The role of personal parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament

The article scrutinises the behaviour of the personal staff of MEPs, using newly collected survey data. The personal staff known as accredited parliamentary assistants (APAs) have long been in the shadow of staff in parliamentary groups and staff in the European Parliament’s (EP) central Secretariat. In the 2010s, MEPs’ allowance for personal staff increased and a statute for APAs was adopted. Against the background of these reforms, this article hypothesises that APAs are a frequent source of assistance for MEPs in comparison to the other EP staff. It assumes that the significance of APAs’ involvement depends on their characteristics as direct employees of MEPs. Results show that APAs frequently assist MEPs in activities relevant for the internal life of the EP, but that they are less frequently involved in inter-institutional relations. The article shows that MEPs seek support which is political, but also that is tailored towards them personally.     

Bicameralism in the European Union: parliamentary scrutiny as a tool for reinforcing party unity

During recent years, the European Union has increasingly been portrayed as a bicameral political system in which political parties build bridges across the European Parliament (EP) and the Council. From this perspective, national parties’ representation in the Council should affect their members’ voting behaviour in the EP. Survey evidence reveals that most members of the EP (MEPs) frequently receive voting instructions from ‘their’ ministers. Accordingly, these MEPs should have a higher likelihood of defecting from their European Political Group. The observed voting instructions imply that the voting preferences of MEPs and their ministers differ. This article argues that parliamentary scrutiny may be one way effectively to coordinate on a common position at an early stage and, consequently, reinforce party unity at the voting stage. However, effective scrutiny depends on national parliaments being strong enough. On the empirical side, this article studies the voting behaviour of MEPs from eight member states during the Sixth EP. We include four national parliaments which the literature conceives of as being strong (DK, DE, SF, SK) and four parliaments conceived of as being weak (FR, IE, IT, UK). Overall, the results support the theoretical argument, thereby demonstrating how domestic-level scrutiny affects EU-level voting behaviour.     

Turning against the Union? The impact of the crisis on the Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament elections were held against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in post-war Europe. The elections saw an unprecedented surge in support for Eurosceptic parties. This raises the question of whether the crisis, and the EU’s response to it, can explain the rise of Eurosceptic parties. Our analysis of the 2014 European Election Study demonstrates that the degree to which individuals were adversely affected by the crisis and their discontent with the EU’s handling of the crisis are major factors in explaining defection from mainstream pro-European to Eurosceptic parties in these elections. This suggests that far from being second-order national elections concerned only with domestic politics, European issues had a significant impact on vote choices.     

Turning your back on the EU. The role of Eurosceptic parties in the 2014 European Parliament elections

This paper analyses how disaffection with the EU influenced individuals' likelihood of turning out to vote and of casting a vote for a Eurosceptic party in the 2014 EP elections, and how these relationships were moderated by the Eurosceptic partisan supply of each country. We argue that the degree to which political parties oppose European integration, as well as the ideological leaning of Eurosceptic parties, should influence both the likelihood of disaffected citizens turning out to vote, and their likelihood of voting for a Eurosceptic party. Our empirical findings show that, in the presence of a party that is strongly opposed to European integration, disaffected citizens are more likely to turn out to vote and to vote for a Eurosceptic party provided that this party also shares their ideological leaning in the left-right dimension. These results indicate that Eurosceptic parties are important actors for the politicization of the European integration conflict and for the Europeanization of EP elections, but, at the same time, they suggest that opposition to European integration is subordinate to the traditional left-right conflict.     

It takes two: how Eurosceptic public opinion and party divisions influence party positions

Do parties respond to voters’ preferences on European integration in elections to the European Parliament (EP)? Following recent research that shows political party responsiveness to Eurosceptic attitudes during EP elections is conditioned by party characteristics, this article seeks to understand how party unity on European integration affects party responsiveness to Euroscepticism. It argues that when Eurosceptic attitudes among voters are high and the parties are divided in their position on European integration, parties will be more responsive to voters and take a more Eurosceptic position. To test the theoretical expectations, the study uses data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Euromanifestos Project, and European Election Study for 1989–2009 for over 120 parties across 20 European Union member states. The findings have important implications for understanding the nature of democratic representation in the European Union.     

