The EU doesn’t weaken UK parliamentary democracy as much as Leavers have you believe

For many advocates of a Brexit, the principle of ‘returning powers to Westminster’ is sacrosanct. They point out that parliamentary debate subjects legislation to proper domestic scrutiny in a way that is impossible in Brussels and Strasbourg. Yet, argues Thomas Winzen, Britain’s opt-outs and the considerable parliamentary time already devoted to EU-related questions suggest that the Commons is not being sidelined. In addition, should Britain vote to leave, the resulting trade deals and bilateral negotiations would be largely thrashed out behind the scenes. On balance, Brexit poses a greater threat to the Commons’ relevance than does a Remain vote

Citizen-centred or state-centred? The representational design of international parliamentary institutions

As a result of the spread of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs), international organizations face crucial questions of representational design. We introduce a distinction between citizen-centred or state-centred IPIs in international organizations (IO). Drawing on new data, we show that, even though parliaments might seem likely to foster citizen representation in the international realm, they in fact often follow state-centred representational designs. We further find that citizen-centred IPIs are a near exclusive phenomenon of a few, democratic regional integration projects. Given the prevalence of state-centred representational designs, we conclude that IPIs’ potential to represent different cross-border communities, concerns, and conflict lines than intergovernmental IO bodies remains institutionally limited. IPIs are thus unlikely to challenge these bodies in similar ways as often observed in the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Union’s Council of Ministers

The Choice for Differentiated Europe: Why European Union Member States Opt out of Integration

Since the early 1990s, European integration has become differentiated integration. Treaty revisions and enlargements have resulted in opt-outs for countries such as Britain or Denmark, and in policy areas such as monetary union. Analysing under what conditions member states make use of the opportunity to opt-out or exclude other countries from European integration, we argue that different explanations apply to treaty and accession negotiations respectively. Threatening to block deeper integration, member states with strong national identities secure differentiations in treaty reform, particularly regarding the integration of core state powers. In enlargement, in turn, old member states fear economic disadvantages and low administrative capacity and, therefore impose differentiation on poor newcomers. A logistic regression analysis of the use of differentiation opportunities by member and candidate countries from Maastricht in 1993 to the Croatian accession in 2013 lends empirical support to these arguments

The European Semester and Parliamentary Oversight Institutions Inside and Outside of the Euro Area

The European Semester is a challenge for national parliaments but also an opportunity to reform domestic oversight institutions. Drawing on data from all member states, this study examines the conditions under which national parliaments use this opportunity. Is Euro area membership a prerequisite for parliamentary adaptation to the European Semester and, if so, which further combinations of conditions account for variation among Euro area countries? The analysis suggests that membership in or close ties with the Euro area and institutional strength constitute necessary conditions for parliamentary adaptation. Combined with other factors—in particular, public debt exceeding the Maastricht criteria—these conditions explain reform in many cases. National parliamentary adaptation to the European Semester thus follows existing institutional divisions constituted by differentiated integration in the Euro area and uneven national parliamentary strength

The institutional position of national parliaments in the European Union: Developments, explanations, effects

This article reviews the literature on the institutional position of national parliaments in the EU. It focuses on new institutional developments, explanations, and effects discussed over the course of the last decade. Existing datasets on parliamentary oversight institutions in EU affairs and economic governance have been extended to 2020 to inform the discussion. A systematic overview of new analyses of the effects of oversight institutions in EU and domestic politics is offered as well. Cutting across the debate as to whether parliaments are multi-level or domestic players in the EU, this review concludes that the last decade has seen growing policy specialization in the institutional position of national parliaments at the European and national levels, and that the causes and consequences of this development remain largely unstudied

Party groups and committee negotiations in the European Parliament: outside attention and the anticipation of plenary conflict

