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    Democratic Politics in the European Parliament

    With the European Parliament comprising politicians from manydifferent countries, cultures, languages, national parties andinstitutional backgrounds, one might expect politics in theParliament to be highly fragmented and unpredictable. Bystudying more than 15,000 recorded votes between 1979 and2004 this book establishes that the opposite is in fact true:transnational parties in the European Parliament are highlycohesive and the classic ‘left-right’ dimension dominates votingbehaviour. Furthermore, the cohesion of parties in the EuropeanParliament has increased as the powers of the Parliament haveincreased. The authors suggest that the main reason for these

    developments is that like-minded members of the EuropeanParliament (MEPs) have incentives to form stable transnationalparty organizations and to use these organizations to competeover European Union (EU) policies. They suggest that this is apositive development for the future of democratic accountabilityin the EU.

    Simon Hix is Professor of European and ComparativePolitics in the Department of Government at the LondonSchool of Economics and Political Science.

    Abdul G. Noury is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and the Institute for European Studies at theUniversite ´ Libre de Bruxelles.

    Gé rard Roland is Professor in the Departments of Economics and Political Science at the University of California,Berkeley.

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    Themes in European Governance

    Series Editor Andreas Føllesdal

    Editorial Board Stefano Bartolini, Ulrich Preuss, Helen WallaceBeate Kohler-Koch, Thomas Risse, Albert WealePercy Lehning, Fritz W. Scharpf, J. H. H. WeilerAndrew Moravcsik, Philip Schlesinger

    The evolving European systems of governance, in particular the European

    Union, challenge and transform the state, the most important locus of governance and political identity and loyalty over the past 200 years. The seriesThemes in European Governance aims to publish the best theoretical andanalytical scholarship on the impact of European governance on the coreinstitutions, policies and identities of nation states. It focuses upon theimplications for issues such as citizenship, welfare, political decision-making,and economic, monetary and scal policies. An initiative of CambridgeUniversity Press and the Programme on Advanced Research on the European-isation in the Nation-State (ARENA), Norway, the series includes theoreticallyinformed studies analysing key issues at the European level and within European

    states. Volumes in the series will be of interest to scholars and students of Europe both within Europe and worldwide. They will be of particular relevanceto those interested in the development of sovereignty and governance of European states and in the issues raised by multi-level governance and multi-national integration throughout the world.

    Other books in the series:

    Paulette Kurzer Markets and Moral Regulation: Cultural Change in the EuropeanUnionChristoph Knill The Europeanisation of National Administrations: Patterns of Institutional Change and PersistenceTanja Bo¨ rzel States and Regions in the European Union: Institutional Adaptation inGermany and SpainLiesbet Hooghe The European Commission and the Integration of Europe: Images of GovernanceMichael E. Smith Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization of CooperationFrank Schimmelfenning The EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe: Rules and RhetoricGary Marks and Marco R. Steenbergen (eds.) European Integration and Political Conict Gallya Lahav Immigration and Politics in the New Europe: Reinventing Borders

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    Michael Zu¨ rn and Christian Joerges (eds.) Law and Governance in Postnational Europe: Compliance beyond the Nation-StateGerda Falkner et al (eds.) Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member Status

    Jonas Tallberg Leadership and Nagotiation in the European UnionRachel A. Cichowski The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance

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    Democratic Politics in theEuropean Parliament

    Simon HixLondon School of Economics and Political Science

    Abdul G. Noury

    Free University of Brussels

    Gé rard RolandUniversity of California, Berkeley

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    CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

    Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

    Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

    First published in print format

    ISBN-13 978-0-521-87288-1

    ISBN-13 978-0-521-69460-5

    ISBN-13 978-0-511-27805-1

    © Simon Hix, Abdul G. Noury and Gerard Roland 2007

    2007

    Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521872881

    This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

    relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

    ISBN-10 0-511-27805-5

    ISBN-10 0-521-87288-X

    ISBN-10 0-521-69460-4

    Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urlsfor external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does notguarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

    Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org

    hardback

    paperback paperback

    eBook (EBL)eBook (EBL)

    hardback

    http://www.cambridge.org/9780521872881http://www.cambridge.org/http://www.cambridge.org/9780521872881http://www.cambridge.org/

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    List of Contents

    List of gures page xi List of tables xii List of boxes xiv Acknowledgements xv

    Introduction 1

    Summary of the argument and the main ndings 3Outline of the book 6Lessons for political science and European politics 8

    Chapter 1 Development of the European Parliament 12

    1.1 Powers of the European Parliament 121.1.1 Power to control the executive: a hybrid model 131.1.2 Power to make legislation: from a lobbyist to a co-legislator 18