Does the messenger matter? A comparison of the effects of Eurosceptic messages communicated by mainstream and radical right-wing parties on citizens’ EU attitudes

The fact that the European elections in 2014 resulted in an unprecedented success for Eurosceptic parties raises questions concerning the influence of political elites on citizens’ Euroscepticism. This paper examines whether Eurosceptic messages have a different impact when communicated by mainstream right-wing parties vs. their more radical counterparts. We do so using data from a survey experiment conducted in Germany in 2013. Our results show that Eurosceptic messages from mainstream parties significantly increase Euroscepticism among voters but that those effects are confined largely to “in”-partisans. Furthermore, when a message is effective among “out”-partisans, it is due to a combined effect of source and message credibility. This holds true for both mainstream and radical right parties suggesting that contrary to expectations, the former do not enjoy any advantage over the latter in terms of perceived credibility.     

Undermining,defusing or defending European integration? Assessing public communication of European executives in times of EU politicisation

How do mainstream political executives cue their politicised constituencies on European integration? Moving beyond static expectations that EU politicisation induces executives to either undermine, defuse or defend integration, this article theorises executives’ incentives under different configurations of public and partisan Euroscepticism in their home countries. Expectations are tested on the sentiment and complexity that executives attach to European integration in almost 9,000 public speeches delivered throughout the Euro Crisis. It is found that national leaders faced with sceptical public opinion and low levels of partisan Euroscepticism rhetorically undermine integration, whereas European Commissioners faced with similar conditions are prone to defend it. These responses intensify disproportionally with growing public Euroscepticism, but are moderated by Eurosceptic party strength in surprising ways. When such challenger parties come closer to absorbing the Eurosceptic potential in public opinion, executive communication turns more positive again but also involves less clear rhetorical signals. These findings move beyond existing uniform expectations on mainstream responses to Eurosceptic challenges and highlight the relevance of different domestic configurations of EU politicisation.     

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections produced a record proportion of women MEPs overall (37 per cent). Yet, these results vary widely across countries and parties. This article aims to explain these variations, evaluating not only who the elected representatives of the 8^th EP are, but also how they got there. Are the paths to the EP the same for women and men? Are there gender differences in terms of MEPs’ political experience? A unique dataset listing more than 700 elected MEPs and their background, party and country characteristics is used to empirically examine who makes it to the EP and through which route. The results of the analysis suggest no significant gender differences in the pathways to the EP. Yet, parties matter: more women were elected to the 8^th EP from left‐wing than from right‐wing or ‘new’ parties, and both men and (especially) women representing right‐wing parties tend to be politically more experienced than their fellow MEPs from other types of parties. Furthermore, it is found that men are more likely than women to be promoted straight from party office to the EP, suggesting that some pathways to the EP are less open to women than others.     

Losing out on substance but winning procedurally? The European Parliament and accountability in crisis legislation

Recent studies have found that the European Parliament (EP) had limited substantive influence on the European Union’s response to the European debt crisis. It has been argued that Parliament compensated this loss by expanding its oversight powers over executive bodies in the implementation of crisis legislation. This article systematically assesses the conditions under which the EP has been successful in increasing its account-holding powers, using new data on the accountability provisions included in economic and financial legislation put forward between 2009 and 2014. It is found that Parliament has indeed been more likely to gain oversight powers in crisis legislation. Levels of accountability are also higher in package deals and more salient legislation. The findings here provide a more nuanced picture of Parliament’s inter-institutional gains and losses in recent years and give more insight into the EP’s account-holding role.     

Legislators,organizations and ties: Understanding interest group recognition in the European Parliament

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re-election, career-progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non-legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self-reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine-grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision-making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible- and open-list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.     

