Search

Under what conditions can challenger parties disrupt mainstream party dominance in democratic institutions? While extant work describes the cultural and economic developments that benefit challengers and parties’ programmatic responses to these, I demonstrate when and how challengers exploit these conditions in their political communication. Theoretically, I posit that challenger parties have relatively stronger vote-seeking incentives than mainstream parties. These collective incentives affect individual parliamentarians’ cost–benefit calculations. Challenger parliamentarians will engage in anti-establishment rhetoric and issue-entrepreneurship when these signals are more likely to reach the voting public and pay-off electorally. I test this theory by analysing parliamentary debates from the European Parliament (1999–2016) through a novel combination of word embeddings and bespoke dictionaries. I find that challenger parties indeed pursue different communication strategies than mainstream parties. Challenger parliamentarians engage in anti-establishment rhetoric in the run-up to elections and issue-entrepreneurship during crises. This is because these factors make speeches more likely to be transmitted to voters. These results demonstrate that challengers adjust their political communication in opportune moments giving them a competitive advantage over less flexible mainstream parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the pervasive digitalisation of industry, the disruption of global supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a geopolitical race for the development of artificial intelligence models, the European Union has pivoted towards promoting 'digital sovereignty' across the technological stack. The paper looks more specifically at the cloud layer and analyses the draft European Union Cloud Services Scheme (EUCS) launched by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity in December 2020. While EUCS is a highly technical scheme, the attempt to include digital sovereignty provisions in it provoked unexpected controversies around who pushes for 'digital sovereignty', why, and how feasible it is. The paper argues, first, that distributive conflicts between member states have led to strong objections towards including digital sovereignty provisions in EUCS. Second, diverging national preferences have also played out in horizontal inter-institutional conflicts around competences between the European Commission and the European Parliament. All in all, the paper makes a novel empirical contribution by studying the overlooked case of EUCS. Theoretically, it bridges the growing literature on digital sovereignty with classic theories of EU integration to identify key factors hindering the translation of digital sovereignty discourses into policy within a broader context of limited technological capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies show that, when salience is high, 'heterogeneous lobbying coalitions' uniting business and civil society groups are more successful in achieving their lobbying objectives than homogeneous coalitions. It is therefore surprising that a coalition of tech firms and civil society activists failed to prevent the adoption of the EU's contested 2019 Copyright Directive, which constitutes a significant shift in the Union's approach to online content regulation. This article argues that proponents of the policy change successfully undermined the lobbying coalition by invoking notions of 'digital sovereignty' and by delegitimizing activists as Silicon Valley's 'useful idiots'. Combining process-tracing of the lobbying processes and content analysis of European Parliament debates, the article shows how legislators employed delegitimation and sovereignty claims to justify their non-responsiveness to public protests. The article contributes to the interest group literature and debates on 'digital sovereignty' by demonstrating its strategic use in the policy-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) has historically positioned itself as an advocate of social Europe. Although the EP has been repositioned from an agenda-setter to a co-legislator, increasing polarisation and politicisation have potentially made agreements on social issues more challenging. This article contributes to the debate on increased politicisation within the EP and its consequences for social Europe, as well as literature on politicisation management, by analysing how politicisation manifests itself and is managed during the committee stage of the EP legislative process. The article asks, to what extent is social Europe politicised within the EP during the committee amendment phase, and how is such politicisation managed at the committee level? Empirically, it analyses three recent directives: the Work-Life Balance Directive (2019), the Minimum Wage Directive (2022) and the Pay Transparency Directive (2023). It finds that the considerable politicisation during the amendment phase is managed by separate, yet simultaneously occurring mechanisms of technocratic filtering and normative filtering. This filtering steers the EP towards a stronger position of social Europe than the initial political division and opposition would suggest while aligning this position to the logic and framing of the Commission’s proposal rather than aiming for a radical expansion of the scope of social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet has become central to economic exchange and political communication, placing regulatory initiatives high on European policy agendas. What cleavages shape the political conflicts surrounding Internet policy? I argue that proposals to regulate the Internet frequently affect not only economic interests but also the civil liberties of citizens in the online environment. Political parties must therefore balance their stance on market regulation and their socio-cultural preferences on the 'liberal-authoritarian' dimension of political contestation. To explore party competition on Internet policy in the European Union, I analyse all Internet policy roll-call votes in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. Ideal point estimation shows that political competition in this policy field is best explained by the 'liberal-authoritarian' dimension. Reinforcing this finding, two case studies illustrate how civil liberty concerns motivate left-wing parties and the liberal party group to form voting coalitions despite diverging economic preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) has repeatedly been criticised for its slow, insufficient response to democratic backsliding in several member states. At the same time, it is the arena where we find some of the most vigorous defences of the EU’s fundamental values and appeals to safeguard the rule of law across the Union. Leveraging an original dataset of MEP statements from plenary debates over the last two EP terms (2009–2019), this article examines the dynamics of norm contestation in the EP’s responses to democratic backsliding. We observe a discursive polarisation primarily along ideological lines, with a notable slippage among European People’s Party legislators who shift from scepticism towards EU intervention in rule of law matters to overt support. We show how Eurosceptic MEPs and those from backsliding countries seek to appeal to domestic voters by invoking negative partisanship and anti-Western resentment to discredit EU criticism. In contrast, pro-intervention MEPs situate their discourse at the supranational level and focus on defending European unity and the rule of law as shared identity. Overall, the growing contestation over the nature of fundamental values by Eurosceptics has crystallized a more vocal and differentiated engagement of Europhile MEPs in democratic backsliding debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new ECB leadership made it its explicit priority to make ECB’s policies greener. Although doubt remains about the scale and effectiveness of the policies implemented since then, the idea that the ECB has a role to play in the fight against climate change has become widely accepted. The main narrative in support of this idea states that the ECB’s pro-climate engagement is part of its primary mandate – price stability. However, until not long ago, ECB’s primary mandate was rather used by those opposing the greening of central banking, while it was largely ignored by pro-climate advocates. How has this narrative emerged and gained traction? This paper argues that this narrative results from a process of coalition-building between pro-climate central bankers and pro-climate politicians in the European Parliament. Building on a multi-method text analysis of original datasets of accountability communications as well as in-depth interviews, this paper documents the mechanisms through which pro-climate central bankers and pro-climate MEPs co-constructed the pro-climate narrative, using accountability relationships as a coalition-building arena. The paper contributes to ongoing discussions on central banks’ accountability, politicisation and role in the green transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes an actor-centred case study of the European Parliament's (EP) reaction to the politicisation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the most controversial EU trade negotiations in history, as structured by the behaviour of its political groups. Specifically, the article traces why and how the EP updated its position on TTIP at the height of politicisation through a new resolution adopted in the summer of 2015. We focus on the role played by the then swing group in the EP, the Socialist and Democrats (S&D), which was a key target of TTIP contestants. Building on the literature on EP politics, we explain how the S&D balanced responsiveness to outside contestants with the responsibility as a group that was required to maintain a stable majority within the EP. We demonstrate how the S&D position was steered by its largest delegations and MEPs with responsible roles. In addition, we show that S&D delegations which faced high levels of domestic politicisation and whose parties hold trade sceptic views defected from the compromise resolution. Our article contributes to the literatures on politicisation of trade, the role of the EP in trade policy, and politics in the European Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which factors drive support of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for trade liberalisation? The literature suggests that economic factors, ideology, and politicization shape MEP voting behaviour. Drawing on a new dataset encompassing all trade-related MEP votes (2009-2019), this study offers a quantitative assessment of the determinants of MEP support for trade liberalisation. It finds that ideological factors have the strongest and most persistent effect on MEP support for trade liberalisation. The economic competitiveness of MEPs' home regions, in turn, has only a limited effect. Politicization, lastly, has an unclear effect on its own and mostly influences MEP voting behaviour through interactions with ideological and economic factors. The study offers the first comprehensive assessment of the determinants of MEP voting on trade liberalisation and contributes to political economy research on electoral institutions and trade, the European Parliament's role in trade policy and the effects of politicization on policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 crisis, the European Parliament (EP) had an opportunity to shape Europe’s economic recovery and strengthen its institutional prerogatives through the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Despite influencing policies and securing soft account-holding powers, the EP failed to assert itself as a budgetary authority in the RRF implementation process. Budgetary authority is a fundamental element in democratic governance as it allows elected representatives to supervise the allocation of public funds and enforce accountability for government spending choices. This article explains the EP’s failure to maximise its budgetary powers and argues that the urgency of the crisis and the strategic use of norm-based arguments inadvertently undermined its bargaining position. The EP’s entrapment in its own rhetorical action is proposed as the main explanation for this outcome. The EP had long emphasised key aspects of the RRF, such as financing through common European debt issuance. As even the most hesitant member states eventually agreed on many of these issues, the EP could not obstruct or delay negotiations without being publicly exposed for inconsistencies between its past rhetoric and present actions. Consequently, it risked being shamed for prioritising its institutional ego over the common European interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections produced remarkable gains for Green parties throughout the European Union (EU). We analyse in how far different