    1.2 Political parties in the European Parliament: a ‘two-plus-several’party system 21

    1.3 The electoral disconnection 261.4 The dataset: roll-call votes in the European Parliament 291.5 Conclusion 31

    Chapter 2 Democracy, transaction costs and political parties 32

    2.1 Citizen-delegate democracy 332.2 Party-based democracy 37

    2.2.1 Parties in legislative politics and the making of public policy 392.2.2 Parties and electoral politics 46

    2.3 Parliaments without strong parties: a history of failure 492.4 Implications for the European Parliament 502.5 Conclusion 53

    vii

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    Chapter 3 Ideological not territorial politics 54

    3.1 Political conict, indivisibilities, externalities and redistribution 553.2 Solving political conicts 57

    3.3 The cleavage theory of democratic politics 633.4 Implications for the European Parliament 663.5 Conclusion 683.6 Appendix: Decentralised governance to territorial

    entities and sectors 69

    Chapter 4 Participation 72

    4.1 Participation in the European Parliament: The costsand benets of voting 74

    4.2 Variations in participation rates across time, politicalgroup and country 77

    4.3 Explaining the patterns 794.4 Conclusion: politics determines participation 85

    Chapter 5 Trends in party cohesion 87

    5.1 Theories of party cohesion 885.2 Measuring cohesion in the European Parliament 915.3 Main trends: growing party voting and declining national voting 935.4 Determinants of party cohesion in the European Parliament

    955.4.1 Variables 955.4.2 Results 99

    5.5 Conclusion: Growing policy-making power leads to growing partycohesion 104

    Chapter 6 Agenda-setting and cohesion 105

    6.1 Agenda-setting and political parties 1086.1.1 The agenda cartel theory of parties 108

    6.1.2 Agenda-setting in the European Parliament: external and internal‘cartels’ 1116.1.3 Propositions about agenda-setting and party cohesion in the

    European Parliament 1156.2 Descriptive evidence of agenda-setting and policy inuence 1186.3 Statistical analysis 121

    6.3.1 Variables 1226.3.2 Results 123

    6.4 Conclusion: agenda control alone cannot explain party discipline 130

    Contentsviii

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    Chapter 7 Who controls the MEPs? 132

    7.1 MEPs: agents with two principals 1337.2 Voting with and against the European and national parties 136

    7.3 Analysis of MEP voting defection in the Fifth Parliament 1397.3.1 Variables 1397.3.2 Results 142

    7.4 Relative importance of European and national parties in all veparliaments 143

    7.5 Conclusion: European parties from national party actions 145

    Chapter 8 Competition and coalition formation 147

    8.1 Theories of party competition and coalition formation 148

    8.2 Patterns of coalitions in the European Parliament 1508.3 Determinants of coalition formation 1528.3.1 Variables 1528.3.2 Results 157

    8.4 Conclusion: an increasingly competitive party system 158

    Chapter 9 Dimensions of politics 161

    9.1 Dimensions of conict in EU politics 1629.2 Estimating MEPs’ ideal points from roll-call votes 1659.3 Spatial maps of the ve elected European Parliaments 1689.4 Interpretation of the meaning of the dimensions 172

    9.4.1 Variables 1729.4.2 Results 175

    9.5 Conclusion: Normal politics in a territorially divided polity 180

    Chapter 10 Investiture and censure of the Santer Commission 182

    10.1 Formation and termination of governments and the case of the EU 18310.2 The Santer Commission: from nomination to resignation 18610.3 Analysis: MEP behaviour in the investiture and

    censure of the Commission 19210.3.1 Variables 19210.3.2 Results 195

    10.4 Conclusion: Government–opposition politics arrives in the EuropeanParliament 198

    Chapter 11 The Takeover Directive 200

    11.1 A short history of the Takeover Directive 20111.2 Explaining MEP voting on the Takeover Directive: nationality or party? 205

    Contents ix

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    11.3 Analysis of MEP behaviour on the Takeover Directive 20811.3.1 Variables 20811.3.2 Results 211

