Challenging Executive Dominance in European Democracy

Executive dominance in the contemporary EU is part of a wider migration of executive power towards types of decision making that eschew electoral accountability and popular democratic control. This democratic gap is fed by far‐going secrecy arrangements and practices exercised in a concerted fashion by the various executive actors at different levels of governance and resulting in the blacking out of crucial information and documents – even for parliaments. Beyond a deconstruction exercise on the nature and location of EU executive power and secretive working practices, this article focuses on the challenges facing parliaments in particular. It seeks to reconstruct a more pro‐active and networked role of parliaments – both national and European – as countervailing power. In this vision parliaments must assert themselves in a manner that is true to their role in the political system and that is not dictated by government at any level.     

Quasi-National European Identity and European Democracy

Democracy may well be the primary virtue of political systems. Yet European politics is marked by a democracy deficit that will not disappear spontaneously. While legal and political theory on this issue is dominated by supporters of civic institutionalism and constitutional republicanism, liberal nationalists seem to be split. They justify the civic nationhood of member states, but they shrink away from the idea of a European people. This essay claims that a quasi-national conception of European identity can be conducive to the rise of a democratic political union of Europe. It discusses the mechanisms and rules for Europeanization of the sense of equal dignity and solidarity. This approach to supranational identity is explicitly instrumental and orientated towards the long run. However, the main liberal objections against it can be countered.     

An Electoral Connection in European Parliament Voting

Concerns about endogeneity often complicate attempts to estimate a causal link between public opinion and the voting records of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). In this article, I overcome this problem by exploiting a rare natural experiment—the surprising and exogenous revelation of Irish public opinion that resulted from Ireland's ratification of the Nice treaty. I find that the Irish electorate's rejection of Nice caused Ireland's European Parliament delegation to vote in a more conservative manner, while its subsequent ratification caused a partial reversal of this shift. My finding of an electoral connection on the Nice treaty casts doubt on the claim that MEPs are largely unconstrained by voter preferences on European issues, despite claims of a democratic deficit in European institutions.     

After Enlargement: Voting Patterns in the Sixth European Parliament

We examined how voting behavior in the European Parliament changed after the European Union added ten new member‐states in 2004. Using roll‐call votes, we compared voting behavior in the first half of the Sixth European Parliament (July 2004‐December 2006) with voting behavior in the previous Parliament (1999–2004). We looked at party cohesion, coalition formation, and the spatial map of voting by members of the European Parliament. We found stable levels of party cohesion and interparty coalitions that formed mainly around the left‐right dimension. Ideological distance between parties was the strongest predictor of coalition preferences. Overall, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 did not change the way politics works inside the European Parliament. We also looked at the specific case of the controversial Services Directive and found that ideology remained the main predictor of voting behavior, although nationality also played a role.     

The Appointment of Rapporteurs in the European Parliament

Committee rapporteurs are central to decision making in many multiparty legislatures. It is not clear, however, whether these rapporteurs are best characterized as partisan animals or technical experts seeking consensus in nonmajoritarian institutions. We addressed this question by examining which members of the European Parliament become repeat rapporteurs. Using an original dataset comprising all committee reports from the 4th and 5th European Parliaments (1994–2004), we found that the report allocation process provides a way to pursue partisan policy goals within a multiparty, consensual institution that rewards both coalition building and expertise.     

民主过程的司法审查:法国议会选举诉讼制度评析

选举是实现国家机关政治统治合法性与正当性的制度基础。保证选举活动合法进行、依法解决选举争议是依法治国的重要内容。由议会自己来审查议员选举合法性问题的制度在法国被证明是失败的。从第五共和国开始,法国的宪法委员会承担了选举法院的角色,审理国会议员选举争议案件。法国议会选举争议裁决制度的发展过程、审查原则、处理程序对中国相关制度的完善有重要的启发意义。     

Institutional change in the European Parliament: balancing legislative ethics and parliamentary independence

Research on legislative ethics has shown how scandals often trigger ethics reform; yet, the content of the reform often differs from that of the scandal. Why is this the case? And if scandals don't explain legislative ethics reform outcomes, then what does? If not this kind of external shock, then what factor(s) shape legislative reform outcomes? These questions provide the point of departure for a case study of the European Parliament's 2011 ethics reform. Drawing from the legislative ethics literature and from recent theories of institutional change, the article examines the impact of the scandal that initiated the reform, the interests and strategies of reform agents who wanted a quick reform process that would not undermine the EP's independence; and the institutional order in which those actors were embedded. It argues that an institutional logics perspective offers a convincing and comprehensive account of EP ethics reform, and suggests a new analytical framework that might be used by researchers in future research on legislative ethics.     

