Do Governments Sway European Court of Justice Decision-making?: Evidence from Government Court Briefs

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is commonly described as a powerful international force for legal integration. Indeed, past studies indicate that the ECJ has developed a supranational legal order that trumps national law in a broad range of economic policy areas. But this depiction of an autonomous Court driving European integration beyond the desires of the member-states is dubious. We would expect the Court, whose existence depends on an international treaty and whose authority depends on national enforcement, to have strong incentives to decide cases with an eye to concerns of national governments. We argue that past studies -- which were based on a small number of case studies -- cannot demonstrate whether the Court is or is not sensitive to member-state interests. Based on novel dataset of all ECJ decisions over three years, we develop an empirical test of member-state influence on ECJ decisions and demonstrate that the Court does temper its decisions to accommodate member-state concerns.

How the Court of Justice of the European Union can be reformed to improve the timely administration of justice

The Court of Justice of the European Union currently has a huge backlog, with cases taking over 17 months on average to process. But how do the Court’s internal procedures affect the duration of cases? And how could the EU reform the Court to improve the timely administration of justice? Drawing on new research, Joshua Fjelstul, Matt Gabel and Cliff Carrubba evaluate potential institutional reforms to reduce the duration of cases and the size of the Court’s backlog

National Party Politics and Supranational Politics in the European Union: New Evidence from the European Parliament

Political parties play an important role in structuring political competition at different levels of governance in the European Union (EU). The political parties that contest national elections also participate in the EU legislative institutions, with the governing parties at the national level participating in the Council of Ministers and a broad range of national parties represented in the European Parliament (EP). Recent research indicates that national parties in the EP have formed ideological coalitions -- party groups -- that represent transnational political interests. These party groups appear to manage legislative behavior such that national interests -- which dominate the Council of Ministers -- are subjugated to ideological conflict. In this paper, we demonstrate that the roll-call vote evidence for the impact of party groups in the EP is misleading. Because party groups have incentives to select votes for roll call so as to hide or feature particular voting patterns, the true character of political conflict is never revealed in roll calls.

A second look at legislative behavior in the European Parliament: roll-call votes and the party system

'Jüngste Forschungen zum Wahlverhalten im Europäischen Parlament (EP) kommen zum Schluss, dass die Fraktionen der unterschiedlichen politischen Parteien das legislative Verhalten beeinflussen. Dadurch wird politischer Wettbewerb im EP entlang ideologischer und nicht nationaler Linien organisiert. Daraus folgt, dass das EP eine geeignete Arena für transnationale politische Auseinandersetzungen darstellt. Die Autoren überprüfen nochmals verschiedene empirische Resultate, die diese Schlussfolgerungen unterstützen. Basierend auf der Analyse eines neuen Datensatzes behaupten die, dass die empirische Basis für diese Schlussfolgerungen bedenklich ist. Denn die namentlichen Abstimmungen, welche bisher als Basis zu Studien zum legislativen Abstimmungsverhalten gedient haben, stellen ein verzerrtes Sample für eben solche dar. Es stellt sich somit die allgemeine Frage, inwiefern die bisherige Beschreibung von Parteikohäsion oder die Charakterisierung von Parteienwettbewerb in der Legislative noch Gültigkeit besitzen. Die Resultate weisen außerdem darauf hin, dass die Fraktionen den Großteil ihrer legislativen Abstimmungen vor den Wählern verbergen und somit ihr legislatives Verhalten verschleiern. Obwohl das EP häufig als Quelle für demokratische Legitimation in der EU-Politikgestaltung genannt wird, zeigen die Resultate, dass in der Praxis die verschiedenen Fraktionen die Kontrollmöglichkeiten der Bürger signifikant behindern.' (Autorenreferat)'A great deal of recent research on voting behavior in the European Parliament (EP) concludes that party groups dominate legislative behavior, effectively organizing political competition along ideological rather than national lines. As a result, some argue that the EP is a suitable arena for transnational political contestation. We re-examine several empirical findings used to support these conclusions. Based on an analysis of a novel set of data regarding EP votes that are unrecorded, we argue that the empirical basis for these conclusions is dubious. The fundamental finding is that roll call votes, which form the basis of studies of legislative voting behavior, are a biased sample of legislative votes. This calls into question the accuracy of any description of party unity or the character of party competition on legislation that is gleaned from roll call votes in the EP. In addition, our findings indicate that party groups hide the vast majority of legislative votes from the eyes of voters, therefore obfuscating legislative behavior. Thus, while the EP is often identified as a source of democratic accountability for EU policy-making because its members are directly elected, our findings suggest that in practice party groups significantly obstruct this channel of popular control over policy-making.' (author's abstract)

