The European Parliament after Lisbon (and before)1

Simon Hug2  
Département de science politique et relations internationales,
Université de Genève
 
Paper prepared for presentation at the International Conference on
``Beyond Lisbon Treaty: Re-examining EU Institutions and Governance''
(Institute of European and American Studies (IEAS),
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, September 7-8, 2012)

First version: March 2012, this preliminary version: Jun 11, 2012

Abstract

The Lisbon treaty, by generalizing the co-decision procedure, has led in several issue areas to an increased implication of the European parliament (EP) in decision-making processes. While some scholars take this as evidence that the European Union has become more democratic, probably a minor change in the EP's Rules of procedure may potentially reinforce accountability even more strongly. This rule change ensures that all final passage votes are carried out by roll call, thus allowing citizens to be informed about their members of the EP's (MEPs') decisions. In this paper I assess whether party group pressure varies between final passage votes and in other legislative votes taken in the EP.

Rcode to combine Simon Hix's roll call vote data (to be requested from him) with Simon Hug's data on roll call requesters (same for first 18 month of EP 6) (and separate vote requesters, if these votes were decided by roll call vote: if users encounter room for improvement in this data I would appreciate to be informed, thanks).

paper

JAGS-code: party pressure

JAGS-code: party pressure as a function of rcv requester

Footnotes:

1 Thanks are due to Simon Hix for sharing his roll call vote data and Doru Frantescu for helping me using it. The Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant-No 100012-129737) provided greatly appreciated partial financial support. The results of some early analyses on which this paper is based were presented with Brian Crisp and Matthew Gabel at the ``Open Legislative Data in Paris: A Conference of the Third Kind with Hacktivists and Academics'' at Sciences Po, Paris (July 6th and 7th, 2012). Questions and feedback from the participants at this conference as well as helpful email conversations with Simon Hix, Bjorn Hoyland and Monika Mühlböck are gratefully acknowledged.

2  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; phone ++41 22 379 89 47; email: simon.hug@unige.ch

File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.12.
On 11 Jun 2012, 08:46.