Path-Dependent Institutions and Strategic Veto Players: National Parliaments in the European Union

According to the prevailing concept of 'dual legitimacy', national parliaments constitute an important source of democratic legitimacy in the EU. Reinforced parliamentary scrutiny and control of the national representatives in the Council of Ministers seem to contribute to a more democratic Europe. However, if parliaments tie the hands of their governments when they negotiate at the European level, effectiveness of policy-making is jeopardised and national interests may be defeated. Realising this dilemma, members of national parliaments develop strategies to deal with conflicting requirements of national party politics and European policy-making. These strategies and their implications for democracy are influenced by the path-dependent institutional changes in national parliamentary systems. They therefore vary considerably between member states.     

TTIP and legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy

Abstract

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU?US strategic partnership impacts on legislative?executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.     

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

The eurozone crisis suggests a significant reinforcement of executive dominance in EU policy-making. Opaque emergency decisions taken at European summits as well as treaties established outside of the EU legal framework facilitate the side-lining of democratically elected chambers. This development entails the risk of a new wave of de-parliamentarisation in EU policy-making. An effective scrutiny of crisis management by national parliaments is, however, indispensable for taking national ownership of the reforms in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper investigates national parliaments’ involvement in the development of instruments to combat the crisis. Based on a quantitative dataset of crisis-related parliamentary activities in 2010–2012, the article observes a very uneven engagement in the scrutiny of crisis management. Institutional prerogatives in EU affairs as well as macro-economic factors can partly explain the observed variation. Surprisingly, however, crisis-related parliamentary activity is not a reaction to Eurosceptic attitudes either in parliament or among the public.     

Explaining subnational parliamentary scrutiny powers: A fuzzy-set analysis of German Landtage

While the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty has important implications for regional parliaments with legislative competences, most studies have focused on cross-country differences or examined the activities of regional parliaments at the EU level. This contribution shows the existence of substantial intra-country differences in the formal scrutiny rights of regional parliaments. We analyse how German regional parliaments (Landtage) have addressed the challenge of controlling their governments in EU affairs. Using fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis, we find that institutional and partisan factors (vote share in the second chamber, economic potential, and conservative governments) explain the differences found among German Landtage particularly well. Landtage with otherwise weak parliamentary prerogatives were successful in using the reform momentum to strengthen their rights in the field of EU policy. Combined with the party political salience of EU policy-making, the integration process has thus empowered formally weaker Landtage.     

Institutional conditions for effective parliamentary oversight of European Union politics

The implementation of European Union directives into national law frequently triggers extensive parliamentary activities, especially if they are complex, salient, and conflictive. These activities can cause delayed transposition. The literature suggests that early parliamentary involvement may speed up the subsequent transposition process. In this article, it is argued theoretically and empirically shown that this hope is only fulfilled where parliaments are sufficiently strong. On the empirical side, the article looks at the effect of ex-ante scrutiny on the duration of the transposition of more than 650 directives in four weak parliaments as well as in four strong parliaments. It is found that an early involvement of strong parliaments may speed up transposition. By contrast, weak parliaments’ early engagement with EU directives may even cause a further delay of the transposition process.     

The Impact of the European Union on Coalition Formation in a Minority System: The Case of Denmark

Does European Union membership influence coalition patterns in national parliaments? For governments in the Scandinavian countries – with their relatively high share of minority governments requiring external parliamentary support to form parliamentary majorities – the question of ‘coalition management’ is highly relevant. This article provides an empirical test of three central arguments in the Europeanisation literature on the impact of EU membership on national parliaments when political parties pass legislation in the Danish Folketing. The effect of EU content in a law on coalition patterns is compared across policy areas and four electoral periods from 1998 to 2011 encompassing 2,894 laws. The data provide support for the argument that the loss of national agenda‐setting over the legislative process has an impact on coalition patterns in the Danish parliament. It is shown that the coalition patterns on Europeanised legislation are both broader and more stable compared to national, non‐EU‐related legislation. The focus on Europeanisation of legislative coalitions goes beyond previous analysis with an institutional focus, and demonstrates an example of how the EU systematically has an effect on legislative coalition formation in a national parliamentary system.     

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.     

The EU’s Multilevel Parliamentary (Battle)Field: Inter-parliamentary Cooperation and Conflict in Foreign and Security Policy

The Treaty of Lisbon has been dubbed ‘the Treaty of Parliaments’, as it upgraded the position of both the European Parliament and of national parliaments within the institutional system of the EU. However, the implementation of the new Treaty also brought to the surface the uneasy relationship between the European and national parliamentary spheres in a number of domains. Drawing on the notion of ‘parliamentary field’, this article accounts for this growing divide by highlighting the competitive dynamics that may emerge from a mismatch between formal constitutional authority and the actual parliamentary capital that parliaments enjoy. The article examines this proposition within the domain of foreign and security policy, where the process of establishing a new inter-parliamentary mechanism for scrutinising policy has placed the European Parliament and the national parliaments visibly at odds.     