national electoral contexts can explain the electoral success of Green parties in EU member states. On the theoretical side, we argue that an increased salience of EU environmental politics has led to 'green issue voting'. However, the relevance of environmental issue preferences depends on the electoral context in which Green parties compete for votes. Specifically, we expect 'green issue voting' to be most relevant for the smaller Green parties who own the environmental issue. On the empirical side, we test our argument by combining survey data collected by the European Election Study with information on party positions provided by the Comparative Manifestos Project. Our findings strongly suggest that the relevance of 'green issue voting' in the 2019 EP elections was conditionally dependent on the national electoral context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do individual members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have policy and ideological incentives to vote against their European Political Groups (EPGs) and national party delegations (NPDs), and how often they act on these by voting against the party line? Documenting over-time variations in incentives to dissent in floor votes using five waves of surveys of MEPs, covering the years 1994–2019, this article shows that while these have generally decreased over time, they remain substantial. Further, by combining individual floor voting records on legislation and individual MEP survey responses for the 2004–2009 EP, the article shows that while individual MEP preferences significantly influence the decision to dissent from the EPG line in floor votes, this is not the case for voting against their NPD, lending support to the argument that the primary principal for MEPs is their national party, not their EPG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Televised debates represent an integral part of election campaigns and with the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process also became part of the European Parliament (EP) elections campaign. Various characteristics of EP elections such as a generally lower (perceived) relevance of and participation in the elections, and also the relatively unknown lead candidates running for Commission President assign TV debates a crucial role to inform European citizens and assist them in their voting decision. Focusing on the second edition of the 'Eurovision debate' during the 2019 EP elections campaign, this article examines the impact of debate exposure on both the decision to turn out and party choice. The study uses original flash survey data collected after the debate in five countries (DE, DK, ES, HU, NL). These data are part of a larger panel-survey study, which allows to examine immediate effects in the days after the debate and also for the eventual decision on Election Day. Although citizens' debate exposure varies considerably across countries, and watchers further differ in their evaluations of the candidate performances, the results show a surprisingly negative effect of debate exposure on turnout, especially among more interested citizens, and basically no effects on party choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heterogeneity of foreign policy preferences has hampered a more effective Common Foreign and Security Policy. We examine the dimensionality of the EU foreign policy space by analyzing foreign policy votes in the European Parliament (1999–2019). As it contains the EU's full geographical and ideological diversity, it is an important laboratory for testing expectations about what predicts foreign policy positions. Party ideologies structure voting on foreign policy: party-political disagreements over the CFSP and military interventions matter more on foreign policy votes than others. The left-right dimension and the EU integration dimension still explain a considerable share of voting patterns, although they matter less on foreign policy votes than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has demonstrated how the European Parliament has expanded its powers vis-à-vis other EU institutions by strategically exploiting powers it already holds and appealing to its contribution to democratic legitimacy. However, established theories are challenged by the failure of the EP to secure the election of a so-called Spitzenkandidat to the post of European Commission President in 2019. Was this failure an incidental set-back or does it point to a structural limit to the EP's ability to expand its powers? Exploring the latter option, this article proposes that the 2019 events warrant the revision of the EP-centred parliamentarisation thesis that dominates our understanding of EU inter-institutional politics. Instead, it develops an alternative theory that departs from the conception of the EU as a demoi-cracy. Using the events in 2014 and 2019, the article constructs analytical narratives for both theoretical positions. Reading the 2019 case through the demoi-cratic perspective suggests that national leaders are unlikely to allow the EP to reclaim the Spitzenkandidaten-process. More generally, it follows from this perspective that the EP can only successfully get the member states to share powers, not to cede them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strengthening of the populist radical right poses an important challenge for European integration. This article explores whether democratic backsliding among member states has acted as a catalyst for broader PRR cooperation at the EU level. Studying the co-sponsorship and contents of parliamentary questions and roll-call vote cohesion of PRR representatives in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019, we examine the extent and substance of their joint polity-based contestation of European integration. Our findings indicate that overall levels of PRR cooperation remain low and concentrated within European party groups, suggesting that ideological divergences between PRR actors and their institutional fragmentation within the EP still hamper their formal cooperation at the European level. These insights feed into debates on the potential and limitations of transnational cooperation of PRR actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on political parties' policy positions has traditionally relied on expert surveys and/or party manifesto data. More recently, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have been increasingly used as an additional method for locating parties in