Committee chair selection under high informational and organizational constraints

This article draws on major theories of committee organization to explain committee chair selection in contexts with high informational and organizational constraints. We test our theoretical expectations through a series of fixed effects conditional logit models ran on an original data set which includes all legislators who have served in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 2012. The findings indicate that sector knowledge matters more for committee chair selection in the first post-communist terms, while chair seniority and party credentials acquire relevance later on. The effect of sector knowledge is stronger than that of chair seniority for the committees that the members of parliament perceive to be the most important, while party leaders have privileged access to the chair position irrespective of how salient the committee is

The Vanishing Lists: Collecting and Matching Parliamentary Candidate Data in Romania

Publishing and preserving detailed information about candidates running for public offi ce is a form of accountability and a precondition for the production of reliable academic knowledge about electoral and partisan politics. This article offers a guide to researchers interested in collecting candidate data in environments where both politicians who design and civil servants who administer the electoral process have a limited understanding of the relevance of such data and where their bureaucratic capacity is underdeveloped. It does so by focusing on the case of Romania, where no complete registry of candidatures at parliamentary elections exists and key information about the candidates running in the 1990–2000 elections seems to have been lost forever. We employ process tracing and an in-depth analysis of legal documents to reveal the causes of this outcome. The article describes how a team of researchers devised and implemented several research strategies to cope with scarce data, the various types of logistical or methodological obstacles encountered and the solutions used in order to recover data and build a new, matched dataset of Romanian parliamentary candidates

The resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic

This review article takes stock of the research analysing the resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic in 31 democracies. The extant research shows that parliaments were better able to fulfil their oversight roles in states with a higher quality of democracy and where constitutional and procedural rules provided more space for parliamentary scrutiny (e.g. incongruent bicameralism). Scholars have also argued that unified executives often attempted to bypass legislative oversight, while on the contrary the checks and balances embedded in coalition governance have acted as a break on attempts to marginalise parliaments. Parliaments struggling to assert their autonomy and fulfil their scrutiny role in normal times saw these issues exacerbated during the health crisis. Finally, the resilience of parliamentary oversight also depended on the extent to which opposition parties adopted a ‘rally around the flag’ or a politicisation strategy, the latter appearing more likely as the pandemic progressed

Legislative performance and the electoral connection in European Parliament elections

The absence of an electoral connection is a widely held assumption in the scholarship on the European Parliament (EP) and a cause of serious normative concern about the functioning of the European Union. Weak individual legislator accountability is part of this assumption, even if we still know little about the extent to which legislative performance matters for citizens in EP elections that allow preferential voting. This study is the first to analyse how legislative performance influences the preference vote shares of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and whether this is moderated by their parties’ EU salience and incumbent intra-party competition. It draws on an original dataset that combines candidate and electoral data from three rounds of EP elections held between 2004 and 2014 under open or flexible list rules with information on individual legislative activity (i.e., number of reports, parliamentary questions and speeches) and leadership positions at EP and committee level. One dimension of legislative performance, report writing, is associated with a larger share of preference votes but only for incumbents of parties assigning high salience to the EU. While MEPs win a higher share of preference votes when they face limited co-partisan incumbent competition, this factor does not moderate the electoral connection

National games for local gains: legislative activity, party organization and candidate selection

Conventional research on political careers has emphasized the use of local offices as a springboard for national careers. However, movements in the reverse direction can also happen when local offices are available and attractive for national level politicians. This article argues that various types of legislative behavior and party strategy influence the likelihood that national legislators run in local elections and tests how this happens. The analysis focuses on Romania and uses an original dataset compiled for the 2016 local elections. Our findings show that legislators with a rich record of parliamentary activity will continue at the national level, while those who do constituency work, and those who can help their parties more locally, move to local politics

Democratic backsliding has not (yet) united the populist radical right in the European Parliament

The European Union is currently facing the double challenge of the rise of radical right populism and the presence of democratic backsliding in several member states. Yet despite the overlap of actors engaged in both processes, Mihail Chiru and Natasha Wunsch show that democratic backsliding has not yet served as a catalyst for populist radical right cooperation inside the European Parliament. Instead, ideological divergences and institutional fragmentation still pose an obstacle to collaboration between populist radical right parties at the European level

Supranational responses to democratic backsliding: norm contestation and discursive polarisation in the European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) has repeatedly been criticised for its slow, insufficient response to democratic backsliding in several member states. At the same time, it is the arena where we find some of the most vigorous defences of the EU’s fundamental values and appeals to safeguard the rule of law across the Union. Leveraging an original dataset of MEP statements from plenary debates over the last two EP terms (2009–2019), this article examines the dynamics of norm contestation in the EP’s responses to democratic backsliding. We observe a discursive polarisation primarily along ideological lines, with a notable slippage among European People’s Party legislators who shift from scepticism towards EU intervention in rule of law matters to overt support. We show how Eurosceptic MEPs and those from backsliding countries seek to appeal to domestic voters by invoking negative partisanship and anti-Western resentment to discredit EU criticism. In contrast, pro-intervention MEPs situate their discourse at the supranational level and focus on defending European unity and the rule of law as shared identity. Overall, the growing contestation over the nature of fundamental values by Eurosceptics has crystallized a more vocal and differentiated engagement of Europhile MEPs in democratic backsliding debates

