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Given its recent development of becoming a fully fledged legislature in EU politics, the European Parliament is increasingly compared to the USA House of Representatives. At the same time, a lot of scholars that have analyzed the evolution of party cohesion within the European Parliament (see, for instance, Hix et al. 2007) do not refer to the American example. This is surprising since there is a long tradition on research looking at party cohesion - socalled party votes - within the House of Representatives (see, for instance, Roberts and Smith 2003). This paper wants to bridge this gap by comparing and explaining figures of party cohesion between the USA House of Representatives and the EU European Parliament. The analysis of party or roll-call votes is part of a broader research agenda that deals with the question whether the European Parliament is developing towards a legislature such as the House of Representatives or, in other words, whether the European Parliament can be better understood by comparing it to the USA House of Representatives. Some comparative research on these two legislatures has already been done. Kreppel (2006), for instance, compared the European Parliament with the House of Representatives by looking at three emblematic features of the House: its legislative power, the role of committees and bipartisan voting. Despite the notion of 'American exceptionalism' that is often referred to when analyzing national legislatures of EU member states, her analysis demonstrated that the European Parliament shares these characteristics to a large degree. This paper will examine whether this also applies to party cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What impact has the 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU) had on legislative decision making? The present paper answers this question, first, by assessing the nature of the controversies and the alignments of actors on those controversies before and after enlargement. I find substantial variation in actor alignments across issues, both before and after enlargement. However, since enlargement a divide between old and new member states has been evident, particularly on issues about financial subsidies. Second, the paper examines whether enlargement has changed the way in which controversies are resolved. What model of legislative decision making gives the most accurate predictions of decision outcomes? Both before and after enlargement, a simple bargaining model, the Nash Bargaining Solution, gives significantly more accurate predictions of decision outcomes than a procedural model. The paper examines the impact of enlargement with a new dataset on legislative decision making in the EU. The dataset has been assembled through 228 semi-structured interviews with key informants. The dataset contains information on the positions taken by EU actors on 229 controversial issues raised by 87 legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from research in Economics, Sociology and Political Science that has shown that diversity makes cooperation more difficult, this paper argues that one way a heterogeneous group can achieve cooperation is through formal oversight mechanisms. In European Union member states, one policy area where cooperation is essential is in the oversight of European affairs. Many policy decisions previously made by democratically elected national legislatures in Europe are now decided through the EU's policymaking process. National legislatures responded to this change by establishing oversight committees in European Affairs. While all national legislatures of EU member states have European Affairs Committees, there is considerable variation in the institutional designs of these committees. Using exact logistic regression to test several competing explanations on cross-national data from 25 European democracies, this article finds that the more political parties there are in a legislature, the more likely that legislature will establish a European Affairs Committee with the power to issue binding recommendations to guide cabinet ministers' negotiations at the Council of the European Union. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of European integration on national level legislatures in European Union member states. Many economic and political decisions previously made by democratically elected national legislatures are now decided at a supranational, or European, level. National legislatures have responded to this change by increasing their oversight of European affairs in order to impose more democratic accountability and transparency into the opaque decision-making process of developing European legislation. While all national legislatures of European Union member states have established European Affairs Committees to help strengthen oversight of European affairs, there is considerable variation in the institutional strength and political control invested in these committees. I argue that the more recently a country joined the European Union, the more likely its European Affairs Committee will have the power to issue binding recommendations to the government. Cross-sectional statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between the timing of membership and a legislature's approach to parliamentary oversight of European affairs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The national parliaments of the member states of the European Union (EU) have been losing power. Decisions that parliaments traditionally had the right and power to decide are increasingly being made either within the institutions of the EU or by the national executives of the member states. But as the EU has been extended to include more and more policy areas, national parliaments and parliamentary party groups acting therein began to realize the loss and adapted their institutional structures to claw back some lost power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]