"Coding Without Humans: A "real-time" database of the European Parliament"

The paper presents the first "real-time" database to the European Parliament (EP) research community. Quantitative research on the European Parliament has until now been associated with large start-up costs as an informative dataset about the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) has not been available. We offer a drastic reduction of these start-up costs through an online resource with updated information about membership of party groups, committee assignments and posts in the EP leadership since the first direct elections in 1979 until the present day. As a demonstration of the dataset, we conduct a natural experiment on the effect of party groups, comparing the voting behaviour of MEPs pre and post party switching

Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament

This article argues that MEPs from national parties represented in the Council of Ministers are more active as rapporteurs on Codecision legislation than MEPs from national parties not represented in the Council. EP rapporteurs can be thought of as informed actors offering non-binding advice to the EP plenary. Expert committees and the Council presidency play a similar role in the Council. Compared with rapporteurs from parties not represented in the Council, EP rapporteurs from parties represented in the Council may incur lower costs in coordinating their proposals with the informed actors in the Council. If this is the case, they should be more interested in writing Codecision reports than are MEPs from parties not represented in the Council. This possibility is investigated using a data set consisting of all Codecision legislation initiated by the Commission between 1999 and 2004

Government and opposition in EU legislative politics.

This thesis presents a model of EU legislative politics. The model sees national political parties as actors, rather than institutions, countries or trans-national party groups. The empirical focus is on the Codecision procedure after the Amsterdam reform came into effect in 1999. In essence, the thesis argues that governing parties dominate EU legislative politics. The governing parties' advantage stems from two factors. First, they are represented in the Upper House, the Council of Ministers, while opposition parties are not. Second, the shifting majority requirements in the European Parliament (EP) mean that a qualified majority in the Council can impose its preferences on the EP if the Council has the support from a blocking minority in the EP. Nevertheless, the qualified majority requirement in the Council also means that most governing parties would like to see a larger change in policy than what the Council can agree to in their common position. This has implications for the legislative strategy of both governing and opposition parties. Three hypotheses are tested. Hypothesis 1: Governing parties are more active as Codecision agenda- setters (rapporteurs) than opposition parties. Hypothesis 2: Rapporteurs from governing parties are more likely to see their initial legislative proposal being accepted by the Council of Ministers in the first reading. Hypothesis 3: The majority of governing parties and ideologically close opposition parties are more likely to support second reading amendments than other parties. The empirical evidence supports the hypotheses. Thus, there are empirical grounds for arguing that government and opposition exist in EU legislative politics. The governing coalition is the qualified majority of the governing parties and its ideologically close parties in the EP. The opposition is the losing minority in the Council and its ideologically close parties in the EP. The opposition also includes those parties that are neither ideologically close to the minority nor close to the majority of the governing parties. The evidence shows that behaviour differences are more evident between governing and opposition parties from adversarial member states. In non-adversarial states, which often have minority or oversized coalition government, the difference between governing and opposition parties is smaller

"Candidate Quality in European Parliament Elections"

European Parliament (EP) elections are characterized by low turnout and defection from governing parties to smaller parties. The most common explanation for this is that European elections are ‘second order national elections’, which voters use to either punish the government or simply abstain. However, so far the literature has not considered whether the quality of the candidates in EP elections is a contributing factor to these patterns of voting. In this paper, we examine whether low levels of turnout and defection from governing parties are influenced by the quality of candidates elected to the EP. We use a unique dataset on the background of each of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from 1979 to 2006 to examine the determinants cross-national and cross-party variation in candidate experience and prominence, as well as the effect on turnout and electoral fortunes of parties. Finally, we examine whether the quality of candidates provides a good indicator of their activities in the Parliament. We find systematic differences in candidate quality across the member states. Higher candidate quality increases turnout and contributes to the electoral success of parties in EP elections. The drawback seems to be that the qualities that make candidates stand out in EP election campaigns make for inactive committee members

Can the Chancellor still influence voting patterns in the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England?

The MPC at the Bank of England was set up to make independent judgements about interest rate policy. But after studying every decision the Committee made over an eleven year period, Simon Hix, Nick Vivyan and Bjørn Høyland find evidence that by appointing members of the MPC the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able to alter the balance of votes there. The Treasury still gets to shape the Bank’s decision-making to some extent

From doves to hawks: a spatial analysis of voting in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, 1997-2007

This paper examines the making of UK monetary policy between 1997 and 2007 using an analysis of voting behaviour in the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). We use a Bayesian method to estimate the interest rate policy preferences of the MPC members on a ‘dove-hawk’ scale. Then, by comparing the ‘ideal points’ of outgoing members with their successors, we find evidence that MPC composition complements the fiscal policies pursued by the government. The revealed preferences of the MPC members suggest three distinct groups; ‘the doves’, who favour lower interest rates than the median committee member; ‘the centrists’, whose revealed preferences are in line with the median committee member; and ‘the hawks’, who favour higher interest rates than the median committee member. Our analysis suggests that the ‘opposition’ to the centrist group changes from the doves to the hawks as the spending policies of the government ceased to be constrained by the 1997 electoral promise to maintain conservative spending plans

Procedural and party effects in European Parliament roll-call votes

I extend the standard spatial model of legislative voting to account for vote-specific party inducements and procedural differences. Focusing on voting in the 1999-2004 European Parliament, I find evidence of vote-specific party inducements in a large share of the roll call votes. Furthermore, MEPs position themselves differently across procedures. As most roll call votes are taken on non-legislative votes, these estimates may overemphasize voting pattern on these votes and downplay voting pattern on legislative votes. As such, these estimates may be a poorly suited for studying within party heterogeneity on legislative votes.bayes; codecision; European Parliament; voting

The political system of the European Union

Systematically revised and rewritten throughout and updated to cover the impact of the Lisbon Treaty, this highly-successful and ground-breaking text remains unique in analyzing the EU as a political system using the methods of comparative political science