the policy space, with a closer focus on concrete policy issues. In this manuscript, we examine the reliability of party positions originated from a VAA, utilising the euandi longitudinal dataset, which provides data on positions of over 400 unique political parties across 28 EU member states from the European Parliament elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019. We cross-validate euandi data with the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). Our results attest the reliability of the euandi trend file vis-à-vis remaining data sources, demonstrating the validity of VAA-based methods to estimate the policy positions of European political parties. Convergence is especially high with CHES party placements. We also explore the sources of divergence in the estimation of policy positions across the three methods, finding little evidence of a systematic source of bias in the estimates between datasets. We conclude with an inventory of arguments in favour of party position measurements used by VAAs for the study of policy-making in European democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has documented the European Commission's attention to the preferences of the European public and the other EU institutions when formulating policy proposals. This project demonstrates that such efforts originated with the first Barroso Commission, which addressed public concerns through purposeful coordination with the European Parliament when drafting policy priorities in the Commission's administrative units. We test for public input during the inter-institutional coordination as early as 2004–2008, using Europarties' pledges issued during the 2004 EP elections and subsequent Commission policy priorities. Our analyses show that the policy priorities of the Commission overlap with the Europarties' pledges when 1) the public is critical of European integration, 2) policies are salient to the public, and 3) priority initiatives fall in areas dominated by civil society and NGO groups. We interpret our results as a responsive relationship based on the inter-institutional coordination between the two actors at the agenda-setting stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses how trilogues affect the possibilities to hold the European Parliament to account from the perspectives of democracy as political equality and democracy as epistemic quality. Trilogues, informal and secluded meetings between a limited number of participants, have become standard operating procedure for reaching legislative decisions in the EU. Trilogues are defended because they provide efficient settings where decision-makers can discuss more freely but are also criticised for hindering open and inclusive decision-making processes. Despite recent rule reforms, we argue that the democratic problem with trilogues is not their informal or secluded character per se, but that the compromises reached in these settings are not sufficiently linked to or discussed among the collective of MEPs in arenas where external actors have access to legislators' arguments and debates. When internal and external accountability is not linked, legislative proposals are deprived of sufficient democratic authorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fully grasp EU inter-institutional negotiations, we need to understand how EU institutions internally prepare for trilogues and what the involvement of staff actors is in this process. This article sets out to uncover the backstage co-ordination of the European Parliament's (EP) mandate for trilogues and seeks to explain the discretion of political group advisors (PGAs) in these preparations. Based on interviews and a survey, it identifies the conditions reinforcing or constraining their autonomy. PGAs' autonomy is highest during the early stages of co-ordination, ahead of group and shadows meetings. PGAs then act without clear instructions and base their actions on what they deem to be in line with the group's political agenda. Trust is a necessary condition for their pro-active involvement in the intra-institutional negotiations, since (shadow) rapporteurs allocate work to EP staff actors only when they can rely on their loyalty. In addition, advisors' political sensitivity and informal networks enable them to accurately represent political positions in negotiations at staff level and formulate strategies acceptable to Members of European Parliament (MEPs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the European Parliament (EP) is responsive to electoral outcomes, then the positions it takes during negotiations on policy issues with other EU institutions will reflect its ideological composition. However, the dominance of a grand coalition of the centrist party groups may limit the extent to which changes in the composition of the EP affect the policy positions that it adopts. The EP may also suffer from an integrationist bias, as further integration enhances its power. This paper tests whether the positions taken by the EP in legislative negotiations reflect its ideological composition, drawing on data covering the period 1999–2019. The findings indicate that the policy positions adopted by the EP more closely reflect the ideological profile of the grand coalition than the median MEP. While the EP generally adopts pro-integration positions, this is in line with its ideological composition; there is no evidence of systematic policy drift in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EP plays a crucial role in defining the power of implementing agencies in the EU. In this article, we move beyond the 'unitary actor' approach to the EP and examine the influence of intra-parliamentary dynamics on the delegation patterns in the Union. We maintain that party polarization as well as the level of policy salience shape delegation patterns in the EU. Reflecting the differences between political elites, increasing party polarization motivates the EP to curtail the prospect of bureaucratic drift when delegating power. Lacking effective control mechanisms over the supranational agency, the EP hinders the extent of delegated power if the Commission oversees the policy. In contrast to the extant literature, we do not find policy salience to be influential for the EP's delegation decisions. We test these conjunctions using data from the Euromanifesto project and the dataset on delegation dynamic in the Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing roll call votes from the energy and climate policy field