The role of the European Parliament in Turkey-EU relations: A troublemaker or a useful normative actor?

This article analyzes the role of the European Parliament (EP) in Turkey–EU relations. More specifically, it explores the reasons why in practice EP’s role in promoting fundamental values of the European Union (EU) in Turkey remained largely limited. Drawing on the broader socialization literature, it concludes that a combination of factors related to the socializer (EP) and to the socializee (Turkey) limits the EP’s effectiveness to emerge as a normative actor in its relations with Turkey. In particular, the study points to the mismatch of values promoted by the EP and those embraced by the Turkish political elite as the real obstacle that prevents any socialization mechanism from being triggered.     

Parliament,printed petitions and the political imaginary in seventeenth-century England

ABSTRACT

Building on recent scholarship relating to the emergence of printed petitions in Britain in the seventeenth century, this article concentrates on those printed petitions that were designed for more or less discreet or limited circulation in order to lobby parliament. It draws on two collections of such material gathered by the MPs Bulstrode Whitelocke (in the 1650s) and Sir Michael Wentworth (in the 1680s and 1690s). Because print facilitated novel ways of engaging with parliament – not least as problems went unresolved and cases dragged on – printed petitions provide a useful window into the aspirations and frustrations of supplicants, and indeed into their political thinking, however rudimentary this may have been. In tracing what might be called the ‘political imaginary’ of contemporary petitioners, this study recovers evidence of radicalization, but also suggests that the art of petitioning could involve the deliberate avoidance of ideological issues that nevertheless underpinned specific interventions.     

Representation and district magnitude in plurality systems

Despite the widely accepted theoretical prediction that high district magnitudes should yield less proportional results in plurality systems, empirical evidence is surprisingly mixed. We argue that these mixed results are ultimately due to a lack of clarity about the counterfactual being considered. We use a simple model to show that an increase in district magnitude reduces expected proportionality in a plurality system only if it is accompanied by a reduction in the number of districts. This conditional prediction helps to explain the diversity of existing findings and is consistent with our own analysis of both U.S. congressional delegations and local councils in Britain.     

Doctrine and Decision: Navigating Labour's New Constitutional Position in the Lords

The 2015–17 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the Lords and, conversely, that peers are able to play in the Labour party. Yet the political significance of this situation has not yet been fully appreciated by a party which remains culturally antagonistic and constitutionally wary of the Lords. In this paper, we draw on interviews with Labour peers, particularly the late Baroness Hollis of Heigham, who have been able to use the essentially conservative powers of the Lords for social democratic ends. We suggest that the Labour party needs to incorporate the second chamber into both its practical and symbolic politics, and to find ways to use this new source of constitutional power without accommodating to it.     

The servant of two masters: Electoral incentives in the Scottish Parliament

Scholars have pointed out the potential impact of different electoral systems on the incentives for representatives to cultivate personal versus party reputations. The mixed-member proportional system (MMP) allows us to examine the effects of electoral systems on legislators’ incentives. Scholars have argued that MMP may be the ‘best of both worlds’; however, MMP may lead to competing demands on list representatives if they are also allowed to run as constituency candidates, as happens in the Scottish Parliament. I show that this leads to different levels of committee activity—which I use as a surrogate for party activity—from constituency Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs), pure-list MSPs (who are elected via the party list and do not run in constituencies), and dual-candidate list MSPs (list MSPs who also run in constituencies), and that the proximity of elections also affects committee activity for those who run in constituencies.     

Methodologies of election forecasting: Calling the 2010 UK “hung parliament”

Election forecasting has experienced considerable growth as a subfield within political science. Research work on United Kingdom elections has been cutting edge here. The recent 2010 general election afforded the opportunity for a trial of different forecasting methodologies. These efforts are showcased in this volume, and include standard, and not-so-standard, statistical models. Overall, these models perform well, foreseeing the unprecedented outcome of a “hung parliament”, as most pollsters and pundits did not. Moreover, they achieved this accuracy with forecasts well in advance of the election itself.     

The second-order election model revisited: An experimental test of vote choices in European Parliament elections

This paper examines the micro-foundations of the second-order elections model of European Parliament (EP) elections. We extend the existing literature in several ways. First, we propose an individual-level model of voting behaviour in second-order elections. Second, we present the first study using experimental methods to test the predictions of the second-order model, allowing us to test the individual-level propositions about vote choice in a controlled environment. Importantly, we also examine the conditioning effect of information on the ‘second-order’ nature of voting behaviour in EP elections. Our findings show that while voters base their EP vote choices primarily on domestic preferences, those who are given additional information about the European integration dimension are also more likely to vote on this basis.     

Electoral institutions and campaigning in comparative perspective: Electioneering in European Parliament elections

This article develops and tests a number of competing expectations (institutional, party and individual) about what influenced the campaign activity of individual parliamentary candidates for the 2004 European Parliament elections. The principal interest is in the effects of variations in the design of electoral institutions across the Member States of the European Union. Based on the analysis, it is argued that an important distinction needs to be made between campaign effort and campaign goals, with electoral institutional factors having a more significant role over the latter.