Suchergebnisse

Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- 1.1 Motivation: The Roles National Parties Might Play in Bicameral EU Decision-Making -- 1.2 Research Questions: One Voice or Forked Tongue? -- Overarching Research Question: Which factors lead to united or divergent voting behavior of ministers in the Council and MEPs of the same national party in bicameral EU decision-making? -- 1.3 A Framework for Analysis: Of Principals, Agents, and Constraints -- 1.4 The Research Plan: A Mixed-Methods Approach -- 1.5 Compiling a New Dataset: Voting in Bicameral Decision-Making -- 1.6 A Look Behind the Scenes: Qualitative Interviews -- 1.7 Overview of the Book -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 2: Voting in EU Decision-Making -- 2.1 The EU's Bicameral Legislative System -- 2.2 Voting in the European Parliament -- 2.3 A Bias in European Parliament Roll-Call Votes? -- 2.4 "Voting" in the Council -- 2.5 Different Datasets on and Definitions of Council Voting -- 2.6 A Bias in Council Data? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 3: The Influence of National Parties -- 3.1 Potential Control Mechanisms -- 3.2 Control Over MEPs -- Candidate Selection -- Prior Instructions and Reporting Requirements -- General Assessment of Party Control Over MEPs -- 3.3 Control Over Ministers in the Council -- Prior Instructions and Reporting Requirements -- Government Type -- The Influence of National Parliaments on EU Decision-Making -- General Assessment of Party Control Over Ministers in the Council -- 3.4 Coordination Between Ministers and MEPs -- Contacts Between Ministers and MEPs -- The Permanent Representations as Coordinators Between the Council and EP -- Coordination of Voting Behavior Between Ministers and MEPs -- General Assessment of Coordination Between Ministers and MEPs -- 3.5 Summary -- Notes

"Voting in European Union Politics" published on by Oxford University Press.

AbstractDoes voting behaviour in the Council of Ministers reflect different national interests? In this article, we explore this question by studying requests for authorization of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The fact that GMOs constitute a highly contentious issue in the European Union enables us to look underneath the 'culture of consensus' which usually characterizes voting behaviour in the Council. We argue that the focus on one issue area can help us to discover more specific voting patterns than those that have previously been found in EU legislative studies. Indeed, based on a dataset comprising all authorization requests voted on in the Council between 2004 and 2014, we find that ministers' voting behaviour is significantly influenced by important national factors such as public opinion, party politics, and structural as well as sectoral interests.

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.