Democracy and Press Freedom in Zambia: Attitudes of Members of Parliament Toward Media and Media Regulation

In Africa, colonial rule, followed often by one-party rule, resulted in the creation of authoritarian press systems. The political climate usually required journalists to align themselves with the government as propagandists rather than serve as watchdogs to inform the public. To rule Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda established a government based on a political philosophy he called Humanism, a form of African democratic socialism that valued the community over the individual and defined the role of the press as a tool for national development. Colonialism, Kaunda's Humanism and general resource scarcity have shaped the perspectives from which Zambians view press freedom. Multi-party elections in 1991 produced a democratically elected government and brought increased freedoms for the media, but the values shaped by the experiences of the elected leaders in Zambia are also important to understanding the Zambian system of press freedom. This paper quantitatively investigates support for the press and press freedom among members of the newly democratized Zambian Parliament. Regression models show that perceptions of media accuracy and fairness are not indicators of press support. The article speculates that Zambia's leaders may have to experience intergenerational value changes to overcome the past if they are to view press freedom from a more libertarian perspective.     

Balancing Competing Demands: Position Taking and Election Proximity in the European Parliament

Parties value unity, yet members of parliament have incentives to deviate from the party line. This article examines how members of the European Parliament (EP) respond to competing demands from national parties and European party groups. We examine ideological shifts within a single parliamentary term to assess how election proximity affects party group cohesion. Our formal model of legislative behavior suggests that when EP elections are proximate, national party delegations shift toward national party positions, thus weakening EP party group cohesion. Our Bayesian item‐response analysis of roll calls in the 5th EP supports our theoretical predictions.     

Limits of Participatory Democracy in European Governance

The Lisbon Treaty (Article 11) recognises the provision on participatory democracy as a democratic principle of the European Union (EU), thus constitutionally legitimising the involvement of civil society in European governance. However, at least three issues relating to the democratic dimension of this practice remain unresolved. First, it is not possible to specify precisely how the participation of civil society relates to democracy. Second, having established representative democracy as the founding democratic principle of the EU (Article 10), the Lisbon Treaty does not allow assessing the provision on participatory democracy as an independent source for democracy. Third, the putative democratising potential of participation would not be construed independently, not only because representative democracy is defined as the founding principle of the EU but also because participation cannot be thought of as independent from the form of the consultation regime, the constitutional framework and the managerial and technocratic styles of policy‐making.     

The European Parliament and Comitology: On the Road to Nowhere?

The European Parliament has generally been deeply distrustful of the comitology system, primarily on the grounds that it allows the national administrations to undermine its supervisory role in the area of implementing legislation. Parliament has therefore sought to use the political, budgetary and jurisdictional means at its disposal to counteract the spread of comitology, or at least to promote the less intrusive forms of committee procedure. These initiatives have not, for the most part, been wholly successful; neither the interinstitutional agreements nor Parliament's arguments before the Court of Justice have produced the results it had hoped for. Parliament has been able, however, to use its Maastricht powers to influence the choice of committee procedure included in legislation adopted under codecision, and its budgetary tactics have forced the Commission to rationalise somewhat the annual expenditure on committees of all kinds and to bring a modicum of transparency into their operation. The imminence of the intergovernmental conference led to a suspension of hostilities towards the end of 1996.     

The European Parliament in Treaty Reform: Predefining IGCs through Interinstitutional Agreements

Abstract:  Despite the fact that Interinstitutional Agreements (IIAs) are an established part of the mass of informal and formal rules structuring EU decision-making and interinstitutional relations, there is as yet no common understanding of their role and functions in the institutional and legal system of the EU—neither in political science nor legal studies. Tracking the evolution of the European Parliament's competencies in three areas where IIAs figure prominently—comitology, legislative planning, and the establishment of procedures to hold the Commission accountable—this article seeks to show that the European Parliament strategically uses IIAs as instruments to wrest competencies from the Council and the Commission. Having no formal say in treaty reform, the European Parliament 'creates facts' through informal but politically binding IIAs hoping that, once established, it can achieve a later codification of its new rights at IGCs. Viewed this way, the analysis of the role of IIAs in Treaty Reform could help to explain a still under-researched puzzle in European integration theory, namely the incremental parliamentarisation of the institutional system of the EU over the last two decades.     

