The Party System in the European Parliament: Collusive or Competitive?

Hix, Simon; Kreppel, Amie; Noury, Abdul

doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00424

Cited by 141 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In contrast, the effects of the Codecision procedure on politics inside the EP have until recently been studied only in terms of voting behaviour under different majority rules (e.g. Hix et al, 2003;Kreppel, 2000). The aim of this article is to investigate whether national party representation in the Council of Ministers influences the number of codecision reports written.…”

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confidence: 99%

Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament

Høyland

2006

European Union Politics

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This article argues that MEPs from national parties represented in the Council of Ministers are more active as rapporteurs on Codecision legislation than MEPs from national parties not represented in the Council. EP rapporteurs can be thought of as informed actors offering non-binding advice to the EP plenary. Expert committees and the Council presidency play a similar role in the Council. Compared with rapporteurs from parties not represented in the Council, EP rapporteurs from parties represented in the Council may incur lower costs in coordinating their proposals with the informed actors in the Council. If this is the case, they should be more interested in writing Codecision reports than are MEPs from parties not represented in the Council. This possibility is investigated using a data set consisting of all Codecision legislation initiated by the Commission between 1999 and 2004.

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confidence: 99%

Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament

Høyland

2006

European Union Politics

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“…This tendency was also confirmed in analyses of party competition between the two main EP party groups (PES and EPP), which show that the party system in the EP has become more consolidated and more competitive as the powers of the EP have increased over time (Hix, Kreppel, and Noury 2003). At the same time, party group cohesion in the EP has been shown to be quite high.…”

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confidence: 62%

Policy Preference Formation in Legislative Politics: Structures, Actors, and Focal Points

Ringe

2005

American Journal of Political Science

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This dissertation introduces and tests a model of policy preference formation in legislative politics. Emphasizing a dynamic relationship between structure, agent, and decision-making process, it ties the question of policy choice to the dimensionality of the normative political space and the strategic actions of parliamentary agenda-setters. The model proposes that structural factors, such as ideology, shape policy preferences to the extent that legislative specialists successfully link them to specific policy proposals through the provision of informational focal points. These focal points shift attention toward particular aspects of a legislative proposal, thus shaping the dominant interpretation of its content and consequences and, in turn, individual-level policy preferences. The propositions of the focal point model are tested empirically with data from the European Parliament (EP), using both qualitative (interview data, content analyses of parliamentary debates) and quantitative methods (multinomial logit regression analyses of roll-call votes). The findings have implications for our understanding of politics and law-making in the European Union and for the study of legislative decision-making more generally.

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“…Research on the European Parliament has shown that politics in this first-ever international, genuine law-making body is not structured along national lines, but is primarily party-based. In fact, the party system in the EP has become more consolidated and more competitive as the powers of the EP have increased over time (Hix et al, 2007;Hix et al, 2003). Comprehensive rollcall vote analyses show an increase in ideology-based party competition in the EP on the basis of the traditional Left-Right ideological divide.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer? Information Networks in Legislative Politics

Ringe¹,

Victor²,

Gross³

2012

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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In this paper we examine information exchange networks in legislative politics and challenge the idea that legislators seek objective information prior to voting on bills. We make the intuitive claim that legislators establish contacts with each other that stand to maximize the value of the information they trade. Additionally, we make the counterintuitive claim that legislators seek information from sources that are predictably biased for or against their preferred outcomes. We test the propositions derived from this argument in the context of the European Parliament, using tools from social network analysis and modeling the network dependence using a multilevel approach. This research makes two primary contributions to the field of legislative politics. First, we demonstrate both theoretically and empirically how legislators use social contacts to their strategic advantage in their pursuit of legislative information. Second, our analytical approach demonstrates how to appropriately account for interdependence of observations in network data. 3The process of lawmaking is an inherently social exercise and scholars have recently begun to use social network analysis to help explain some legislative behaviors (see for example, Fowler 2006). However, it is not yet clear how social networks among lawmakers contribute to legislative outcomes, policy formation, or pivotal activities such as voting. This paper seeks to begin to fill this gap by examining social networks in legislative politics as circuits of information exchange. Specifically, we are interested in examining if legislative offices establish connections amongst each other that maximize the value of the information they trade.We maintain that in an effort to make well-informed policy choices, legislators have incentives to pursue information from sources that are predictably biased; the social connections they establish to collect information about the legislation they enact reflect these incentives. Information provided by sources that are predictably biased allows legislators to compare the information they expect to receive, given the known bias of the source, to the information they actually receive. This is of great value to legislators as they seek to confirm the appropriateness of the policy positions they are predisposed to take toward a given policy proposal. If the information legislators expect matches the actual information they receive, their predispositions are confirmed; in contrast, if the source provides information that deviates from their expectations it is likely to trigger a re-evaluation of their initial policy positions.Prior authors have noted the value of "biased" information for legislators (see Kingdon 1981, 232;Calvert 1985); however, we offer that information has greater value to decision-makers if it is predictably biased. Such information is either in support of or in opposition to the position a legislator is predisposed to take, which means that legislators ought to seek information from both political allies and ...

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The Party System in the European Parliament: Collusive or Competitive?

Cited by 141 publications

References 28 publications

Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament

Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament

Policy Preference Formation in Legislative Politics: Structures, Actors, and Focal Points

Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer? Information Networks in Legislative Politics

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