How preference votes affect the allocation of seats in the European Parliament

Citizens in some EU member states are given the opportunity to select their preferred candidates when voting for parties competing in European Parliament elections. But do these systems actually result in meaningful differences in the allocation of seats? Drawing on newly collected data, Thomas Däubler and Mihail Chiru explore the impact preference votes have on the composition of the Parliament

Time is on my side? The temporal proximity between elections and parties’ salience strategies

The emphasis national parties put on European Union (EU) issues in their manifestos varies to a great extent between countries. A systematic explanation of this variation is, however, still lacking. We address this gap by exploring the effect of the temporal proximity between national and European Parliament (EP) elections within the national electoral cycle on national parties’ EU issue emphasis. Multilevel mixed-effects Tobit regressions on a sample of 956 manifestos, produced by 340 parties running for national elections in 27 EU member states between 1979 and 2019, indicate that temporal proximity displays a positive effect on national parties’ EU issue salience: the closer in time EP elections are to national elections within the national electoral cycle, the more parties emphasize EU issues in their national election manifestos. This is particularly the case for non-Eurosceptic parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition in EU member states

Fractionated extraction from Centaurea cyanus L. flowers

Catedra Farmacognozie și botanică farmaceutică, IP USMF „Nicolae Testemiţanu”, Republica Moldova, Institutul de Chimie al AȘMObiectivul studiului. Până în prezent sunt cunoscute mai mult de 8000 de substanțe de natură fenolică, care din punct de vedere chimic, prezintă o grupă neomogenă de compuși organici. Cei mai răspândiți fenoli vegetali fac parte din următoarele grupe: acizi fenolici, flavonoide și taninuri. Extractele vegetale cu conținut de compuși fenolici prezintă un interes științific și medicinal considerabil grație proprietăților curative. Faptul dat a dedus necesitatea standardizării condițiilor de extracție a principiilor active din plante și determinarea ulterioară a conținutului lor. Un interes deosebit prezintă flavonoidele, care se extrag din plantă cu alcool etilic. Însă, în aceste extracte se regăsesc și clorofilele. Astfel, obiectivul de bază a fost de a determina flavonoidele în prezența concomitentă a mai multor compuși. În acest scop, a fost realizată extracția fracționată cu diferiți solvenți din flori de albăstriță. Material şi metode. Obiect de analiză au servit florile uscate marginale din inflorescență de albăstriță. Extracția fracționată a fost realizată în următorul mod: la 100 mg produs vegetal (faza solidă inițială) s-a adaugat 20 ml solvent (hexan, cloroform, alcool etilic și apă consecvent), s-a agitat amestecul timp de 2 ore (temperatura camerei, 50°C sau temperatura de fierbere). Faza lichidă (FL) a fost separată prin decantare. Faza solidă (FS) a fost spălată de 3-4 ori cu solventul respectiv, pentru a elimina urmele de fază lichidă. La FS, spălată și uscată, s-a adăugat o porție nouă de solvent și procesul s-a repetat până la dispariția benzilor de absorbție în spectrul substanțelor extrase. În continuare a urmat extracția cu următorul solvent. Spectrele extractelor finale diluate au fost înregistrate la lungimea de undă de 200-700 nm, la spectrofotometru Lambda 25 (Perkin Elmer). Dat fiind faptul că intensitatea și poziția benzilor de absorbție a luminei substanțelor extrase depinde de solvent, toate spectrele studiate au fost înregistrate în soluții etanolice. Pentru aceasta din fiecare extract a fost evaporat solventul și 5 ml extract uscat a fost dizolvat în 5 ml alcool etilic. Pentru analiza solubilității flavonoidelor (antocianilor), a fost aplicată metoda, bazată pe reacția de formare a complexului cu clorura de aluminiu. Rezultate şi concluzii. Extracția cu hexan (FS1+hexan – culoarea albastră), FL1+hexan (incoloră) a prezentat spectru cu maxime de absorbție la 272 și 370 nm. La adăugarea cloroformului s-a înregistrat o maximă de absorbție la lungimea de undă de 657 nm, caracteristică pentru clorofile. FL2+cloroform a obținut o colorație gălbuie, iar FS2+hexan, cloroform a rămas albastră. În plus, cloroformul separă clorofilele și nu extrage flavonoidele, ceea ce poate fi utilizat pentru purificarea produsului vegetal. La extracția succesivă cu alcool etilic, FS3+hexan, cloroform, alcool etilic și-a păstrat culoarea albastră, iar FL3+alcool etilic a devenit incoloră. În spectrul de absorbție au fost prezente maxime la lungimile de undă de 270, 538 și 664 nm. Astfel, apare un maxim de absorbție la lungimea de undă de 538 nm, care poate fi atribuit prezenței flavonoidelor. În cazul extracției succesive cu apă, FS4+ hexan, cloroform, alcool etilic, apă s-a decolorat, iar FL4+apăa obținut o nuanță roz. Spectrul de absorbție a prezentat maxime la 267 și 318 nm. Paralel a fost realizată extracția cu apă-HCl, pH=2, la temperatura camerei. FS+apă-HCl a devenit roșie, iar FL+apă-HCl prezintă colorație roșie pronunțată, cu maxime de absorbție la 270, 317 și 512 nm. Deci, cu apă acidulată din flori de albăstriță se extrag antocianii. La adăugarea soluției de AlCl3 0.1N și pH=4, soluția s-a colorat în violet. Maximul de absorbție s-a deplasat la 555 nm. Astfel conchidem, că pentru analiza antocianilor este suficientă extracția apoasă