The European Parliament's political groups have traditionally been studied using quantitative methods and roll call votes. This article expands such research agendas by applying qualitative methods ...and interview data to expose existing power relations not just on macro level but within and between political groups. This generates insights on the ways in which radical right populism impacts on democratic practices and their erosion in parliamentary politics. The article examines intergroup and intragroup activities as fundamental, under‐researched areas of the functioning of political group. The research material consists of 123 interviews with members of the European Parliament and staff and ethnographic field notes all gathered in Brussels and Strasbourg between 2018 and 2020. The findings show that the impact of radical right populism on political group dynamics cannot be understood by focusing on formal institutions only but has to be analysed at the level of informal institutions.
The increasing constraints on crude oil resources contribute to the emergence of liquid biofuels as an alternative for road transport fuels. The European Union (EU) Parliament called for a 7% limit ...on crop-based biofuels by 2030 and proposed increasing the incorporation target for advanced biofuels, within the proposals under discussion in relation to the post-2020 EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) by 2021–2030. The main objective of this work is to assess the economic impacts of the EU Parliament's decision concerning first generation biofuels. We also determine the conditions under which advanced biofuels could become available by examining the evolution of oil prices and public subsidies. We employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated on the French economy. Advanced biofuels are modelled as latent technology and we include biofuel by-products. Our simulations provide guidelines for public decision-makers to design alternative fiscal policies to support biofuels in a context of regulatory uncertainty.
•Economic impacts of first- and second-generation biofuel are evaluated.•Conditions under which advanced biofuels could become available sooner.•Latent technology is modelled using a logistic schedule in a dynamic CGE model.
This article presents an empirical analysis of how the European Parliament's eighth legislature mobilised to shape European Union (EU) foreign policy towards Turkey during the refugee crisis. On a ...conceptual and methodological level, we propose an analytical framework based on the mechanism of political leadership to trace the EP's role in two specific areas of EU foreign policy towards Turkey: enlargement and cooperation on migration. We argue that EP foreign policy resources allow it to play a political leadership role in this policy domain. Empirically, the analysis feeds into the claim of New Institutional Leadership since it reveals that the informal governance at the time of the refugee crisis favoured the mobilisation of the EP, mainly to protect its institutional prerogatives. The analysis also shows that the EP adopted a contradictory approach to EU foreign policy towards Turkey that affected the Parliament's reputation as the guardian of EU values.
The paper examines the party system of the European Parliament (EP) between 2004–2019through European Parliamentary Groups. It applies party system typologies in an internationalcase. The examined ...period starts from 2004, which marks the largest enlargement of thedominating the decision-making In addition to the widely used typologies developed by Blondeland Sartori, the present paper focuses on the relationship between the political groups in theEP and their role in decision-making. It draws conclusions about the nature of the party systemand its changes over three cycles from the internal cohesion indices and coalition statistics ofthe political groups. The party system of the EP is a polarised pluralist system dominated bytwo political groups (bidominant). In the period under review, the party system of the EP can becharacterized as balanced, showing only small changes.
A tanulmány az Európai Parlament (EP) pártrendszerét vizsgálja 2004–2019 között az EP-ben működő politikai csoportokon keresztül. A nemzeti pártrendszerekre kidolgozott tipológiákat nemzetközi intézményi keretbe helyezi. A vizsgált időszak kezdete 2004, az Európai Unió legnagyobb bővítésének éve, míg végpontja 2019, a jelenleg utolsó európai parlamenti választás. A széles körben használt, Blondel és Sartori által kidolgozott tipológiákon túlmenően, az EP politikai csoportjainak egymáshoz való viszonyára, a döntéshozatalban betöltött szerepükre fokuszál. A politikai csoportok belső kohéziós indexeiből és koalíciókötési statisztikáiból von le következtetéseket a pártrendszer jellegére és a pártrendszer három cikluson keresztül tartó változásaira vonatkozóan. Az EP pártrendszerét egy olyan szélsőségesen plurális rendszerként írja le, amelyben két domináns politikai csoport uralja a döntéshozatalt (bidominancia). A vizsgált időszakban az EP pártrendszere kiegyensúlyozottként jellemezhető, csak kismértékű változást mutat.
Abstract
This paper uses data on bill co-sponsorship in the U.S. House of Representatives to estimate gender differences in cooperative behaviour. We find that among Democrats there is no significant ...gender gap in the number of co-sponsors recruited, but women-sponsored bills tend to have fewer co-sponsors from the opposite party. On the other hand, we find robust evidence that Republican women recruit more co-sponsors and attract more bipartisan support on the bills that they sponsor. We interpret these results as evidence that cooperation is mostly driven by a commonality of interest, rather than gender per se.
The aim of this article is to analyse the impact of Brexit on UK MEPs' parliamentary work in the European Parliament. The UK MEPs enjoyed full rights of MEPs, yet Brexit made their terms short and ...fixed. Furthermore, the Brexit process constituted a highly emotionally charged moment for politicians' parliamentary work. The article is based on a unique dataset of 130 MEP and political staff interviews and a parliamentary ethnography conducted in Brussels and Strasbourg in 2018–2020 at the time of Brexit. The empirical findings include the identification of four ways that MEPs and staff constructed the work of the outgoing UK MEPs: The Full MEP; The Scrupulous Brexit Scrutineer; The Eternal Friend; and The Jubilant Brexiteer. The empirical analysis provides a rich and nuanced account of the UK MEPs' parliamentary work differentiated by their political party and political group background.
Research on national parliaments in the EU has greatly expanded since the Treaty of Lisbon fully recognized their role in providing democratic legitimacy for EU decision‐making. However, the direct ...interaction between national parliaments and the European Commission has received little academic attention. This research note seeks to frame a research agenda that explores whether, and under which conditions, the Commission visits to national parliaments have the potential to develop from sites for inter‐institutional exchange of information to arenas for cross‐level accountability. We lay out a framework to capture the relation between national parliaments and the Commission based on three kinds of indicators: the formal set‐up, logic of interaction, and public communication. We illustrate the kind of evidence and range of variation that this agenda may unearth by applying this framework in an exploratory analysis of Trade Commissioner Malmström's visits to seven national parliaments in the EU.
What drives the behaviour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in legislative oversight? In this article, we explore the interplay between the ideology and nationality of MEPs in policy ...fields where the two dimensions are likely to come into conflict. Focusing on EU socio‐economic governance, we collect an original dataset of parliamentary questions asked during the Economic Dialogues with the European Commission (2012–2019). By means of content analysis, we detect variation in MEPs' preferences relating to two dimensions central to this field, that is, economic effectiveness and social inequality. We argue that the variation in MEPs' concerns can be explained to different degrees by their ideology and nationality. We find that ideology plays a highly significant role in shaping the type of questions posed in legislative oversight; however, the nationality of MEPs is also an important driver of behaviour, especially when a member state is disproportionately affected by EU measures.
The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary ...voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan’s sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.
In this controversial book, Keith Krehbiel investigates and casts doubt upon a view of Congress held by many academics, journalists, and members of the lay public: that Congress is organized ...primarily to facilitate logrolling or "gains from trade" between legislators. The author puts forward an alternative "informational" theory that, unlike previous formal theories, highlights institutional needs and individual incentives for acquiring policy expertise. Using games with incomplete information, Krehbiel derives a set of unique and testable predictions about the organization of legislatures—including the composition of committees and the procedures under which legislation is considered. Krehbiel's creative illustrations and nonmathematical presentation of formal theories make this book accessible to a diverse set of readers. The political relevance and testability of games with incomplete information will be appreciated by game theorists and economists, while the book's findings make it essential reading for political scienti
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