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This article analyzes the voting behavior of Euro-parliamentarians. The roll-call data from the plenary sessions of the European Parliament (EP) during the third and fourth legislatures are used to estimate legislators' preferences. Applying the spatial models of roll-call voting to the EP, I investigate the dimensions underlying legislators' voting behavior. I focus on the relative importance of ideology (i.e. European-wide political party affiliation) versus nationality as the main factor influencing voting behavior. The results support the existence of a European political system in which the main actors are political groups, not national delegations. Also, the pattern of voting in the EP is found to be quite stable across time and issues. Moreover, after taking into account Members' political party affiliations, nationality becomes, though to a lesser extent, statistically significant in explaining legislators' ideal positions.

We analyze the voting behavior and ratings of judges in a popular song contest held every year in Europe since 1956. The dataset makes it possible to analyze the determinants of success, and gives a rare opportunity to run a direct test of vote trading. Though the votes cast may appear as resulting from such trading, we show that they are rather driven by quality of the participants as well as by linguistic and cultural proximities between singers and voting countries. Therefore, and contrary to what was recently suggested, there seems to be no reason to take the result of the Contest as mimicking the political conflicts (and friendships). [Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V.]