    11.4 Conclusion: parties and ideology matter, even when national interests

    interfere 214

    Conclusion 216Bibliography 221Index 235

    Contentsx

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    List of gures

    1.1 Voter participation in European Parliamentelections page 27

    4.1 Average annual participation in the EuropeanParliament, 1979–2004 78

    4.2 Average participation of the Europeanpolitical groups 78

    4.3 Key determinants of participation in theEuropean Parliament 84

    5.1 Cohesion of the European Parliament as a whole 935.2 Average relative cohesion of the political groups

    and the member states 94

    5.3 National fractionalisation and ideological diversityin the two main groups 965.4 Key factors affecting party cohesion 1036.1 MEP self-placement and NOMINATE locations

    in the fifth parliament 1066.2 Average ideological diversity of the political

    groups in each parliament 1176.3 Proportion of times each party was on the

    winning side 119

    6.4 Relationship between agenda-setting and winning 1218.1 Frequency of the Socialist–EPP ‘grand coalition’ 1518.2 Coalition size and frequency 1538.3 Ideological distance between parties and coalition

    frequency 1559.1a Location of MEPs in the 1979–1984 Parliament 1699.1b Location of MEPs in the 1984–1989 Parliament 1699.1c Location of MEPs in the 1989–1994 Parliament 1709.1d Location of MEPs in the 1994–1999 Parliament 1709.1e Location of MEPs in the 1999–2004 Parliament 1719.2 Proportion of each political group in the Council

    and Commission 174

    xi

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    List of tables

    1.1 Main changes in the powers of the EuropeanParliament page 14

    1.2 Political parties in the elected EuropeanParliament 24

    4.1 Mean participation by member states 794.2 Determinants of political group participation,

    semi-annually 814.3 Determinants of political group participation, by

    individual vote 835.1 Average relative cohesion of the six main

    political groups 945.2 Determinants of party cohesion 1006.1 Testing agenda-setting: pooled results 1246.2 Testing agenda-setting in each Parliament 1287.1 Voting with/against national and European

    parties in the fifth Parliament 1377.2 Defection rates in each Parliament 1387.3 Determinants of MEP defection 1427.4 Average influence of European and national

    parties on MEP voting 1448.1 Coalition patterns in the 1999–2004 Parliament 1518.2 Determinants of changes in coalition frequencies 1569.1 Dimensionality in the European Parliament

    and Other Assemblies 1679.2 Interpreting the dimensions: pooled analysis 1769.3 Interpreting the dimensions: Parliament by

    Parliament results 17810.1 The Santer Commission 184

    10.2 Key votes on the Santer Commission 18610.3 MEP voting behaviour by party, memberstate, and government status 189

    xii

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    10.4 Parties in government at the time of the votes 19410.5 Determinants of MEP Voting on the Santer

    Commission 19611.1 Three key votes on the Takeover Directive 20511.2 MEP voting behaviour by party, member state,

    and council position 20711.3 Parties in government at the time of the votes 21011.4 Determinants of MEP Voting on the Takeover

    Directive 212

    List of tables xiii

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    List of boxes

    2.1 Parties and the reduction of policy volatility page 402.2 Parties and general versus local public goods 43

    xiv

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    Acknowledgements

    Independently of each other, Simon in London and Ge ´rard and Abdulin Brussels began collecting the voting records of the Members of theEuropean Parliament (MEP) in 1998. Abdul and Simon then‘discovered’ each other at the American Political Science Associationconference in Washington, DC in September 2000, when theypresented almost identical papers analysing the dimensions of votingin the European Parliament. We quickly decided to pool our efforts, andstarted working on collecting the full set of roll-call voting data from July1979 to June 2004. This proved more difcult than we had originallyanticipated. The voting records from the rst three parliaments had tobe entered from hard copies of the annexes to the minutes of the

    European Parliament’s plenary sessions. This involved scanning eachpage and applying a specially written piece of software to transform thetext les into a database. For the fourth and fth parliaments, we wereable to gain access to the original electronic les from the EuropeanParliament.

    This research would not have been possible without the support of several people. Georges Destre ´e, from the Centre de Calcul at theUniversite ´ Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), wrote the computer code, whichenabled us to transform kilometres of text into lines of numerical code.

    Giacomo Benedetto coordinated the scanning of the les for the rsttwo parliaments and entered a huge amount of data on each MEP andeach vote. Vincenzo Verardi scanned the voting records for the third andfourth parliaments. Bjorn Hoyland entered the information about eachvote in the rst and fth parliaments. Elsa Roland helped integrate thedatabases from the third and fourth parliaments. Michiel van Hultenprovided us with access to the electronic les from the fth parliament,and Michiel’s assistant, Ruud Verschuur, provided invaluable support insending us the les. Maria Elvira Traccitto, from the EuropeanParliament, provided us with extensive data on each individual MEP.Pat Cox, who was President of the European Parliament between 2002and 2004, invited us to present the research in the European Parliament

    xv

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    in 2003. Without the help of these people this research would not havebeen possible.