in the Eighth European Parliament (2014–2019), this article asks why has the European Parliament succeeded in maintaining its relatively ambitious position and how national and partizan factors explain voting behaviour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on EU energy and climate legislation. We find the Eurosceptic vs. pro-EU cleavage to be the main conflict line structuring voting on energy and climate policy. Additionally, EU energy and climate policy has been supported by MEPs from member states with a track record of more ambitious climate policymaking and those with higher energy dependence. We show that increasing party fragmentation in the European Parliament has strengthened the influence of some progressive party groups, particularly the Greens, and has enhanced the European Parliament's ability to mobilize support for a relatively ambitious energy and climate legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) faces two parallel trends of growing polarization. Externally, ambitious climate action has become more contested and global power relations are shifting. Internally, European elections brought more Eurosceptics to Parliament, altering its political majorities and making it more difficult for mainstream parties to continue the European Parliament's (EP) long-standing policy positions such as ambitious climate policy. We analyze the impact of growing internal and external polarization trends on Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and political group's positions on EU foreign climate policy ambitions between 2009 and 2019. Using an original dataset of plenary debates, we find that the EP as a whole has remained surprisingly stable in its support of ambitious foreign climate policy. Yet, when looking at the qualitative details of MEPs' positions, we uncover significant variance in the ways in which MEPs from various political groups perceive the EU's global role over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2019 European Parliament elections, Eurosceptic parties were able to consolidate their strong results from 2014. Based on a specified conceptualization of Euroscepticism, this article provides an overview of the Eurosceptic vote and argues that Eurosceptic parties have by now established themselves as a fixed part of the EU party system. It interprets Euroscepticism as the upshot of an emerging centre–periphery cleavage in EU politics. In analogy to the emergence of opposition to processes of administrative centralization and cultural homogenization during nation-building, this perspective sees Euroscepticism as a reaction to the process of centre-formation at the European level, as a way of defending the specific cultural, economic and regulatory traditions of member states against the process of centralization of authority at the European level since the 1950s. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this argument for both EU scholars and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together seven original contributions on actors involved in trilogue negotiations whose role has largely been neglecled: the Commission, the Council, the Court, the Ombudsman, national parliaments, organised interests and Eurosceptic groups. This introduction outlines the setup and work processes of trilogues, and highlights the key findings of the issue's contributions, namely how actors at the edge of the negotiations can shape power relations in trilogues and how micro-behaviour shapes macro-processes of inter-institutional bargaining. It also discusses the ongoing tension between transparency and efficiency, notably when it comes to institutional oversight mechanisms and the legitimacy of trilogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With higher levels of polarization in the European Parliament (EP), mainstream groups increasingly face the trade-off between engaging and dismissing Eurosceptic challenger parties. Therefore, this article proposes a model to understand the strategies of mainstream and Eurosceptic groups in legislative work. It uses content analysis of legislative amendments to explain under what conditions these two sets of actors decide to engage with or disengage from each other. We compare two legislative packages, the more technical Circular Economy Package with the highly politicized Asylum Reform Package to assess how the choices of mainstream and Eurosceptic groups influence the survival of amendments and the success of the EP in trilogues. The comparison shows that politicization leads to more polarization and, subsequently, increases the chances that mainstream groups will collaborate with and copy soft-Eurosceptics along a left-right divide. At the same time, we also demonstrate that disengagement from Eurosceptic groups is closely related to their small size and limited resources. Finally, although the cordon sanitaire is systematically used to exclude hard Eurosceptics, it is not effective when it comes to isolating radical populist amendments proposed by soft-Eurosceptics and mainstream groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since they first entered the European Parliament in 1979, the EU has proven to be a strong legitimising tool for far right parties, providing them with funding, visibility and a higher degree of credibility and respectability. While recent literature has explored some of these dynamics, the role of the far right's ideological positioning on Europe as a source of public legitimacy has been neglected. This paper argues that as a relatively new and contentious political issue, Europe can function as a powerful ideological resource for far right parties by allowing them to convey a more acceptable political message. This argument is illustrated through a case study of two key aspects of the Rassemblement National's ideological approach to the European Union: the party's claim to be pro-European but anti-EU and its opposition to EU integration on grounds of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its initially limited role under Article 50 in the withdrawal negotiations, the EP has constructed a central role for itself in the process. How was the EP able to shape the rules to its advantage? As instruments to enhance its own role, the EP combined the unconcealed brandishing of its veto threat with the promotion of strong internal unity and supporting the Commission's role as central negotiator. The EP was able to exploit interpretative ambiguities in the incomplete contract which is the