive to public opinion. This paper examines if parties in EU countries have shifted their left-right ideological positions during the current crisis and whether such shifts are a direct response to the pressures of wider economic conditions or are more affected by changes in the preferences of the median voter. Party-based and citizen-based data are examined between 2002 and 2015, encompassing both the pre-crisis and crisis periods. The main findings are that the economic crisis has made parties less responsive to public opinion on the left-right dimension and this effect is more pronounced for parties that have been in government.

This article aims at contributing to a better understanding of the role of junior ministers (JMs) in contemporary parliamentary governments. Using principal-agent theory, we attempt to shed light on the content of the delegation relationship between JMs and their principals, mainly cabinet ministers and the prime minister. By applying categorical principal components analysis, we examine recruitment patterns in order to clarify whether JMs tend to focus on policy outputs, party building or political projection and management. The analysis employs data on all the Spanish Secretarios de Estado (SEs) from the creation of the office in 1977 until 2010. The results suggest that delegation to SEs mostly emphasizes policy outputs, since expertise dominates as a recruitment feature, though political skills and party connections are also valued complementary assets.