    Financial support for the research was provided by the Economic andSocial Research Council of the United Kingdom (No: L213 25 2019),the Nufeld Foundation (No: SGS/00387/G), the Leverhulme Trust(No: RG/8/2000/0042), an ACE grant from the European Commissionand an ARC grant from the Communaute ´ française de Belgique (No:00/05-252). Additionally, we were very fortunate to be able to spendmost of the 2004–2005 academic year together at the University of California, Berkeley, to complete the book. We would like to thankBruce Cain, Heddy Riss and Liz Wiener, at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, for helping in organising Simon and Abdul’svisit. To enable them to visit Berkeley for the year, Simon received aDistinguished Fellow award from the US–UK Fulbright Commissionand Abdul received a Belgian–American Education Foundation fellow-ship. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of these institutionsand people.

    We would also like to acknowledge the following people who havecommented on various aspects of the research and the book manuscript: John Carey, Micael Castanheira, Richard Corbett MEP, ChristopheCrombez, David Farrell, Matt Gabel, Bjorn Hoyland, Simon Hug,

    Amie Kreppel, Charles Lees, Chris Lord, Iain McLean, Keith Poole,Tapio Raunio, Howard Rosenthal, Michael Shackleton, Roger Scully,Erik Voeten and Helen Wallace.

    Simon, Abdul and Ge ´rard

    Acknowledgementsxvi

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    Introduction

    ‘I have come to the conclusion that if a vote were to take place today,the outcome would not be positive for the European institutions or forthe European project. In these circumstances I have decided not tosubmit a new Commission for your approval today. I need more timeto look at this issue, to consult with the Council and to consult furtherwith you, so that we can have strong support for the new Commis-sion. . . . These last few days have demonstrated that the EuropeanUnion is a strong political construction and that this Parliament,elected by popular vote across all our member states, has a vital role toplay in the governance of Europe.’ José Manuel Durã o Barroso, CommissionPresident designate

    ‘Today this House on the river Rhine has grown in stature. Its will was

    tested, its will has prevailed. . . .

    Mr Barroso, you suggested yesterdaythat it was anti-European to vote against your Commission. . . . [but]today, Euroscepticism loses because the voice of democracy in Europehas risen by an octave and has made itself heard in every nationalcapital and beyond.’ Graham Watson, Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (the liberal party in the European Parliament)

    On 27 October 2004 the European Parliament refused to elect thenew Commission, the European Union (EU) executive. There was no

    vote, as 10 minutes before the vote the Commission President designate, Jose´ Manuel Dura ˜o Barroso, announced that he was withdrawing histeam of Commissioners. He simply did not have the numbers: the Partyof European Socialists, the second largest party in the Parliament afterthe June 2004 elections, was backed in its opposition to the proposedCommission by the smaller liberal, green, and radical-left parties.This coalition, with a combined force of 371 out of the 732 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), was easily larger than the pro-Commission bloc of the European People’s Party (EPP), with 268 seats,and the small conservative national party to its right, with 27 seats.

    If it was so clear that the Parliament would reject the Commission,why did Barroso not withdraw his team earlier? It had been known for

    1

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    some time that many liberal, socialist and green MEPs were unhappywith the nomination for the justice and home affairs portfolio of Rocco Buttiglione, a devout Catholic with ultra-conservative views onimmigration, women’s rights and homosexuality.

    Barroso and the governments thought that they could railroad theParliament. The governments expected the Parliament to supporta Commission that was composed of politicians nominated by thetwenty-ve governments of the EU member states, as it had always donebefore. The Parliament does not have the right to reject individualCommissioners, but only to reject the whole team, and rejecting thewhole team was thought of as the ‘nuclear option’. Moreover, a cross-party coalition in the Parliament had voted for Barroso in July, andthe proposed Commission contained a reasonable balance of con-servatives, social democrats and liberals. Above all, Barroso did notplace Buttiglione in another portfolio or force the Italian government tonominate someone else, because the governments were convinced thatthey could force ‘their’ MEPs to support the Commission.

    This time, however, the European Parliament did not bend to the willof the governments. Only the night before the vote did it become clearthat the overwhelming majority of MEPs would side with the leaders of their supranational parties in the Parliament rather than with their

    national party leaders, who were lobbying them heavily to support theCommission. It was now too late to reshufe the team. Barroso hencedecided that delaying the vote was the only option.

    The media heralded this climb down by Barroso and the governmentsas a founding moment for democracy at the European level. 1 A coalitionof supranational political parties was able to rally their troops in theParliament to block the will of the supposedly sovereign governments of twenty-ve nation-states. With cohesive parties that are independentfrom national government pressures, the formal powers of the European

    Parliament, to amend legislation and the budget and to elect and cen-sure the Commission, were now a reality. Democratic politics had nallyarrived in the EU.

