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ABSTRACTThis article examines the campaigns to increase EC voters' awareness of the EC and direct elections to the European Parliament with a view to stimulating high turnout. A supranational perspective is adopted. The first part of the paper discusses and evaluates the aims and effects of the so‐called "non‐partisan" European Elections Information Programmes launched by the Commission and the European Parliament, and briefly details their implementation in the Member States. The second part of the paper sketches the campaigns of the transnational party organizations – European People's Party, Confederation of Socialist Parties and European Liberals and Democrats – for the elections. It is concluded that the effectiveness of the programmes and political campaigns was curtailed by a number of political factors at the national level in many Member States.

Neo-functionalism ascribes a dynamic role to interest groups in the process of integrating pluralist communities. By participating in the policymaking process, interest groups are expected to develop a stake in promoting further integration in order to acquire economic payoffs and additional benefits from maintaining and stimulating the organization through which certain demands can be articulated and goals attained. This implies that in the integration process interest groups have an instrumental role to play in the maintenance of the system; and that by virtue of their participation in the policy-making process of an integrating community they will "learn" about the rewards of such involvement and undergo attitudinal changes inclining them favorably towards the system. Thus, they acquire an interest in seeing the system's perpetuation, and the policy and decision makers acquire an interest in being responsive to interest groups' demands. What is implied overall is that actors' loyalties will shift towards those decision makers in the systems best able to reward them.

Traditional theories of government coalition formation concentrate on formal criteria inspired by – if not directly drawn from – game theory. One such criterion is that the coalition which forms must be winning; another is that it should have no surplus members without whom it would still be winning, i.e. it should be minimal; and a third is that the number of parties should be as few as possible. The closest that such theories come to considering the substantive issues affecting the formation of coalitions in the real world is their focus on reducing the ideological diversity of parties within the government. On many occasions, however, such ideological considerations receive negligible attention from politicians, who often ignore size factors altogether.

Pour une réforme institutionnelle de la CEE: l'argumentation en faveur du bicaméralismeLes auteurs examinent la question de la réforme institutionnelle de la CEE et tout particulièrement du Parlement européen. L'article soutient que le Parlement n'est pas l'assemblée législative de la CEE mais qu'il tend à la devenir. Actuellement c'est le Conseil des Ministres qui est l'organe législatif suprême mais il est incapable de remplir pleinement ses fonctions législatives parce qu'il a la responsabilité d'effectuer deux tâches contradictoires. Premièrement, de par sa composition il est chargé de représenter les gouvernements membres de la CEE et de protéger les intérêts des Etats membres. Deuxièmement, il agit comme organe législatif de la CEE en ce qu'il a seul le pouvoir d'approuver les propositions de Commission. Ces tâches sont incompatibles jusqu'à un certain point parce que l'une implique la promotion des intérêts nationaux et l'autre, l'intégration.Puisque le Parlement aspire à devenir l'assemblee législative de la CEE, il est suggéré que le systéme parlementaire bicaméral devrait être adopté de sorte que le processus de co-décision entre le Parlement et le Conseil des Ministres soit élargi.Le Parlement pourrait acquérir les fonctions législatives propres aux chambres basses dans les parlements bicaméraux des Neufs alors que le Conseil des Ministres pourrait devenir une chambre haute avec la responsabilité spécifique de la protection des intérêts des Etats membres. Les auteurs proposent certain moyens afln defaciliter cette réforme. Si un système bicaméral était introduit ceci rationaliserait le processus de prise de décision de la CEE et aiderait à réaliser les idéaux de la démocratic parlementaire à l'échelle supranationale.

ABSTRACTThe paper considers the powers, or more correctly the lack of powers, of the European Parliament. Attention is focused on the legislative powers of the Parliament; its financial powers following the revision of Article 203 of the Treaty of Rome; and its control, or oversight, powers. Comparisons are made between the powers of the European Parliament and those of the national parliaments of the European Community's nine Member States. The detailed examination of the powers of the European Parliament reveals that in no widely accepted comparative sense can it be considered a parliament as it fails to meet a series of basic political, constitutional, and decision‐making requirements concerning the performance of legislative, financial, and control functions.