Executive Privilege Reaffirmed? Parliamentary Scrutiny of the CFSP and CSDP

The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) occupy a unique space in EU governance. Both policies have supranational elements, yet their formally intergovernmental status shields them from the increased scrutiny powers granted to national parliaments after Lisbon. National parliamentary scrutiny of these policy areas has thus received relatively little attention. Using an analytical framework of ‘authority, ability and attitude’, this paper argues that attitude, meaning MPs’ willingness to scrutinise CFSP, is the most important factor in explaining the empirical variation in the quantity and quality of national parliamentary scrutiny of CFSP. Drawing on qualitative research and interviews conducted as part of the OPAL project, the paper demonstrates that formal powers do not, in practice, equate to ‘strong’ scrutiny, arguing that the strongest parliaments are those that make CFSP scrutiny a systematic, normalised and culturally accepted part of parliamentarians’ everyday work.     

The Ties that Bind? Intra-party Information Exchanges of German MPs in EU Multi-level Politics

As political authority is successively transferred from the national to the EU level, national parliaments are often considered to lose control over the domestic political agenda. Yet recent studies suggest that national parliaments cannot simply be labelled ‘losers’ of European integration. National parliaments have institutionally adapted to the EU in order to better scrutinise and control their governments in EU affairs. While existing research shows how parliaments employ their institutional opportunities to exercise scrutiny in the national arena, this paper suggests that MPs also employ informal strategies to obtain information on EU affairs to control and influence their governments. It argues that MPs primarily act through political parties, which are viewed here as multi-level organisations, and make use of their partisan ties to regional, transnational and supranational party actors to obtain information on EU issues. The article probes this argument by drawing on original data obtained through a survey of German MPs in 2009.     

The Contingent Diffusion of Parliamentary Oversight Institutions in the European Union

What explains the variation in institutional adaptation of national parliaments to European integration? Whereas the existing literature has mainly focused on domestic conditions, this article explains institutional adaptation to integration by focusing on inter‐parliamentary diffusion. The argument draws on ‘learning’ mechanisms of diffusion on the demand side and on ‘emulation’ mechanisms on the supply side. Parliamentary demand for external inspiration is related to uncertainty about functional oversight institutions, and the selection of sources to perceptions of similarity and success. Demand arises in new European Union member parliaments and young democracies that then turn towards culturally alike countries and old democracies. Using spatial econometrics, support is demonstrated for the argument in the article while ruling out alternative diffusion mechanisms such as spatial proximity and learning from Scandinavian frontrunners once links along cultural similarity and democratic experience are controlled for. The results underline the limits of the ‘isolated polity’ approach in the comparative study of institutions in Europe's closely integrated political system, while also showing that, even in this favourable environment, diffusion pathways are contingent on the mechanisms generating demand among policy makers and shaping their selection of sources for external information.     

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.     

Beyond Institutional Capacity: Political Motivation and Parliamentary Behaviour in the Early Warning System

The Early Warning System gives national parliaments the right to intervene in European Union policy-making. This article investigates their incentives to submit reasoned opinions. It analyses the reactions of 40 parliamentary chambers to 411 draft legislative acts between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2013 by ReLogit models. The article argues that, beyond institutional capacity, political motivation explains cross-chamber and inter-temporal variation. Higher levels of party political contestation over EU integration have a positive effect, but greater party dispersion on the left–right dimension negatively affects submissions. Furthermore, salient and urgent draft legislative acts incentivise parliaments to become active in the Early Warning System. Finally, some findings suggest that minority governments and economic recession represent positive conditions for unicameral parliaments and lower chambers to submit reasoned opinions. The findings are discussed with reference to the role of national parliaments in EU democracy.     

Clawing Back Lost Powers? Parliamentary Scrutiny of the Transposition of EU Social Policy Directives in the Netherlands

For quite some time parliaments were seen as the losers of European integration. As a reaction, several parliaments have sought to exert more control over the executive branch in EU decision-making. An alternative venue for ‘clawing back’ these lost powers is by influencing the domestic transposition of EU policies. Surprisingly, this opportunity for greater parliamentary involvement has not received much scholarly attention. Under what conditions do the parties in parliament engage in ex post scrutiny over transposition? To shed light on this question, this article provides a detailed study of scrutiny by the Dutch parliament over the transposition of two social policy directives, investigating four hypotheses regarding vote-seeking, policy-seeking and office-seeking incentives for parliamentary oversight. The analysis shows that the ex post scrutiny that takes place can mostly be summarised as low-profile scrutiny aimed at information-gathering and position-taking, especially by opposition parties.     