    Most commentators failed to realise, however, that parties and politicsinside the European Parliament had been developing for some time.

    1 For example, Wolfgang Munchau in The Financial Times declared that it was ‘a great dayfor European democracy’ (28 October 2004, p. 17). Adrian Hamilton in The Independent wrote: ‘Europe’s leaders . . . cannot just continue taking the Union’s institutions or itsvoters for granted . . . But the other great lesson of this week may well prove morebenecent in the long term . . . we are seeing in [the European Parliament’s]manoeuvrings the beginnings of cross-national parties and Europe-wide politics’ (28October 2004, p. 41).

    Democratic politics in the European Parliament2

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    Since the rst direct elections in 1979, beyond the attention of the massmedia and the voters, and even off the radar screens of most of the EU’sgovernments, the MEPs had gradually fashioned a well organised andhighly competitive party system at the European level. What actuallyhappened in October 2004 was that Europe’s political class was nallyforced to wake up to the new reality, where supranational party politicsis a key aspect of policy-making in the emerging European polity.

    What we do in this book is explain how this process developed: whyMEPs chose to organise as supranational parties in the European Par-liament in the rst place, why these parties then evolved as powerfulagenda-setting actors, why voting along supranational party lines gra-dually replaced voting along national party lines as the dominant form of behaviour in the Parliament, and ultimately how democratic politicsemerged in the only directly elected institution at the European level.

    We argue that increases in the power of the European Parliament haveplayed a crucial role in shaping supranational parties in the EuropeanParliament. 2 In a rather short space of time, a matter of decades ratherthan centuries, the European Parliament has evolved from an unelectedconsultative body to one of the most powerful elected assemblies in theworld. Today, a large proportion of social and economic legislationapplied in the member states of the EU is adopted at the European

    rather than the national level. The European Parliament not only hasthe power to amend and reject most EU laws but also inuences themake-up and political direction of the body that initiates these laws: theEuropean Commission. We argue that this increase in powers has madethe European Parliament look increasingly like a normal parliament withcohesive parties who compete to dominate legislative outcomes and whoform coalitions with other party groups for that purpose.

    Summary of the argument and the main ndings

    We analyse all of the nearly 15,000 recorded votes by individual MEPs(roll-call votes) in the rst ve elected European Parliaments, coveringthe 25-year period between 1979 and 2004. We show that voting in theEuropean Parliament has become increasingly structured. Contrary to awidespread popular perception, this structure is based around thetransnational European parties, and not nationality. A German con-servative is more likely to vote with a Portuguese conservative than with

    2 For a survey of the explanations for the development of the powers of the EuropeanParliament, see, in particular, Rittberger ( 2005 ).

    Introduction 3

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    a German social democrat or a German green. The voting behaviour of MEPs is thus based on party rather than nationality.

    We build a theory to explain why this is the case in the EuropeanParliament and also in other democracies. Our argument is based on theidea that in a democracy political conicts (over redistribution, legisla-tion, and so on) inside a parliament between representatives of differentterritorial units are best solved by federalism; in other words, by theappropriate devolution of power to the territorial units themselves, whenthese conicts are important. The costs of devolution can then beminimised by keeping some powers centralised, such as jurisdiction overfree trade and other areas (some key environmental competences, forexample) where externalities between territorial units are important andwould have a negative effect under decentralisation. We argue that it ismore difcult and less efcient to organise the devolution of powers tosocio-professional groups or economic sectors, or other functionalinterests in the economy, because this would entail potentially verynegative economic consequences. If conicts between territorial unitscan be solved more easily by devolution of powers than conictsbetween socio-economic groups, then it follows quite naturally that theconicts one ends up observing in national parliaments or federal leg-islatures are conicts between socio-economic groups. This explains

    why parties form along the left–right axis and not along territorial lines.The theory applies to other advanced democracies as well as to theEuropean Parliament.

    We show that party cohesion has increased as the powers of theEuropean Parliament have steadily increased. This suggests that higherstakes in decision-making have given MEPs with similar policy pre-ferences the right incentives to solve their collective action problemsinside the parliament, to form European-wide parties, to delegateincreasing powers to the leaders of these organisations, to come up with

    unied positions to compete with the other European parties and todiscipline their members into voting with the European party line. Weshow, for example, that cohesiveness of parties does not decrease in thelong run even when the parties become more ideologically hetero-geneous. However, higher fragmentation of the European parties isassociated with a somewhat lower cohesion. In other words, when theEuropean parties are composed mostly of many small national partydelegations, they have a harder time to agree on a common positionthan when the European parties are composed of some large nationaldelegations and some smaller ones.

