Agenda-setting under pressure: Does domestic politics influence the European Commission?

The European Union (EU) has become increasingly visible and contested over the past decades. Several studies have shown that domestic pressure has made the EU's ‘electorally connected’ institutions more responsive. Yet, we still know little about how politicisation has affected the Union's non-majoritarian institutions. We address this question by focusing on agenda-setting and ask whether and how domestic politics influences the prioritisation of legislative proposals by the European Commission. We argue that the Commission, as both a policy-seeker and a survival-driven bureaucracy, will respond to domestic issue salience and Euroscepticism, at party, mass and electoral level, through targeted performance and through aggregate restraint. Building on new data on the prioritisation of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (1999–2019), our analysis shows that the Commission's choice to prioritise is responsive to the salience of policy issues for Europe's citizens. By contrast, our evidence suggests that governing parties’ issue salience does not drive, and Euroscepticism does not constrain, the Commission's priority-setting. Our findings contribute to the literature on multilevel politics, shedding new light on the strategic responses of non-majoritarian institutions to the domestic politicisation of ‘Europe’.     

THEORIZING AND EXPLAINING VOLUNTARY ACCOUNTABILITY

Public organizations are not only subject to statutory obligations to give account, but they also commit themselves voluntarily to additional accountability practices. What motivates the organizations to do so? After all, such practices are costly to the organizations in a number of ways. This study argues that public organizations opt for voluntary accountability for two main reasons: they regard it as an appropriate practice and they respond to perceived legislative threats. Building on these explanations, hypotheses are formulated on the variation in the degree to which organizations voluntarily render account. These hypotheses are tested using new data on voluntary accountability of 103 independent agencies in the Netherlands. The study finds that more voluntary account is rendered by agencies which deal with more salient policy issues, by agencies which depend on public funds, and by agencies with more staff. Agencies without legal personality render less voluntary account.     

When politics prevails: Parties,elections and loyalty in the European Parliament

In many political systems, legislators serve multiple principals who compete for their loyalty in legislative votes. This article explores the political conditions under which legislators choose between their competing principals in multilevel systems, with a focus on how election proximity shapes legislative behaviour across democratic arenas. Empirically, the effect of electoral cycles on national party delegations’ ‘collective disloyalty’ with their political groups in the European Parliament (EP) is analysed. It is argued that election proximity changes the time horizons, political incentives and risk perceptions of both delegations and their principals, ‘punctuating’ cost‐benefit calculations around defection as well as around controlling, sanctioning and accommodating. Under the shadow of elections, national delegations’ collective disloyalty with their transnational groups should, therefore, increase. Using a new dataset with roll‐call votes cast under legislative codecision by delegations between July 1999 and July 2014, the article shows that the proximity of planned national and European elections drives up disloyalty in the EP, particularly by delegations from member states with party‐centred electoral rules. The results also support a ‘politicisation’ effect: overall, delegations become more loyal over time, but the impact of election proximity as a driver of disloyalty is strongest in the latest parliament analysed (i.e., 2009–2014). Furthermore, disloyalty is more likely in votes on contested and salient legislation, and under conditions of Euroscepticism; by contrast, disloyalty is less likely in votes on codification files, when a delegation holds the rapporteurship and when the national party participates in government. The analysis sheds new light on electoral politics as a determinant of legislative choice under competing principals, and on the conditions under which politics ‘travels’ across democratic arenas in the European Union's multilevel polity.