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Against democratic deficits of European Union (EU) governance, recent literature emphasizes the communicative function of national parliaments. Yet, arguments from the broader EU politicization literature have been only rarely applied to public parliamentary debates. This article integrates arguments about supranational authority and partisan competition as key drivers of debates on the EU and tests respective implications by an automated text analysis that retrieves EU references in all 1,393 plenary debates of the German Bundestag during 1991–2013. A panel analysis identifies authority transfers as the strongest predictor for EU salience in the plenary. EU references furthermore increase with supranational policy output, public EU visibility, and a differentiating public opinion. With regard to partisan emphasis, mainstream and particularly governing parties push European issues in the German Bundestag.

Recent studies have shown that the most important factor explaining opinions on European Union issues is attitudes towards immigrants. Two arguments are given to explain this effect. We contend that these arguments are both built on the idea that people with anti-immigrant attitudes frame other Europeans as an out-group. We then test the validity of these arguments by measuring how respondents in a voter survey frame the issue of Turkish membership. We find that framing the issue in terms of out-groups indeed mediates the effect of anti-immigrant attitudes on support for Turkish membership. This finding offers new insights into why levels of public support vary over different EU issues, because opposition is likely to increase when an issue is more easily framed in terms of out-groups.

The article suggests an explanation for seemingly diverse patterns of change in domestic economic institutions following the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It argues that EMU participants redesigned ill-fitting domestic fiscal and wage-setting institutions in order to counter the anticipated destabilizing effects of the 'one size fits all' monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). After outlining the argument, the article identifies general economic and institutional conditions that are required for the use of fiscal and wage-setting institutions as effective stabilizers in a monetary union. It then undertakes a comparative assessment to detect country-specific mismatches between anticipated needs and the available domestic economic institutions. Finally, the article surveys institutional changes in 10 member states between the mid 1990s and 2002 and shows that the observed institutional adjustments largely correspond to the expected correction of initial mismatches.

This article maps and investigates public support for different types of differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union. We examine citizens' preferences for DI using novel survey data from eight EU member states. The data reveals substantive differences in support for different types of DI. Factor analyses reveal two dimensions that seem to structure citizens' evaluations of DI. The first dimension relates to the effect of DI on the European integration project, the second concerns the safeguarding of national autonomy. Citizens' attitudes on this second dimension vary substantively across countries. General EU support is the most important correlate of DI support, correlating positively with the first and negatively with the second dimension. Our results underline that while citizens generally care about the fairness of DI, balancing out their different concerns can be a challenging political task.

Here, I introduce a novel approach towards data collection for comparative research and present a new data infrastructure on parties, elections and governments, the Parliament and Government Composition Database (ParlGov). This data infrastructure combines a database, data presentation in webpages and software scripts in order to generate more dynamic datasets and to facilitate cooperation. So far, it includes information about more than 1000 parties, around 600 elections (national and European Parliament) and almost 1000 governments with their party composition. These observations are linked to a wide set of information about party positions and make it possible to derive various datasets for studies in political science. To provide a first glance into the potential of this new data infrastructure, I map the political space of the European Union (EU) by drawing on this source.

Since the 1990s, multilateral European security institutions have gone through profound changes. None of the existing institutions like the European Union (EU) or NATO can assume full responsibility for security, because of Russia's inclusion in Europe. EU expansion and its policies affect Russia and visa-versa, so a strategic partnership is beneficial. In 2003, Russian and the EU agreed to create four common spaces--economic, freedom and security, external security, and research and education; activities to build those spaces are described. The EU's New Neighborhood Initiative is criticized as conceptually flawed because of the diversity of these "neighborhoods" and conflicts with existing regional cooperation forums. Issues with the admission of new members to the EU are discussed.

In a world where attitudes towards immigration and the European Union are at the forefront of political and economic agendas across the continent, this Special Issue is highly relevant and well timed. This Forum article reviews the Special Issue and summarizes lessons learned and identifies open, remaining and new, questions. As a future research agenda, it is advised to pay attention to (a) differentiation in EU attitudes, (b) the role of national political elites, (c) the changing communications environment, and (d) the role of religion and religious attitudes.

Although many interest groups work together perpetually, most academic studies agree that coalition formation does not lead to more influence. In this article, we try to explain these puzzling findings. While former research generally tends to frame the decision of forming an interest group coalition as a strength, in this paper, we argue that coalition building should be considered as a 'weapon of the weak'. Interest groups fearing that they are insufficiently influential, and whose very existence as an organisation is at risk, are more likely to coalesce. This theoretical framework is tested on a sample of around 3000 interest groups in six European countries – Belgium, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden – and the European Union. Empirical findings clearly demonstrate that perceived fears – oriented towards both organisational survival and policy influence – have an effect on how likely it is that an interest group will decide to build a coalition.

The Central and East European (CEE) countries that had applied for membership in the European Union were confronted with far-reaching requirements in order to bring domestic policies in line with EU standards. Notwithstanding these rather uniform pressures emerging from conditionality, there is considerable variety in alignment performance across the candidate countries and over time. To account for this, we use time series cross-sectional data on the implementation performance of 13 EU candidate countries between 1999 and 2003. Our results indicate that the bureaucratic strength and effectiveness of a country positively influence its ability to adjust domestic arrangements to EU requirements. By contrast, we find no support for veto-player theories of political constraints on legislative change. We hence conclude that the implementation of the acquis communautaire in candidate countries prior to accession has been a question of bureaucratic problems rather than of political veto-manoeuvres.

This book tells the story of the EU Global Strategy (EUGS). By reflecting back on the 2003 European Security Strategy, this book uncovers the background, the process, the content and the follow-up of the EUGS thirteen years later. By framing the EUGS in this broader context, this book is essential for anyone wishing to understand European foreign policy. The author, who drafted the EUGS on behalf of High Representative and Vice President of the Commission (HRVP) Federica Mogherini, uses the lens of the EUGS to provide a broader narrative of the EU and its functioning. Tocci's hybrid role as a scholar and adviser has given her unique access to and knowledge of a wide range of complex structures and actors, all the while remaining sufficiently detached from official processes to retain an observer's eye. This book reflects this hybrid nature: while written by and for scholars, it is not a classic scholarly work, but will appeal to anyone wishing to learn more about the EUGS and European foreign policy more broadly.--

This article compares national parliamentary scrutiny over European Union matters in two countries with coalition governments, Germany and the Netherlands, based on interviews with members of parliament serving on their European Affairs Committee. While acknowledging that legal powers and institutional structures are important when evaluating parliamentary-government relations, the examination focuses on the goals and methods of party groups when overseeing government. In Germany, the goal of the governing coalition parties is to protect the government, whereas in the Netherlands they scrutinize the government's position in order to be sure the compromise in the cabinet sufficiently protects the party's interests. Although the Dutch governing parties normally support the government, a `floating coalition' occasionally emerges with ruling parties working with parts of the opposition to amend a proposal toward their own preferences. The study concludes that it is not only the legal powers and institutional structures that determine parliamentary scrutiny in a given member state, but also party interactions.