EU Lisbon Treaty to reinforce its institutional position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although European Parliament committee chairs play a salient role in the legislative process of the EU, we know virtually nothing about their selection and whether policy specialization and the individual attributes of the MEPs matter in the process. This paper draws on a unique longitudinal dataset that includes all full committee members, information on their past committee experience and office in the first seven terms of the EP and data on their parties. Despite the complex proportionality rules that govern the selection of committee chairs in the EP and the interdependence between their distribution and the allocation of other legislative offices, I find that chair seniority shapes the nomination of committee chairs. On the contrary, there is no evidence that European Party Groups use chair selection to reward their most loyal members, while EPG leaders did become chairs more often than regular members in the early terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With transparency for EU trade negotiations becoming a high-profile topic this past decade, its connection with EU inter-institutional politics has become more consequential. In response to the changed role of the European Parliament and the need to better inform the public debate, the European Commission has significantly reformed its transparency policy for trade negotiations. At the same time however, an institutional process of informalisation at the EU level has enfolded. This study uses process-tracing methodology to determine how the increased transparency caused this informalisation in the case of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. It thereby seeks to uncover a widely-occurring yet surprisingly underexplored process of institutional change that follows from increased transparency. Contrary to earlier accounts of correlations between transparency and informalisation, the author finds that both concepts are not necessarily contradictory. Instead, informality can in fact contribute to transparency goals and help legitimise decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant parts of the EU's legislative process remain shrouded in secrecy. In informal trilogues, representatives of the three main institutions negotiate compromises behind closed doors which are subsequently rubber-stamped in public meetings. While most research on (EU) transparency focuses on the availability of documents, this article investigates how much information on trilogue proceedings is shared with the general public through European Parliament (EP) committee meetings as the only forum to which public account must be rendered during the negotiation process. This article analyses the degree to which trilogues are reported back on, and the quality of feedback provided. Although the EP requires its trilogue negotiators to report back to its committees after each trilogue, the majority of trilogues is not reported back on at all, or not in time. Where feedback is given, its quality is often only poor. The EP thus does not deliver on its promises, which seriously undermines the legitimacy of the EU's legislative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, trade agendas are expanding to include non-commercial objectives such as the promotion of fundamental political and human rights. Although the European Parliament (EP) positions itself as an advocate of such objectives in the conclusion of European Union (EU) trade agreements, it rarely insists on them in negotiations. Yet, in the negotiations with Canada, the EP successfully took a tough stance on a human rights conditionality clause. Why did the EP invest political resources in insisting on conditionality in the agreement with Canada – a country which is among the top five regarding fundamental rights? We argue that, due to limited organizational capacity, composite actors, such as the EP, have to select 'strategic issues' among political events that make them appear as unique supporters of public interest. In this context, composite actors factor in saliency in their utility calculation of investing political resources in a policy issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do European Parliament (EP) elections have adverse effects on the political socialisation of individuals? Instilling a lasting political disaffection in impressionable voters, the supranational contest may have negative consequences for long-term political socialisation. Relying on a large cross-national dataset from 2004, I identify the causal effect of first-time eligibility and voting in the EP elections by exploiting the exogenous variation in adolescents' birth months. The results of a discontinuity design show that the elections do not politically disengage young voters or strengthen their party bonds to radical or Eurosceptic parties. Instead, the EP elections arouse their political interest in general and their European interest in particular; a long-lasting effect that persists for more than five years. Placebo tests and various robustness tests confirm the results. Considering that individuals are most receptive towards political socialisation stimuli during early adulthood, this study sheds light on the integrative potential of the EP elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) is currently enmeshed in a polycrisis. Yet, a treaty change to ease these crises is out of reach. We ask how a supranational actor, the European Parliament (EP), strives for more de facto powers amidst this situation. Relying on refined propositions of inter-institutional bargaining theory, we argue that the EP skilfully deploys strategies in order to extend its powers beyond the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Based on original interview material, we assess these propositions in two crisis-ridden areas of EU decision-making: economic governance and the negotiation of trade agreements. We find that the EP extended its powers in both policies by applying a set of particular strategies, which include obstructing the decision-making process, acting as a first-mover and mobilizing the public. Finally, we reflect on the possible consequences of this self-empowerment for the EP's legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business interest groups numerically dominate the European Union (EU) interest group communities. However, scholars note that the relative proportion of business interests