    The cohesion of European parties is quite surprising for several rea-sons. First, the degree of agenda control by the European party leaders

    Democratic politics in the European Parliament4

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    is more limited than in most national parliaments. Indeed, the EuropeanCommission has the exclusive right of initiative of nearly all EU legis-lation. Hence, legislation that comes on the oor of the EuropeanParliament emanates from outside the parliament and not from amajority coalition inside the parliament. This inability to control theagenda should reduce party cohesion, as the leaders of the parties in theparliament cannot lter out proposals on which their members havedivergent political opinions. We do nd some evidence of lower cohe-sion due to the lack of agenda control – for example, the parties areslightly more cohesive on non-legislative issues, which are initiatedinternally in the parliament, than on legislative issues, which are initi-ated externally. However, we also nd evidence suggesting that theEuropean parties are able to overcome the lack of agenda control andvote cohesively. For example, we nd that a European party is ascohesive in a vote on a ‘hostile amendment’ (where an amendment isproposed by another party on a bill where a member of the rst party isthe rapporteur ) as in all other votes.

    A second reason why cohesiveness should be lower in the EuropeanParliament is that European parties do not have many instruments todiscipline their members. They do not control the selection of candidatesin European Parliament elections, as this is controlled by the national

    parties who make up the European parties. The European parties alsohave no control over the future career of MEPs, as it is again the nationalparties who control the allocation of ministerial portfolios and other jobsin the domestic arena and the selection of European Commissioners. Theonly instruments European parties have to discipline their members arethe allocation of membership of legislative committees, rapporteurshipsand other positions of inuence within the European Parliament. Theseinstruments are relatively weak in terms of their disciplining power. Theyare denitely weaker than the ones available to parties in parliamentary

    regimes. However, to the extent that it is national parties that developcommon positions in their European parties, it is national parties that playa key role in enforcing European party discipline. Individual MEPs nearlyalways vote with their national party delegation, independently of theirown preferences. If one adds this to the fact that it is rare that a nationalparty votes against its European party, one understands that nationalparties play a key role in determining the cohesion of the Europeanparties. European parties are able to mobilise their members to participatemore in votes that are expected to be closer and the outcome morecompetitive.

    We consequently argue that the incentive to form and maintainpowerful transnational party organisations is fundamentally related to

    Introduction 5

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    political competition inside the European Parliament to secure policyoutcomes from the EU that are as close as possible to the ideological(left–right) preferences of the MEPs and national parties. It pays to becohesive because this increases a party’s chance of being on the winningside of a vote and thus to inuence its nal outcome. It is thus naturalthat the increases in the powers of the European Parliament have led toa stronger and more democratic structure of politics in the EuropeanParliament, based around left–right competition between genuineEuropean parties.

    Outline of the book

    Chapter 1 provides some essential background material on the devel-opment of the powers of and parties in the European Parliament.Chapters 2 and 3 then present the two basic elements of our theory: thatpolitical parties are essential for the functioning of democratic politics,and that these political organisations are more likely to emerge aroundideological (left–right) divisions than territorial divisions.

    The remainder of the book contains a series of empirical tests of ourideas, using a unique dataset of all roll-call votes in the European Par-liament between 1979 and 2004. Chapter 4 starts the analysis by

    looking at the increasing participation of MEPs in roll-call votes andhow participation varies with the powers of the European Parliament onthe issue of the vote. We nd growing levels of participation, moregrowth in more organised parties, and more participation where theParliament has more power.

    The next three chapters focus on partisan politics inside the Parlia-ment. Chapter 5 looks at the ‘cohesion’ of the political parties. Weintroduce a cohesion index for measuring the cohesion of parties andnational delegations. We show that while voting along transnational

    party lines has increased, voting along national lines has decreased. Wethen investigate the determinants of party cohesion, and nd that thetransnational parties are increasingly cohesive despite growing internalideological and national diversity.

    We then investigate two possible explanations of growing partisanpolitics in the European Parliament. Chapter 6 focuses on whether theparties in the European Parliament can enforce party discipline by con-trolling the agenda. We nd that parties are more likely to be cohesivewhere they have some control over the agenda, on non-legislativeresolutions, for example. Because agenda-setting rights are sharedamongst the parties and because legislation is initiated externally by theCommission, this limited agenda control in the European Parliament

    Democratic politics in the European Parliament6

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    should lead to a lower cohesion than what we observe. We also showthat parties are not less cohesive when facing hostile amendments onbills they sponsor. There is thus strong suggestive evidence that Euro-pean political groups are able to discipline the voting behaviour of theirmembers even when they do not control the agenda.

