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¹⁸ Established measures of the power of central banks include independence from outside interference, which touches upon these incentives. However, elements of the incentives dimension are not treated as conceptually distinct and are simply combined with institutional powers in an additive index. Henisz's index includes the preferences of heads of state as one potential CI;Google Scholar Henisz, Witold Jerzy, ‘The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth’, Economics and Politics, 12: 1 (2000), pp. 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁸ I focus on the lower chamber to which the cabinet is responsible. To ensure comparability I only analyse the Chamber of Deputies in Italy, even though the cabinet is responsible to both the Chamber and the Senate.Google Scholar

²⁹ Romer, Thomas and Rosenthal, Howard, ‘Political Resource-Allocation, Controlled Agendas, and the Status Quo’, Public Choice, 33: 4 (1978), pp. 27–44. The status quo can be conceptualized as the position of the incumbent who often remains in office until a successor is selected, or, for collegial institutions, as the median of the remaining members.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁷ These values give the three variables approximately equal impact on the rank ordering of the index scores. Among the four highest and lowest scores we find variation in all variables. Coding the majority requirement as 1; 2; 3 leads to very similar results (r = 0.96; p = 0.000; N = 78).Google Scholar

³⁸ Using an additive link instead leads to very similar results (r = 0.92; p = 0.000; N = 78).Google Scholar

³⁹ Using values of 0.25 or 0.50 instead leads to virtually identical results (r = 0.99; p = 0.000; N = 78).Google Scholar

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⁴² Under the EMU, national central banks must cooperate with each other in the Council of the European Central Bank (ECB). However, they can act without interference from other national actors. I focus on heads of central banks because of their exalted positions as members of the Council of the ECB and because the role of other decision-making bodies such as boards of central banks differ substantially between countries.Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ The theoretical ranges of the scales are not fully covered empirically, especially for central banks where the measure was designed for global analysis. My focus on liberal democracies compresses the range of observed values considerably. Future research could try to develop new measures to capture finer differences in the powers dimension.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ The correlation coefficients are r = 0.03 (constitutional judges), r = −0.53 (heads of central banks), r = −0.22 (heads of audit institutions) and r = 0.56 (ombudsmen).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ For a review see Cukierman, , ‘Central Bank Independence and Monetary Policymaking Institution’.Google Scholar

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