varies by either the institutional venue or the policy issue. Exchange-theoretical approaches emphasize the distinct informational needs of policy-makers at different venues, hereby favoring business actors to a varying degree. Other scholars emphasize the importance of conflict and argue that containment or expansion of conflict on concrete policy issues shapes the relative presence of business interest representatives. We simultaneously test both hypotheses comparing interest group activities on seventy issues observed in the European Parliament, the European Commission and in the EU media. We find little differences between the EU venues in terms of the interests represented. Rather, the salience and scope of issues seem more important denominators for variation in business lobby activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which stakeholders' demands are represented by the Commission, European Parliament, and national governments in the Council when legislative proposals are debated. We formulate and test propositions from resource exchange theory to explain variation in the responsiveness of EU actors to various stakeholders. Our research design integrates the study of the formative and decision-making stages of the legislative process, which are often studied in isolation. We combine new information from detailed qualitative content analysis of consultation documents with an established dataset on subsequent legislative decision-making. The findings indicate that a broad range of stakeholders' demands are reflected in the positions taken by the national and supranational actors involved in the EU's legislative process, but also that there is considerable variation in the extent to which different EU actors respond to stakeholders of different types and origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debate about the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidates) in the 2014 European Parliament (EP) election. Focusing on parties' efforts to make the candidates visible to voters, we argue that the multi-level character of these elections creates large differences concerning individual parties' incentives to promote the Spitzenkandidaten in their campaigns. Analysing a novel dataset of campaign communication on Facebook, we find that only a few parties highlighted them, while many did not. In line with our theoretical argument, this variation is systematic and can be attributed to lacking incentives for most parties. Especially nominating a candidate at the European level only has a modest positive effect on national parties' willingness to put the candidates in the spotlight. This lacking commitment to the nominated candidates should be considered in discussions about the reform of the current Spitzenkandidaten system for the 2019 EP elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapporteurs have been widely recognized as influential agents within the European Parliament (EP). But under what conditions are they really able to wield influence? Linking two strands of literature largely isolated from each other, this article considers both formal and informal agenda-setting resources to address this question. Formal agenda-setting stresses the role of institutionally defined prerogatives and constraints. Informal agenda-setting offers a meaningful link to the multiple streams framework (MSF), which attributes causal power to agency, ideas and timing. A case study on the EU chemicals regulation REACH illustrates the interdependence of institutional and ideational factors in policy entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse whether a newspaper’s editorial position regarding the European Union is related to its selection decisions in the news section. We ask whether such a synchronization between news and editorials exists, whether it is conditioned by the type of media system and under which conditions it also affects the selection of transnational voices. Our study is based on a quantitative content analysis of the quality press in seven European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom) in the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our results support a synchronization between editorials and news, specifically with regard to the selection of national speakers. With regard to transnational speakers, they are selectively chosen by a medium if its editorial position is not supported at the national level. Furthermore, they are used to put forward a portrayal of a political community in accordance with the editorial line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some scholars consider that European Union agencies (EAs) were created as independent bodies in order to enhance the credibility of the European Union decision-making process. Scholars have typically focused on analysing the relationship that these agencies have with politicians. However, relatively little attention has been paid to their relationship with stakeholders. This study examines the professional trajectory of EA board members, identifying their career ties with politicians and stakeholders. Using an original dataset on the career trajectories of 338 top officials in 33 EAs, the findings provide evidence that the type of appointing body matters: on the one hand, the European Parliament is more likely - than the Commission - to appoint individuals having career ties to politicians; on the other hand, multiple veto players are less likely to designate board members linked to political players. Additionally, the findings suggest that agencies performing regulatory tasks seem to be more inclined to have lower levels of de facto independence from politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of research on the impact of the electoral system ‘ballot structure’ on the behaviour of politicians. We offer a clear, ordinal and rules-based three-way coding (closed, flexible, open) of the electoral systems used in European Parliament elections, taking into account both the ballot type and the intra-party seat-allocation rules. For the notoriously difficult group of flexible list-systems, we show how these operated in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections, and introduce an additional behavioural distinction between ‘weakly flexible’ and ‘strongly flexible’ subtypes at the party-list-level. We then illustrate how the type of ballot used in an election can influence individual policy representation by looking at the vote-splits between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the