Is the traditional notion of democracy threatened by the increasing involvement of international actors? To what degree do the demands of international actors shape domestic political discourse and democratic exchange? In this project I search for specific answers to help address these complex questions in relation to compliance in the European Union. The argument put forth in this study helps to enhance our understanding of national political elites’ choices when they must pit public opposition against the benefits they can reap through compliance with the demands international actors. Such a dilemma, I argue, often creates tension that results in domestic political elites behaving contrary to their voters’ interests in predictable and perhaps troubling ways.

This project systematically examines the interaction between the pressures of domestic principals and national political agents’ consideration of EU benefits on their willingness to comply with the demands of international actors. The argument centers on the individual cost-benefit calculation that political incumbents perform on a case-by-case basis, pitting their domestic re-election concerns against short- and long-term benefits associated with the demands of membership in international structures. Demands and specific rules that accompany policy-making at the supranational level may generate substantial constraints as well as provide fruitful opportunities through which domestic political incumbents are able to constrain as well as extend their policy-making capacity and improve their re-election fortunes.

The evidence in this project reveals two main results. First, governments’ flexibility to respond to public opposition becomes significantly smaller when the amount of benefits received from the EU increases. The hypothesized trade-offs between domestic re-election concerns and the EU benefits thus, have a distinguishable effect on the extent to which governments will respond to constituency pressures. Compliance with the EU’s demands is more likely when governments receive more fiscal transfers than when the net benefits of membership are less substantial.

Second, political parties play a central role in the political process of compliance, as they are the primary activists, most susceptible to public pressures. Political parties set the executive and legislative agendas and thus have the ability to influence what gets dealt with during each legislative session and government tenure. Public pressure is instrumental in drawing parties’ attention to EU related problems and thus increases the likelihood that the EU becomes more scrutinized on the agenda. Ultimately, the results reveal that the more scrutinized EU issues become on the agenda, the higher the likelihood that EU demands will elicit non-compliance from member states.

In this project, the role of national political incumbents is explicitly modeled as central to our understanding of compliance, which makes it stand apart from the traditional studies of international studies of compliance. The theoretical argument and the empirical evidence provide a partially optimistic view on the future of the relationship between national incumbents and their two principals – international organizations and domestic constituencies. However, at the same time, more pro-active citizen participation in democratic discourse may be essential to maintain the delicate balance that national incumbents strike between their long-term interests and immediate constituency pressures.