How provinces effectively negotiated their European interests before Austria's admission to the European Union; with comparisons to regional government in Germany and other nations.
This article introduces the 'Positions and Salience in European Union Politics' dataset. The dataset comprises positional and salience estimates of more than 250 parties and governments in the European Union (EU). These estimates, which all come with measures of uncertainty, pertain to 10 important EU policy domains as well as a European integration and a left—right scale. The dataset exploits statistics from hand-coded European party manifestos provided by the 'Euromanifestos' project and uses simulation to correct stochastic error. The manifestos are scaled using a technique for count data that employs principles from psychophysics. For most European domestic parties and major European Parliament groups, the estimates range from 1979 to 2004, while for member state governments time-series between 1998 and 2007 are available. The dataset may be of use to scholars interested in European integration, Europeanization, compliance research or EU legislative decision-making.
In: Finke , D 2019 , ' Institutional conditions for effective parliamentary oversight of European Union politics ' , West European Politics , vol. 42 , no. 1 , pp. 1-24 . https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1474418
The implementation of European Union directives into national law frequently triggers extensive parliamentary activities, especially if they are complex, salient, and conflictive. These activities can cause delayed transposition. The literature suggests that early parliamentary involvement may speed up the subsequent transposition process. In this article, it is argued theoretically and empirically shown that this hope is only fulfilled where parliaments are sufficiently strong. On the empirical side, the article looks at the effect of ex-ante scrutiny on the duration of the transposition of more than 650 directives in four weak parliaments as well as in four strong parliaments. It is found that an early involvement of strong parliaments may speed up transposition. By contrast, weak parliaments' early engagement with EU directives may even cause a further delay of the transposition process.
According to the 'opposition deficit thesis' European Union politics is characterized by a conspicuous absence of opposition to the policies promoted by the EU. However, once we start looking for systematic evidence supporting the claim of an opposition deficit in EU politics, we come up surprisingly empty handed. This article seeks to rectify the lacuna in previous research by examining how much and what type of opposition actually exist in EU politics. The study formulates four hypotheses on the state of political opposition in EU politics, and breaks new ground by testing their validity by use of unique data collected from the Swedish European Affairs Committee for the period 1995–2016. The results show there is in fact considerably more opposition present in EU politics than has previously been assumed. The opposition deficit thesis thus seems to be more myth than reality.
This study highlights both the significance and impact of the developing changes in the last decades around Europe, the notion-related adjustments that remain to be carried and in parallel to provide a more general explanation concerning the institution of sovereignty in relation to the process of European integration. The main questions that this article seeks to answer are the following: Who governs who within the EU? How does the European nexus of institutions and governance affect sovereignty? Which are the main consequences of the Maastricht's framework in relation to sovereignty? In order to provide an answer to the above questions, we intend to analyze the relationship of the institution of sovereignty and the ability of exercising independent economic policy within the EMU as well as reexamine the development of this relationship in close regard to the process of European integration. The major contribution of this research is that offers a complementary study in order to understand better the relationship between European integration and state sovereignty. This research integrates sovereignty in the current debates, and provides an exegesis not only for the main factors that affect the transformation of the EMU but also for the limits of the European integration.
AbstractAccording to the 'opposition deficit thesis' European Union politics is characterized by a conspicuous absence of opposition to the policies promoted by the EU. However, once we start looking for systematic evidence supporting the claim of an opposition deficit in EU politics, we come up surprisingly empty handed. This article seeks to rectify the lacuna in previous research by examining how much and what type of opposition actually exist in EU politics. The study formulates four hypotheses on the state of political opposition in EU politics, and breaks new ground by testing their validity by use of unique data collected from the Swedish European Affairs Committee for the period 1995–2016. The results show there is in fact considerably more opposition present in EU politics than has previously been assumed. The opposition deficit thesis thus seems to be more myth than reality.
Abstract The gender gap pervades many core aspects of political science. This article reports that females continue to be under-represented as authors and reviewers in European Union Politics and that these differences have only diminished slightly since the second half of the 2000s. We also report that females use more cautious and modest language in their correspondence with the editorial office, but do not find evidence that this under-studied aspect of the gender gap affects the outcome of the reviewing process. The authors discuss some measures European Union Politics and other journals might take to address the imbalance.