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The existing assessments of EU politicization have predominantly focused on the media and in the actors that are reported in that arena. This chapter offers a novel approach to the study of EU politicization by focusing, instead, on the institutional arena of six EU countries. Using the MAPLE dataset of parliamentary debates, with a total of 724,963 speeches covering a period of 20 years, this chapter offers a comparative and longitudinal analysis of EU politicization at the institutional level, assessing the impact that the Eurozone crisis had in the parliamentary debates of the EU. Automated and manual content analysis methods are used to answer three main questions: Has the EU been politicized at the institutional level? Did the Eurozone crisis affect the politicization of the EU in parliaments? What characteristics of political parties have determined the salience and contestation of the EU topic? Our results suggest that the EU has not been, in the past 20 years, a very salient nor contested topic at the institutional level. However, we find that the parties’ contribution to the democratic legitimacy of the European integration varies significantly, with the parties’ position on the EU topic being the strongest determinant of EU politicization. The existing assessments of EU politicization have predominantly focused on the media and in the actors that are reported in that arena. This chapter offers a novel approach to the study of EU politicization by focusing, instead, on the institutional arena of six EU countries. Using the MAPLE dataset of parliamentary debates, with a total of 724,963 speeches covering a period of 20 years, this chapter offers a comparative and longitudinal analysis of EU politicization at the institutional level, assessing the impact that the Eurozone crisis had in the parliamentary debates of the EU. Automated and manual content analysis methods are used to answer three main questions: Has the EU been politicized at the institutional level? Did the Eurozone crisis affect the politicization of the EU in parliaments? What characteristics of political parties have determined the salience and contestation of the EU topic? Our results suggest that the EU has not been, in the past 20 years, a very salient nor contested topic at the institutional level. However, we find that the parties’ contribution to the democratic legitimacy of the European integration varies significantly, with the parties’ position on the EU topic being the strongest determinant of EU politicization.

What are the consequences of EU politicization for the EU and European societies? This book shifts the analytical focus from EU politicization processes to their empirical and normative research on the effects of politicization on public opinion, public discourses, policymaking and European integration.

Do macro-economic conditions affect legislators’ representative focus? This article examines this novel predictor by analysing an original dataset of parliamentary questions from the Greek parliament. Greece is a very informative case since not only is it one of the countries most severely hit by the Eurozone Crisis but it also offers an institutional setting that provides plenty of incentives to re-election-seeking actors for constituency-focused representative work. The data utilised covers an extended period of six Greek legislatures and over 12,000 parliamentary current questions asked pre, during and post-crisis between 2006 and 2019. The stand-alone effect of macro-economic conditions as well as its interaction with known predictors like the legislators’ vulnerability is tested. Findings provide evidence that better national economic performance conditions increase the likelihood that MPs with table current questions about their constituency, although other traditional factors like electoral vulnerability remain important.

EnglishThe 2019 European Parliament election in Greece took place on 26 May together with municipal and regional elections. It was the first electoral contest since September 2015 and marked the end of a very turbulent era for Greek politics. The radical left governing syriza suffered severe losses and the centre-right conservative party of New Democracy regained its electoral strength and dominated the Greek party system once again since the 2004-2009 period. This article attempts to shed an analytical light on this electoral result through the analysis of the Greek party system and its main actors, the campaign aspects as well as the results that forced the governing party to call for snap elections. portuguesAs eleicoes europeias de 2019 na Grecia ocorreram a 26 de maio, juntamente com as eleicoes municipais e regionais. Foi a primeira disputa eleitoral desde setembro de 2015 e marcou o fim de uma era muito turbulenta na politica grega. O partido de esquerda radical syriza, entao no governo, sofreu grandes perdas, enquanto o partido conservador de centro-direita Nova Democracia recuperou a sua forca eleitoral e assumiu uma vez mais o dominio sobre o sistema partidario grego, depois do periodo 2004-2009. Este artigo tenta lancar luz sobre estes resultados eleitorais, atraves de uma analise do sistema partidario grego, dos seus principais atores, das ocorrencias da campanha e dos resultados que forcaram o partido no governo a pedir eleicoes antecipadas.

The idea that electoral competition, party promises and manifestos are important for how the representative behaviour of parties unfolds post-electorally is central to democratic theories of representation. Scholars of Party Mandate fulfilment have for long been focusing methodologically on the number of pre-electoral pledges parties in government manage to realize. This paper analyses existing research and its limitations and proposes a novel approach for mandate fulfilment, extending past research (both conceptually and methodologically) by looking at the extent to which the parliamentary discourse of parties matches their electoral discourse. It designs, tentatively validates and implements a novel measure of how similar is the pre and post-electoral rhetoric of parties by utilizing recent advances in computational linguistics and the diffusion of text analysis tools in the social sciences. It applies it on the Irish parliament and compares electoral manifesto data with post-electoral parliamentary data from 1997 to 2019.