We study the relationship of the European Parliament's (EP) standing committees and party groups. According to recent studies, committees are the centre of EP policy-making, while party groups enable the transmission of policy positions from specialists to generalists through the mechanism of ‘perceived preference coherence’ (Ringe 2010). We argue that this view underestimates the importance of party groups during the committee stage, if there is outside attention to committee negotiations, or if specialists expect conflict at the plenary stage. Under these conditions, committee members use the party groups to pre-empt the anticipated risk of plenary conflict in an effort to protect their reputation and legislative goals. Finding intra-party co-ordination at the committee stage is important, since the rise of early legislative agreements diminishes the formal relevance of the plenary in EP policy-making. The study of intra-party co-ordination also speaks to a growing scholarly interest in informal European governance

The Contingent Diffusion of Parliamentary Oversight Institutions in the European Union

What explains the variation in institutional adaptation of national parliaments to European integration? Whereas the existing literature has mainly focused on domestic conditions, this article explains institutional adaptation to integration by focusing on inter‐parliamentary diffusion. The argument draws on ‘learning’ mechanisms of diffusion on the demand side and on ‘emulation’ mechanisms on the supply side. Parliamentary demand for external inspiration is related to uncertainty about functional oversight institutions, and the selection of sources to perceptions of similarity and success. Demand arises in new European Union member parliaments and young democracies that then turn towards culturally alike countries and old democracies. Using spatial econometrics, support is demonstrated for the argument in the article while ruling out alternative diffusion mechanisms such as spatial proximity and learning from Scandinavian frontrunners once links along cultural similarity and democratic experience are controlled for. The results underline the limits of the ‘isolated polity’ approach in the comparative study of institutions in Europe's closely integrated political system, while also showing that, even in this favourable environment, diffusion pathways are contingent on the mechanisms generating demand among policy makers and shaping their selection of sources for external information

Is parliamentary attention to the EU strongest when it is needed the most? National parliaments and the selective debate of EU policies

When do parliaments debate European Union policies? Normative arguments suggest that debates enhance government accountability. Others warn of government bias, declining debate near elections, and parties avoiding Eurosceptic publics. Our conclusions are more differentiated. We argue that rank-and-file parliamentarians rather than leaders initiate debates. Political incentives guide their debate selection towards salient policies in the countries in which voters care most. However, where the motivation Eurosceptic publics provide and institutions facilitating rank-and-file agenda-setting are lacking, EU law-making and European Council priorities will raise little parliamentary attention. Analysis of original data, using a Bayesian and multilevel framework, lends credibility to our views. Claims of a government bias, election effects, or trends towards more debate are unlikely to hold in all countries

Parliamentary co-evolution: national parliamentary reactions to the empowerment of the European Parliament

Existing research on the European Union's (EU) multilevel parliamentary system builds on the hypothesis of parallel evolution, situating explanations for European Parliament (EP) empowerment at the EU level and explanations for national parliamentary powers in EU affairs at the national level. We propose the hypothesis of co-evolution, which specifies a connection between national and European arenas of parliamentarization. We study whether the EP's empowerment enhances or reduces pressure on national parliaments to strengthen their own EU-related competences. First, we argue that national parliamentary parties take conscious positions on the powers of the EP. Second, support for the EP among the party composition of national parliaments tells us whether parliaments regard the EP as a competitor or ally, feeling pressed, or relieved of the pressure, to strengthen their EU-related competences

Opting out from European Union legislation: the differentiation of secondary law

Differentiated integration in the European Union (EU) has been primarily discussed and analysed at the treaty level, whereas lack of systematic data has hampered the examination of secondary-law or legislative differentiation. We present a new data set of differentiation in EU legislation from 1958 to 2012, a descriptive analysis and a comparison of the patterns of primary- and secondary-law differentiation across time, member states and policies. We find that differentiation facilitating the accession of new members and constitutional differentiation accommodating the opposition against the integration of core state powers drive both primary- and secondary-law differentiation. In addition, we find complementarity between differentiation in treaty law and secondary legislation depending on the availability and salience of differentiation opportunities