    Chapter 7 focuses on whether national parties or the Europeanpolitical groups have more control on the MEPs. We nd that MEPs areless likely to vote against their national parties than their Europeanpolitical groups. On balance, one-third of an MEP’s voting behaviour isdetermined by his or her European political group and two-thirds isdetermined by his or her national party. Hence, growing transnationalparty politics in the European Parliament must be explained via nationalpolitical parties. Despite continued policy differences between themember parties in each European political group, national parties havedecided to form increasingly powerful transnational political parties andto endow these organisations with leadership and agenda-settingpowers.

    The next two chapters then look at the ideological structure of politicsin the European Parliament, within and between the European parties.Chapter 8 focuses on coalition formation between the European parties.We look at the proportion of times the majority in each political group

    voted the same way as a majority in another political group. Weshow that coalitions in the European Parliament are increasingly alongleft–right lines. We also investigate the determinants of coalition for-mation, and nd that the left–right ideological distance between any twopolitical groups is the strongest predictor of whether they vote togetherin a given period and over time.

    Chapter 9 then looks at the dimensions of voting in the Parliament.We apply a scaling method to the roll-call votes and nd that the classicleft–right conict is the main dimension of voting in the European

    Parliament, between as well as inside the European parties. In otherwords, the further an MEP is from the average left–right preferences of his or her European party, the more likely he or she will vote differentlyfrom the other members of the party. We also nd that, although lesssalient, the second dimension captures MEPs’ preferences on Europeanintegration as well as conicts between the parties in the EuropeanParliament and the parties represented in the Council and Commission.

    The next two chapters supplement the aggregate analyses in theprevious empirical chapters with two detailed case studies. Chapter 10investigates the parliament’s executive-control powers, by analysingMEP behaviour in four key votes in the fourth parliament (1994–1999)on the investiture and censure of the Santer Commission. We nd the

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    emergence of ‘government-opposition’ politics in the European Parlia-ment: wh ere the European parties who dominat e the Comm ission tendto support the Com mission, while the p arties wh o are either notrepresent ed in the Commission or who are marg inalised in this insti-tution tend to opp ose the Commission. From this perspective, at thestart of the Barroso Com mission in 2005, there was ‘unied govern-ment’ in the EU, where a centre-right coalition cont rolled the Com-mission, the European Parliament , and the Council.

    Chapt er 11 turns to the parliament’s legislative powers, by investi-gating MEP behaviour in the fth parliament (1999–2004) on theTakeover Directive. We nd that even when the political stakes areextremely high, European parties and left–right preferences have a sig-nicant inuence on MEP behaviour. Where an issue is highly salientfor a particular m ember stat e in a vote, the MEPs from this state m ayvote together and against their European par ties. However, because thisonly affects one or two member states in any vot e (as was the case withGerman MEPs on the Takeover Dir ective), and because this onlyoccurs in a small number of votes on any bill, European parties’ posi-tions and left–right preferences of MEPs are the main determinants of legislative outcomes in the European Parliament.

    Finally, Chapt er 12 concludes by drawing out the implications of our

    argument and ndings as well as discussing avenues for future research.

    Les sons for political science an d European politi cs

    The research presented in this book contains insights both for politicalscience in general and for the sub-eld of European polit ics. We spellthem out briey here but will come back to these issues through out thebook.

    From the point of view of political science, our book contributes to

    the study of legislative behaviour in a comparative perspective. A rstimportant question refers to the role of parties in democracies. Why dowe generally observe party formation in democracies? Along what linesdo they form? What is the effect of party systems in legislative decision-making? In Chapter 2, we provide a synthesis of these questions andprovide a systematic analysis of the advantages of strong party systems indemocracies relative to weak and fragmented party systems. We dis-tinguish between the role of parties in solving collective action problemsexternal and internal to the elected legislature. Collective action problemsexternal to the legislature refer to electoral politics. Parties play a crucialrole in mobilising the electorate to vote, a key question in political science.They also provide brand names with well-known and recognisable

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    platforms and a reputation that has value with voters and is thereforevaluable to preserve, which enhances the reliability of politicians. Col-lective action problems internal to the legislature refer to legislativepolitics. Cohesive parties reduce the volatility and increase the pre-dictability of legislative decisions. They allow for specialisation of par-liamentarians in specic issues, which improves the quality of bills. Theyincrease the efciency of policy-making by screening out inefcientprogrammes that only bring benets to small groups and costs to thegeneral public. They also reduce the dimensionality of politics bycreating correlations between the different dimensions of politics.