The world of committee reports: rapporteurship assignment in the European Parliament

The academic world has shown increasing interest in the European Parliament (EP), but still more has to be done to open the ‘black box’ of its micro-management. This study is an attempt to show that puzzles in the internal workings of the EP are far from being solved or understood. Its purpose is three-pronged: First, it illustrates that the world of committee reports is characterised by disproportionality which contradicts the overall principle laid down in the standing rules of the EP. Second, the study attempts to explain and understand rapporteurship allocation. Focusing on the consumer and environment committee in the fourth term of the EP, the results indicate that the group of rapporteurs consists of members with high demands for the policy in their jurisdiction. Its preferences systematically differ from those of the legislature as a whole. Third, this article discusses four aspects that deserve further elaboration in future studies on the EP's internal organisation.     

Prospects and Concerns of e-Democracy at the European Parliament

Bicameralism remains a common legislative arrangement, providing a classic potential check on political executives. But this potential is not always realised, leading scholars to ask which factors contribute to bicameralism that is ‘strong’. One well-established analysis is that of Arend Lijphart, in his account of majoritarian and consensus democracies. This bases bicameral strength on two dimensions: ‘symmetry’ of the two chambers' formal powers and ‘incongruence’ of their composition. Other theorists reason in similar ways. But recent British developments, backed by evidence from other states, expose flaws in this approach. A more convincing theory must be ‘three-dimensional’, recognising the centrality of perceived legitimacy to bicameral strength. Legitimacy is fundamental to understanding bicameralism, due both to the composition of some second chambers and to the role of all such chambers in challenging democratically elected first chambers. Lijphart did note that legitimacy affected the dynamics of bicameralism, but its role is both more central, and significantly more complex, than he suggested.     

Party Control in a Committee-Based Legislature? The Case of the European Parliament

Does a strong committee system reduce the ability of political parties to dominate a parliament? This article seeks to answer this question in the case of the European Parliament (EP). Specifically, the article assesses the extent to which party leaders control their committee members in the EP. On the basis of interviews with Members of the European Parliament, the article analyses: (1) the extent to which EP party group leaders control committee assignment and (2) how much influence they have over the direction of committee activities, specifically through group co-ordinators. The results show that national delegation leaderships are increasingly involved in directing the committee assignment process and that group co-ordinators, in some cases, are able to control committee business in the EP.     

Electoral foundations of parliamentary questions: evidence from the European Parliament

Parliamentary questions (PQs) provide a useful tool for members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to control the executive at supranational level and to promote their reputation among relevant groups (party, interest groups and constituency). Previous works have just focused on macro-functions of questions, neglecting the opportunity for MEPs to use them as a re-election and re-selection strategy (micro-functions). In this article, it is argued that PQs are a relevant instrument in the hands of parliamentarians in order to increase their reputation and build up their political image. In particular, it is considered how variation in electoral systems might affect legislative behaviour and, especially, the number of questions asked. Using a new data set on oral and written questions to the European Commission and the Council, the article demonstrates how candidate-centred electoral systems incentivise MEPs to ask more questions than legislators elected under party-centred systems.     

After the Crash: A Perspective on Multilevel European Democracy

From a social‐market perspective, European integration has reduced the capacity of democratic politics to deal with the challenges of global capitalism, and it has contributed to rising social inequality. The article summarises the institutional asymmetries which have done most to constrain democratic political choices and to shift the balance between capital, labour and the state: the priority of negative over positive integration and of monetary integration over political and social integration. It will then explain why efforts to democratise European politics will not be able to overcome these asymmetries and why politically feasible reforms will not be able to remove them. On the speculative assumption that the aftermath of a deep crisis might indeed create the window of opportunity for a political re‐foundation of European integration, the concluding section will outline institutional ground rules that might facilitate democratic political action at both European and national levels.