Responding to the crisis: Eurosceptic parties of the left and right and their changing position towards the European Union

At the time of the election of the European Parliament (EP) in 2014, the European Union (EU) was heavily affected by a multifaceted crisis that had – and still has – far-reaching implications for the political system of its member countries, but also for the European level of governance. Against the background of the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 EP elections, this study aims to investigate in which way Eurosceptic parties of the left and the right respond to the multiple crises of the EU. Using data from the Euromanifesto Project from 2004/2009 and 2014, changes in the party positions towards the EU are analysed in the shadow of the multiple crises and the reasons thereof are explored. The findings show a general anti-European shift among the two types of Eurosceptic parties. Nevertheless, the changes in the EU polity tone are not determined by issue-based repercussions of the multiple crises, but by the EU-related evaluation – the polity mood – of the national citizenry. For far-right Eurosceptic parties, the shift is moderated by the level of public support for EU integration in their national environment. Among far-left Eurosceptic parties, by contrast, it is moderated by the more specific public attitudes about the monetary union policy of the EU. Consequently, political parties when drafting their manifestos for EP elections are not so much guided by the objective severity of political problems or by the evaluations of these problems by the citizenry. What matters in the end is the link that citizens themselves are able to establish between the severity of political problems, on the one hand, and the responsibility of the EU for these problems on the other. This has important consequences for understanding of the nature and substance of political responsiveness within the EU system of multilevel governance.     

Partisan consequences of low turnout at elections to the European Parliament

Low turnout and potential differences in party preferences between voters and non-voters may affect party vote shares at European Parliament (EP) elections. Of particular concern is the rise of Eurosceptic and populist parties, but scholars do not know whether these would benefit from increased voter mobilization. To address this gap, we simulate the party choices of non-voters at the 2009 and 2014 EP elections. Contrary to analyses of turnout effects at general elections in multiparty systems, our simulations suggest that left-leaning and ideologically moderate parties would gain if turnout went up to levels observed at first-order national elections. And while there is some evidence that populist parties might have benefitted from higher turnout at the 2014 elections (but not in 2009), our findings do not support expectations that either Eurosceptic or Europhile parties’ vote share would be affected by higher turnout.     

Support for the Far Right in the 2014 European Parliament Elections: A Comparative Perspective

The May 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were characterised by the success of far‐right Eurosceptic parties, including the French Front National, UKIP, the Danish People's Party, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Austrian FPÖ, the True Finns and the Greek Golden Dawn. However, a closer look at the results across Europe indicates that the success of far‐right parties in the EP elections is neither a linear nor a clear‐cut phenomenon: (1) the far right actually declined in many European countries compared to the 2009 results; (2) some of the countries that have experienced the worst of the economic crisis, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, did not experience a significant rise in far‐right party support; and (3) ‘far right’ is too broad an umbrella term, covering parties that are too different from each other to be grouped in one single party family.     

Does the UK Have Influence in the EU Legislative Process?

The UK has influenced some major EU policies, such as the creation of the single market and enlargement. But how influential are the UK government and British MEPs in the day‐to‐day EU legislative process? To answer this question, this article analyses recent data from the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. The evidence is mixed. In the Council, in recent years the UK government has been outvoted more often than any other EU government, yet UK officials remain well connected ‘behind the scenes’. In the European Parliament, British MEPs are now more likely to be on the losing side than are the MEPs of any other member state, yet British MEPs still win key committee chairs and rapporteurships. The evidence suggests that if the UK votes to remain in the EU, Britain's political elites will need to re‐engage with Brussels politics if the UK is to avoid becoming further marginalised from mainstream EU politics.     

Eurosceptic Challenger Parties and Political Opposition in European Union Politics: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

Despite extensive research on Eurosceptic challenger parties, our knowledge of their influence on political opposition has so far been sparse. In this article we make an in‐depth assessment of parliamentary EU opposition, based on 4,264 statements made by national parliamentarians in the European Affairs Committees (EACs) of Denmark and Sweden. Our analysis shows that the presence of Eurosceptic challenger parties in the national parliamentary arena impacts patterns and practices of EU opposition significantly. A greater presence of ‘hard’ Eurosceptic parties in parliament is associated with more opposition in EU politics. These parties deliver a vast majority of the polity‐oriented opposition towards the EU and present more policy alternatives than mainstream parties. The findings presented have implications for our understanding of national parliamentary EU opposition as well as for the assessment of the impact of Eurosceptic challenger parties on the process of European integration.     