European People’s Party in a vote on tackling homophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the degree to which European citizens see themselves represented by political parties relate to their willingness to participate in an election? We argue that the closer citizens are to the parties running in an election in terms of the socio-economic left-right conflict and the European integration policy dimension, the more likely they participate in elections to the European Parliament. The analysis, which is based on the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies datasets, indicates that the ideological left-right distance between citizens and parties mattered for participation in both EP elections under study. Moreover, the European integration dimension has become relevant for citizens’ turnout decision over the course of the European economic and sovereign debt crisis, but only in countries that are part of the Eurozone. These findings have implications for the nature of European elections and representative democracy on the European level, and indicate that missing policy responsiveness can lead to lower voter turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National parliaments (NPs) have been generally considered the 'victims' of European integration - at least until the 1990s. In this article, I argue instead that NPs played an active and decisive role in shaping European institutions since the 1960s. In particular, NPs were the key actors driving the empowerment of the European Parliament (EP). When national governments decided to transfer some of their powers to the European level, many NPs threatened to oppose those reforms unless governments agreed to increase the EP's powers. These NPs considered the EP's empowerment to be effective compensation for their own lost powers. Two case studies were selected to illustrate this argument: the first transfer of budgetary powers to the EP (1970) and the first transfer of legislative powers through the Single European Act (1986). In both cases, the EP's empowerment was made possible by an inter-parliamentary alliance between the EP and NPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moonlighting, the pursuit of (paid or unpaid) sideline jobs by democratically elected politicians, regularly evokes public outcry. This study provides an empirical test of the claim that moonlighting goes hand-in-hand with a lower degree of parliamentary effort. The article draws upon original data on the number of outside jobs and the remuneration received by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during the seventh legislative term (2009-2014). Controlling for key intervening variables that affect legislative effort, we find that higher ancillary income is associated with lower participation in roll-call votes, but that this relationship is mostly driven by a small circle of heavy moonlighters. However, our analysis demonstrates that representatives with a greater number of outside jobs are also more, instead of less, likely to draft committee reports. The findings have important normative implications and speak to policy debates about the regulation and transparency requirements of outside jobs in legislatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy congruence has been identified as the main driver of European Parliament (EP) alliances. Yet, radical right parties are divided between three EP groups: European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD); Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF). This article investigates why four radical right parties in the ECR and EFDD - the Danish People’s Party, the Finns Party, the Sweden Democrats and UKIP - neither joined the apparently more ideologically homogenous ENF nor allied all with one another in 2014. Using Chapel Hill data, we find no policy logic explaining their alliance behaviour. Rather, our interviews with those in the parties indicate that they privileged national ‘respectability’ calculations when deciding alliance strategies. We therefore propose an alternative theory of EP group formation that sees some radical parties play a two-level game in which the perceived domestic ‘office’ and ‘votes’ benefits of European alliances outweigh those of ‘policy’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has the new structure of European Union (EU) economic governance affected the ability of parliaments (national and European) to scrutinize and control economic policy? Departing from the premise that executive power needs to be matched by appropriate parliamentary control, this contribution argues that parliamentary powers have been compromised in EU economic governance. Although budgetary powers remain formally at the national level, governments' decisions have become constrained and national parliaments find themselves on the losing side of a reinforced two-level game. This loss in parliamentary powers is not compensated at the European level, as at that level political authority is effectively left suspended between the national governments, who are unaccountable as a collective, and the European Commission, which lacks a political mandate of its own. Against this background, a final section identifies guidelines for organizing parliamentary accountability in settings, like EU economic governance, in which executive power has come to be shared across levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution examines and explains the role of national parliaments in the European Semester process. It builds on original survey-based evidence and traces whether national parliaments discuss and vote on Stability/ Convergence and on National Reform Programmes; how their involvement changed over time; and what might condition national varieties of parliamentary scrutiny over European Union (EU) affairs. We find significant cross-country variation in whether the debate is taking place at the parliamentary level; whether it is European Affairs or finance committees that are involved; and whether there is involvement ex ante (before submission) and/or ex post (after country-specific recommendations). From 2012 to 2015, finance committees played an increasingly prominent role. Traditional measures of the strength of parliament do not explain what we observe. We do find that non-euro area member states were most likely to monitor EU recommendations under the European Semester and that this effect increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]