Bringing Europe into Question - A Longitudinal Study of Domestic Legislators' Questioning Behaviour in EU Affairs

This paper examines parliamentary questioning behavior of political parties with relation to the European Union. Using a unique data collection of parliamentary questions from the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) I provide new evidence on the extent of parliamentary involvement in EU affairs in Belgium and Denmark. In one respect EU-related questions seem not to differ from other issues: The number of questions a party asks depends on whether it is currently in government or in opposition. Second, there is evidence that parties follow issue-based strategies. The analysis reveals that party Euroskepticism has a positive effect on EU-related questioning behavior. The results have implications for the study of parliamentary scrutiny in European Union affairs and our knowledge about party politics inside domestic legislatures

Parties now talk about the EU in national election campaigns, but they still tend to talk past each other

How important is the issue of European integration to national election campaigns? Roman Senninger and Markus Wagner write that while the EU previously played only a very small role in national elections, the onset of the Eurozone crisis has resulted in the issue becoming more prominent in campaigns in several countries. However, using an analysis of party press releases in Austria, they illustrate that parties still differ greatly in how they address the issue, with parties exhibiting a tendency to talk past each other rather than genuinely engaging with the subject

Domestic and European parliamentarians of the same party tend to pay attention to the same policy issues

Do members of the European Parliament (MEPs) act remote from their national party or do they coordinate their behaviour with their ‘home base’? Using data on written parliamentary questions from Danish MPs and Danish MEPs, Roman Senninger and Daniel Bischof show that issue attention across the national and European levels converges, especially within parties represented at both parliamentary levels

How transnational party alliances in the European Union facilitate learning between national political parties

Many political parties in European countries belong to transnational party alliances, which are most visible in the party groups of the European Parliament. But do these alliances influence the policy platforms adopted by parties in domestic politics? Drawing on a new study, Roman Senninger, Daniel Bischof and Lawrence Ezrow illustrate how transnational alliances help facilitate ... Continue

How Transnational Party Alliances Influence National Parties' Policies

Previous research reports that parties in established European democracies learn from and emulate the successful election strategies of foreign incumbents, i.e., successful parties are influential abroad. We theorize that - in addition to incumbency (or success) - exchange takes place through transnational party alliances in the European Union. Relying on party manifesto data and spatial econometric analyses, we show that belonging to the same European Parliament party group enhances learning and emulation processes between national political parties. Estimated short- and long-term effects are approximately two and three times greater when foreign incumbents are in the same European Parliament party group compared to other foreign incumbents. Our results have implications for our understanding of how transnational party groups influence national parties’ policy positions

Party policy diffusion in the European multilevel space: what it is, how it works, and why it matters

Almost since the end of World War II, transnational cooperation among political parties has been a common feature of European politics. This paper makes the case for studying transnational partisan cooperation in the European multilevel space, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of “party policy diffusion.” At the heart of the paper is a conceptual discussion of party policy diffusion in the EU. Specifically, we look at the (1) aims that lead parties to learn from or emulate parties in other countries; (2) the mechanisms through which this may work; and (3) the wider implications of this practice both for domestic and European politics. Drawing on this conceptual discussion, the paper then goes on to offer leads as to how the phenomenon of party policy diffusion can be studied in the European multilevel space. To this end, we briefly point to possible ways of testing hypotheses about party policy diffusion using spatially explicit modeling strategies such as spatial regression models and exponential random graph models for transnational party networks

Anmeldelse af Det nationale råderum ved gennemførelse af EU-regler

Jens Blom-Hansen, Jørgen Grønnegård Christensen, Caroline Howard Grøn, Michael Hansen Jensen og Peter Bjerre Mortensen: Det nationale råderum ved gennemførelse af EU-regler. København: DJØF Forlag, 2021, 227 sider, 285 kr. (anmeldt af Roman Senninger

Replication Data for: Issue Expansion and Selective Scrutiny - How Opposition Parties Used Parliamentary Questions about the European Union in the National Arena from 1973 to 2013

Replication dat

Replication Data for: Working in unison: Political parties and policy issue transfer in the multilevel space

Replication data for Working in unison: Political parties and policy issue transfer in the multilevel spac

Replication Data for: Institutional change in parliament through cross-border partisan emulation

Replication Data for: Institutional change in parliament through cross-border partisan emulatio