Absent yet popular? Explaining news visibility of Members of the European Parliament

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent their citizens in European Union policy making, having the power to approve, amend or reject the near majority of legislation. The media inform EU citizens about their representatives and are able to hold them publicly accountable. However, we know little about whether, and to what extent, MEPs are visible in the news. This study investigates the visibility of MEPs in national broadsheets in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. It seeks to explain individual‐level variation by employing an original dataset of news visibility of 302 MEPs over a period of 25 months (September 2009–September 2011) and tests the applicability of the news values and mirror theories in the context of supranational politics. The results show that political office, length of tenure and domestic party leadership have a positive effect. Legislative activities have a mixed effect on MEP news visibility. Attendance negatively affects news visibility, while non‐attached MEPs receive more news coverage. In short, despite the core supranational nature of EP legislative politics, MEP news visibility primarily depends on journalists’ domestic considerations. This informs both our understanding of MEP parliamentary behaviour and journalism studies in the context of the EU.     

In the Shadow of Brexit: The 2019 European Parliament Elections as First‐Order Polity Elections?

European Parliament (EP) elections have traditionally been described as ‘second‐order national elections' in which campaigns are fought by national parties on national issues. We argue that the 2019 elections should instead be considered ‘first‐order polity' elections. It is not EU‐level party politics or policy issues that are debated, but rather the legitimacy of the EU itself. Firstly, the EP elections have transformed into an EU ‘blame game' in which national governments are punished or rewarded over their stance on European integration. Secondly, the 2019 election was about the EU's fundamental values, not only with respect to multiculturalism, but also gender equality and LGBTQ rights. Finally, these first‐order polity elections are driven in large part by traditional news and social media platforms. While this is a long way from the patterns of the early EP elections, they still fail in fulfilling the function of holding MEPs and European party groupings adequately to account.     

The European Union Blowback? Euroscepticism and its Consequences in the Western Balkans

While there exists a large body of literature investigating the European Union’s intervention in the western Balkans, and in particular the influence of so-called ‘enlargement fatigue’, rarely is the western Balkans’ own fatigue towards the EU given serious consideration. This paper examines domestic views about Europe, arguing that aspiring new EU member states have been experiencing various forms of Euroscepticism due to a number of socio-economic, cultural and political factors. The growth of Euroscepticism has helped Russia to play a more assertive and influential role in the region. However, as this paper argues, Euroscepticism is not a rejection of the European perspective and the search for alternatives, but rather a critique of the actual methods, timing and impact of the integration process.     

National versus European: Party Control over Members of the European Parliament

This article examines different strategies of national governmental parties to influence ‘their’ Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), posing the following questions: Do national parties try to control voting behaviour of their MEPs? And do control mechanisms enhance the probability that an MEP toes a national party line rather than following his or her European party group? The analysis reveals differences between individual parties, indicating that at least some national parties actively attempt to control their MEPs. Furthermore, the article evaluates the success of the various approaches, taking compliance with the position of the minister in the Council as a benchmark. The results show that the overall effect of control mechanisms remains small. Instead of toeing the line of their national party's minister, MEPs tend to vote with their European group.     

Parliamentary questions and oversight in the European Union

Delegation in the European Union (EU) involves a series of principal‐agent problems, and the various chains of delegation involve voters, parties, parliaments, governments, the European Commission and the European Parliament. While the literature has focused on how government parties attempt to monitor EU affairs through committees in national parliaments and through Council committees at the EU level, much less is known about the strategies opposition parties use to reduce informational deficits regarding European issues. This article argues that the European Parliament (EP) offers opposition parties an arena to pursue executive oversight through the use of written parliamentary questions. Using a novel dataset on parliamentary questions in the EP, this article examines why Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) ask questions of specific Commissioners. It transpires that MEPs from national opposition parties are more likely to ask questions of Commissioners. Questions provide these parties with inexpensive access to executive scrutiny. This finding has implications for the study of parliamentary delegation and party politics inside federal legislatures such as the EP.