Suchergebnisse

Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and Euro Area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the right is most opposed to a more developed European fiscal union, while a non-populist politician on the political left in France or Italy is most integrationist. Furthermore, the relative position of French and Italian policymakers is issue dependent and the left dimension outweighs the German dimension in two out of seven reform issues. Finally, populism intensifies the polarizing impact of national interests.

The European Parliament (EP) can act as a democratic check on the European Commission. By relaxing the assumption of the EP as a unitary actor, this article examines factors determining the behaviour of individual members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in parliamentary scrutiny. It tests propositions based on the costs and benefits of each voting outcome in the context of the four EP roll-call votes cast in the period from 1995 to 2002 on the EP's decision to grant budgetary discharge to the Commission. The main findings are: (i) ideology matters in the MEPs' attitude toward the Commission; (ii) national parties influence the MEPs' behaviour significantly in the discharge votes; and (iii) the ties between the Commissioners and the MEPs through national partisanship influence the MEPs' attitude to the Commission when it is under threat.

For a year following the launch of the euro, the European Central Bank (ECB) seemed indifferent to the currency's depreciation. Then the ECB changed to a policy position of trying to bolster the external value of the euro. This paper seeks to explain these patterns of positions on the ECB's external monetary policy. I argue that the ECB's policy on the exchange rate is a function of its commitment to domestic price stability in the euro zone. In other words, the ECB's concern with the euro's exchange rate centers solely on what that exchange rate can do to inflation. This focus on price stability is a function of the interests of the ECB in maintaining its own image of competence in European society.

Conventional wisdom holds that interest group access to the European Commission is biased in favor of specific interests and against diffuse interests. Yet, patterns of access vary between policy areas. In this article, I map and explain the relative access of specific and diffuse interests to the European Commission's expert groups. I find that specific interests gain more access in general, but there are considerable variations across issues. I argue that variations in access across expert groups are explained by the relative ability of specific and diffuse interests to contest policies in different policy areas. This argument gains support by statistical analyses using a novel dataset comprising all expert groups with interest group participants. The findings suggest that a political logic helps explain variations in specific and diffuse interest access to the Commission.

Why do individuals in Central and Eastern Europe support parties and candidates that hold restrictive positions on migration? I argue that the mobilization of public opinion against the European integration of external migration management is a cause. To test, I employ an experiment in Slovakia that combines a between-subjects experiment with a candidate-choice conjoint. Results indicate strong support for restrictive migration policies generally and that ideology moderates reactions to messages about European Union influence. In response to these messages, liberals shift toward restrictive policy preferences; conservatives do not. These differential effects suggest that messages about European Union influence run up against ceiling effects, where entrenched anti-migration preferences prevent attitudinal change. This paper identifies the limited set of conditions under which the mobilization of public opinion against European integration influences attitudes and electoral preferences.

There is a broad consensus that the left-right dimension has been the dominant line of conflict in the European Parliament since 1979. A pro-/anti-EU dimension is found to be of secondary importance, which is attributed to the fact that decision-making over the competences of the European Union is the realm of intergovernmental negotiations. In this article, we show that the seventh EP witnessed a transformational moment in the history of the EU. The Eurozone crisis amplified the importance of the pro-/anti-EU dimension and increasingly shapes the voting behaviour of Members of the EP. This change is particularly pronounced for voting on economic issues. To demonstrate this transformation, we employ a novel deductive method that allows us to predict the relative importance of two dimensions structuring MEP voting behaviour. Our results contradict established wisdom about the strength of the left-right divide in EP politics.

Scholarly research investigating the determinants of support for European integration at the individual level is abundant, but the analysis of aggregate-level indicators is relatively less developed. This study examines the collective responses of the Europeans to different environments of integration by using a multiple interrupted time series design with panel data. The results suggest that the context of integration after important treaties changes the aggregate support for integration significantly. More importantly, the analysis provides evidence challenging some findings of earlier studies with regard to the impact of aggregate-level indicators of support for integration. Tables, Figures, References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2005.]

This article analyses the circumstances under which the European Commission implements its legislative programme on time. Similar to many national governments the European Commission announces an annual Work Programme, where it identifies important legislation it plans to propose within 12 or 18 months. This study is based on an original dataset of 233 legislative proposals listed in the Work Programme in the period 2005–2012. I show that the Commission implements at least 94% of its legislative programme, where 76% of the proposed legislation is formally introduced within the deadline. The empirical analysis provides evidence that procedural and technical complexity decreases the probability of timely implementation. In addition, proposals listed in Work Programmes that allow for the introduction of some proposals within the extended deadline of 18 months are more likely to be introduced on time. The size of the gridlock interval, as defined in spatial models, does not have a statistically significant effect.

We attempt to further the 'normal' study of public opinion in the European Union (EU) by examining the relationship of gender to attitudes toward integration. Using Eurobarometer 42 we demonstrate that a modest gender gap exists, with women being less enthusiastic about the EU than men. We then construct a model to explain male & female attitudes using measures of political distance, women's values, ideology, economic vulnerability & national tradition. Women's attitudes are more sensitive to knowledge about the EU & to economic pessimism than men's, while men's attitudes are determined more by interest in politics, traditionalist values, ideology, & working-class status. We conclude by analyzing interesting differences that emerge when respondents are grouped by 'type of welfare state'. 3 Tables, 59 Figures. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.]

Why do legislators choose to vote 'Abstain' instead of 'Yea' or 'Nay'? Is it because they shy away from taking sides when facing competing demands? We address this question by studying roll-call vote data on the sixth European Parliament. In line with our principal–agent approach, we find that Members of the European Parliament are prone to strategically abstain when torn between different positions of their national party, their transnational party group, and their country's minister. Abstentions are thus not random but strategic and ignoring them may bias the findings of legislative studies.

A comprehensive analysis of how European development policy was shaped, this book explores the role of former colonial officials in shaping the policy agenda and explores this example of 'recycled empire.' Dimier argues that this post-colonial agenda only changed as a result of pressure from the OECD and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s

Despite the increased use of stakeholder consultations, little is known about their impact on the legislative process. We examine how consultation of external actors during policy preparation affects decision-making duration and efficiency. We test our predictions on EU legislative decision-making and we find that although stakeholder consultations in policy preparation may increase the democratic legitimacy of decision-making, they result in efficiency losses in the subsequent legislative processes. Hence, rather than smoothing the way for quick legislative reconciliation, consultations increase the transaction costs of subsequent bargaining by prolonging the time needed to form the necessary coalitions and reach legislative deals. However, despite the proliferation of different tools for involving external actors, we find no differences in legislative speed between open and restricted consultations.