The Paradox of Accountability: Supranational Organizations, the Debt Crisis, and Democracy in Europe

The 2010 sovereign debt crisis brought to the forefront a paradox of accountability in Europe. Supranational organizations, like the IMF, the EU, and the “Troika,” assumed unprecedented influence in domestic policies through the imposition of austerity measures, bailouts, and structural reforms in response to the debt crisis. While the appropriateness of these responses may be debated, they represent a clear shift away from national policymaking and consequently an undermining of national-level accountability mechanisms. The paradox of accountability arises when such supranational organizations assert their dominance for the sake of sustaining democratic nations.

Recent scholarship has sought to address this problem by looking at how citizens’ support for democracy has been affected by the debt crisis, yet there has been a dearth of research conducted on whether the presence of supranational organizations has in actuality affected the quality of democracy at the national-level.

In this study, I conducted a panel analysis of 27 EU member states over the time period 1996–2012. I tested the effects of EU membership status on national accountability, measured as the World Bank’s Voice and Accountability score (one of its six Governance Indicators). Using a generalized least squares (GLS) regression model, I found that EU membership is associated with a decrease in a nation’s accountability score (significant at the 0.001 level). Thus, the paradox of accountability involved with democratic nations joining supranational organizations suggests that the future will likely bring further tensions over national accountability, so long as this inherent contradiction is not addressed.