Normative transformations in EU external relations: the phenomenon of ‘soft’ international agreements

Abstract

The European Union increasingly uses ‘soft’ international arrangements rather than formal international agreements in establishing relations with non-EU states. This contribution aims to raise the question of to what extent a move from hard to soft law in relations between the EU and its partners can be seen as allowing the Union to ‘step outside’ the legal framework (if that indeed is what is happening) and disregard the rules and principles that define the way in which EU external relations are to take shape. Possible consequences include the risk that these instruments are not subject to appropriate safeguards, that parliamentary influence (by the European Parliament as well as by national parliaments) is by-passed and that transparency is affected. There are various reasons for the EU not to use formal procedures, but a turn to informality does come at a price.     

National parliamentary control and voting in the Council of the European Union

This article explores the different ways governments express dissent in the Council of the European Union (EU) through ‘No’ votes, abstentions and recorded negative statements. A game-theoretical model is presented that studies voting behaviour and analyses how the national parliaments’ levels of control over their governments’ EU policies affect it. It is concluded that governments that are strongly controlled by their parliaments are not more likely to express dissent. However, when they do express dissent, they vote ‘No’ more often. Parliamentary control depends on the presence of formal oversight institutions as well as the motivation of parliamentarians to hold their governments accountable. Empirical support is found in an analysis of votes on 1,387 legislative proposals that represent more than a decade of Council decision making in the period 2004–2014. This article contributes to the discussion on the involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs, and clearly distinguishes the different forms of dissent in Council decision making.     

To Scrutinise or Not to Scrutinise? Explaining Variation in EU-Related Activities in National Parliaments

There is an on-going debate in the literature as to whether national parliaments can and do play an active role in EU policy-making. The main reason for persistent disagreement is the lack of comparative empirical data on parliamentary behaviour in EU affairs. The article aims to contribute to this debate by presenting the first comparative quantitative data on European affairs activities of national parliaments and by explaining the empirical variation. The development of a unique dataset including all 27 national parliaments allows a series of explanatory variables to be tested for the level of parliamentary activity at both the committee and the plenary levels. The analysis shows that institutional strength in EU affairs plays an important role. Overall, however, EU activities can be better explained with a mix of institutional capacities and motivational incentives. The specific combinations vary for different types of activities.     

Ministerial gatekeeping and parliamentary involvement in the implementation process of EU directives

According to the literature on parliamentary government, legislatures provide political parties with veto and amendment rights, which counterbalance executive power. This institutional feature is also said to help overcome ministerial “drift” within coalition governments. While this literature has focused on the situation of an unconstrained environment of parliamentary government, the European Union’s Member States continuously delegate policy competencies to Brussels, whose directives must in turn be transposed into national law to take effect. Because the minister in charge enjoys informational advantages and has the sole right to begin the process of implementing directives, he can completely control the agenda in this constrained environment. We evaluate the empirical implications of a ministerial gatekeeping model by investigating the (in)activities of 15 countries with respect to 2,756 EU directives adopted between December 1978 and November 2009. Our findings show that partisan ministerial approval is necessary to start the implementation process which conditions the counterbalancing response of parliaments. Accordingly, the delegation of policy competencies to the European Union changes the power relationship in parliamentary governments and increases the risk of partisan ministerial drift.     

Implementing Social Europe in Times of Crises: Re-established Boundaries of Welfare?

This volume examines the state of social Europe when European Union principles and policies have to be implemented in the member states while the EU legitimacy crisis and the Great Recession prevail. The volume explores diverse processes, stages and subjects of implementation in a variety of social policies to identify different institutional dynamics and actor behaviours at play. The individual contributions examine the transposition of the patients’ rights directive to the Europeanisation of pension reforms; the role of national parliaments in transposing social Europe; judicial Europeanisation; and the multi-level enforcement of EU decisions. Theoretically, the volume highlights that implementation is often conditioned by domestic politics or comes as a ‘random walk’ due to organisational and cognitive constraints. Empirically, the volume has three main findings. First, the constitutive components of the EU tend to have a contradictory impact on the EU’s social policies and the national welfare systems. Second, crises influence the implementation of social Europe, at times leading to a modification of fundamental principles and content, but not across the board. Third, as a result, there is evidence of differentiated Europeanisation.     

National parliamentary control of EU policy in the three new member states

This article examines the procedures that have been established by the national parliaments in the three new EU member states (Austria, Sweden and Finland) following their accession to control their government's EU policy‐making. It compares and contrasts with the Danish case, to date the most extreme form of national parliamentary intervention. Whilst noting the specific characteristics of each of the three new member states, it places these developments in a broader Union‐wide trend towards greater national parliamentary involvement, a trend which the author expects to continue with future enlargements.