The voting behaviour of the European Parliament members and the problem of the Europarties

Abstract

Abstract. The members of the European Parliament are elected in nationally organized and domestically oriented polls; however, in the Strasbourg Assembly they form transnational Party Groups or Europarties. The Rules of Procedure require such formations for the functioning of the Assembly, but Party Groups are much more than procedure requisites. They assemble elected representatives of national parties which share a consistent similarity in political ideologies and strategies. Party integration is a decisive development in the unification process of the Western European countries and it is expected to come from the Party Groups experience. The paper analyses such an issue by examining roll‐call votes. Data include a systematic sample of votes cast during the first and second elected Parliament. The research looks into two fundamental items: (a) Party Group cohesion (an index of agreement is used to measure it); (b) voting line‐ups of Party Groups. The aim is to point out the most important political cleavages and issues of the Community political system.

Executive Selection in the European Union: Does the Commission President Investiture Procedure Reduce the Democratic Deficit?

“…As a result, whereas the second-order structure of EP elections facilitates EP party group fragmentation, the structure of internal EP rules and incentives facilitates coalescence of individual MEPs and national party delegations into fewer EP party groups (Bardi, 1996). In addition, as this incentive structure has evolved, the cohesion of the EP party groups in roll-call votes has increased dramatically between the 1984-1989 and 1989-1994 sessions (Attiná, 1990;Quanjel & Wolters, 1993;Brzinski, 1996;Raunio, 1996).…”

Trans-national diffusion patterns and the future of far right party research: Independence vs. interdependence

“…Most recently, scholars come to assume that FRPs play an important (causal) role in the right turn of European politics [54]. This proposed Verrechtsing or droitisation hypothesis is still underdeveloped, but regardless of its disputed validity and spurious evidence, the potential influence FRPs have on different aspects of society is becoming the subject of a growing body of research 4 . The general awareness of diverse forms of interdependence throughout different literatures yields several critical considerations.…”

“…Several studies indicate the spread of communist attitudes and support, both within and between socio-political contexts, as early as the 1920s [6,39,26]. Furthermore, studies have been published on inter-party cooperation in Scandinavia [2,36], policy coordination between Christian democratic parties [35], the developmental cooperation in the postcommunist world upon its transition away from Communism [77], the competition between right-wing parties for issue ownership of Euroscepticism [65], the cooperation between social democratic parties [42], trans-national cooperation between European green parties [18], general cooperation in the European Parliament [4,41,72], the transnational cooperation between extreme right parties and movements in Eastern Europe [45], and even the cooperation between post-communist and nationalist parties in Eastern Europe [33]. Most recently, scholars come to assume that FRPs play an important (causal) role in the right turn of European politics [54].…”

The aggregating function of political parties in EU decision-making

“…Since the pioneering work of Fulvio Attina (Attinà 1990) roll-call analysis has been steadily perfected, notably by Simon Hix (Hix 2001(Hix , 2002a) and his collaborators ). Yet in spite of its sophistication, there is a suspicion that it rests on shaky foundations (Carrubba and Gabel 1999).…”