Roll-Call Vote Selection: Implications for the Study of Legislative Politics

Roll-call votes provide scholars with the opportunity to measure many quantities of interest. However, the usefulness of the roll-call sample depends on the population it is intended to represent. After laying out why understanding the sample properties of the roll-call record is important, we catalogue voting procedures for 145 legislative chambers, finding that roll calls are typically discretionary. We then consider two arguments for discounting the potential problem: (a) roll calls are ubiquitous, especially where the threshold for invoking them is low or (b) the strategic incentives behind requests are sufficiently benign so as to generate representative samples. We address the first defense with novel empirical evidence regarding roll-call prevalence and the second with an original formal model of the position-taking argument for roll-call vote requests. Both our empirical and theoretical results confirm that inattention to vote method selection should broadly be considered an issue for the study of legislative behavior

The behaviour of political parties and MPs in the parliaments of the Weimar Republic

Copyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.Analysing the roll-call votes of the MPs of the Weimar Republic we find: (1) that party competition in the Weimar parliaments can be structured along two dimensions: an economic left–right and a pro-/anti-democratic. Remarkably, this is stable throughout the entire lifespan of the Republic and not just in the later years and despite the varying content of votes across the lifespan of the Republic, and (2) that nearly all parties were troubled by intra-party divisions, though, in particular, the national socialists and communists became homogeneous in the final years of the Republic.Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstan

A Second Look at Legislative Behavior in the European Parliament. Roll-Call Votes and the Party System. IHS Political Science Series: 2004, No. 94

A great deal of recent research on voting behavior in the European Parliament (EP) concludes that party groups dominate legislative behavior, effectively organizing political competition along ideological rather than national lines. As a result, some argue that the EP is a suitable arena for transnational political contestation. We re-examine several empirical findings used to support these conclusions. Based on an analysis of a novel set of data regarding EP votes that are unrecorded, we argue that the empirical basis for these conclusions is dubious. The fundamental finding is that roll call votes, which form the basis of studies of legislative voting behavior, are a biased sample of legislative votes. This calls into question the accuracy of any description of party unity or the character of party competition on legislation that is gleaned from roll call votes in the EP. In addition, our findings indicate that party groups hide the vast majority of legislative votes from the eyes of voters, therefore obfuscating legislative behavior. Thus, while the EP is often identified as a source of democratic accountability for EU policy-making because its members are directly elected, our findings suggest that in practice party groups significantly obstruct this channel of popular control over policy-making

The Politics of International Oversight: Strategic Monitoring and Legal Compliance in the European Union

States often violate international agreements, both accidentally and intentionally. To process complaints efficiently, states can create formal, pretrial procedures in which governments can negotiate with litigants before a case ever goes to court. If disputes are resolved during pretrial negotiations, it can be very difficult to tell what has happened. Are governments coming into compliance? If so, are they only doing so when they have accidentally committed a violation or even when they are intentionally resisting? Or are challenges simply being dropped? This paper presents a formal model to address these questions. We develop our theory in the context of the European Union (EU). To test our model, we collect a new dataset of over 13,000 Commission infringement cases against EU member states (2003–2013). Our results suggest that accidental and intentional noncompliance both occur, but that intentional noncompliance is more common in the EU. We find that the Commission is an effective, if imperfect, monitor and enforcer of international law. The Commission can correct intentional noncompliance, but not always. It strategically drops cases that it believes it is unlikely to win

“Roll-Call Votes and Party Discipline in the European Parliament: Reconsidering MEP Voting Behavior”

Over the past ten years, possibly the most dramatic institutional development in the European Union (EU) has been the augmentation of the legislative powers of the European Parliament (EP). Until 1987 the EU legislative process required only that the EP be consulted before the council of Ministers decided EU legislation. Since then the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and the Amsterdam Treaty have created and gradually expanded a more powerful legislative role for the EP. Indeed, for a broad range of policy areas, the EP can now exercise a legislative veto. Consequently, understanding the decisions of the EP on legislative proposals is crucial to explaining the legislative process and legislative outcomes in the EU. In particular, we need to understand the voting behavior of Members of the European Parliament