    We contribute to the theory of parties by proposing a theory, brieysummarised above, for why parties in stable democracies form mainlyalong the left–right axis and not along territorial lines. Our theory is acomplement to the ‘cleavage theory’ of Lipset and Rokkan. The clea-vage theory does not ask why parties do not generally form on a terri-torial basis, except in countries where the borders and the territorialorganisation of the state remain contested. In the context of the Euro-pean Parliament, it is especially important to ask that question. On theother hand, the cleavage theory gives content to our notion that partiesform on a functional and not on a territorial basis.

    Political scientists have made much progress in recent years in trying

    to understand what causes voting behaviour inside elected legislatures.The European Parliament is an especially interesting institution to verifypolitical science theories. With members from multiple nation-states,who are organised into national as well as transnational political parties,and with dramatic changes in the powers of the institution, the Eur-opean Parliament is a unique laboratory for testing general theories of political parties and legislative behaviour. Most political science theoriesof parties and legislative politics have been developed in very particularinstitutional contexts, such as the US Congress or the British House of

    Commons. If these theories are truly generalisable, however, theyshould also hold in the European Parliament. Different theories high-light different causes of party cohesion. Many traditional theoriesemphasise the ‘carrots and sticks’ used by party leadership to disciplinetheir representatives to toe the party line. One alternative theory, asso-ciated mostly with Keith Krehbiel, emphasises the preferences of themembers of a party. Cohesion in voting is related to closeness in politicaland ideological preferences. Politicians sort themselves into parties onthe basis of their preferences, and it is this sorting that fundamentallycreates cohesion. Another theory, put forward in a recent book by GaryCox and Mathew McCubbins, emphasises the role of agenda control inexplaining party cohesion. Parties use their control over the legislative

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    agenda to only put forward bills on which there is strong support fromtheir party in the parliament.

    In this book, we nd that ideology alone cannot explain party cohe-sion. While European parties tend to form coalitions on the basis of ideological closeness, variation in cohesion within the European partiesis not related to variation in ideological preferences in the Europeanparties. Similarly, compared with other legislatures, European partieshave relatively little control over the agenda. Nevertheless, cohesion isrelatively strong. Overall, it is impossible to escape the conclusion thatthe European parties are able to discipline their representatives in theEuropean Parliament. However, our ndings suggest that this happensmostly via the inuence of national parties, which voluntarily choose toform European parties to promote their own policy goals, and then actcollectively to secure these goals.

    From the point of view of European politics, our work builds on theresearch of scholars in this eld in the last decade. Scholars not onlyhave been closely observing the functioning of the European Parliament,but have also collected samples of voting data to try to understand betterthe patterns of voting behaviour. By putting together and makingavailable the complete population of roll-call data in the history of theEuropean Parliament, we hope to contribute to bringing the level of

    research on the European Parliament to the level of existing research inAmerican politics, where roll-call data from the whole history of the USCongress are used in a standard way to analyse issues of Americanpolitics.

    Our research shows that the European Parliament cannot be under-stood as a unitary actor engaged in strategic games with the Commissionand the Council. It shows how and why cohesion of the Europeanparties has changed over time. It shows that left–right politics is the maindimension of contestation in the European Parliament, but a second

    dimension has also emerged, which relates to the speed and nature of European integration and battles between the European Parliament andthe Council and Commission.

    More broadly, the European Parliament is fundamentally importantfor the future of the EU and democratic governance in Europe. The EUwas probably the most signicant institutional innovation in the orga-nisation of politics and the state anywhere in the world in the second half of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twenty-rst century,however, there is growing concern about how viable this organisation isin the long term if it cannot be made more democratically accountable.The European Parliament is uniquely placed, as the only directly electedinstitution at the European level, to operate as the voice of the people in

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    the EU governance system. If democratic politics does not exist in theEuropean Parliament, then the future of the EU may be bleak. How-ever, if democratic politics has begun to emerge inside the EuropeanParliament, in terms of being based around political parties thatarticulate the classic ideological divisions of democratic politics, thenperhaps democracy beyond the nation-state is possible after all.

    This is all the more important in the light of the constitutional ascotriggered by the failed referendums on the European Constitutionproject in France and the Netherlands. Opposing arguments have beenvoiced that the Constitution went too far or not far enough in theEuropean integration process. It is doubtful, however, that a new con-stitutional project would gain more support within the Europeanpopulation if it does not strengthen the democratic accountability of European institutions. The European Parliament is the only directlyelected body in the EU. While being often criticised or vilied by somenational politicians and national media, one should not forget that it isalso the European institution that is most trusted by European citizens.In the Eurobarometer opinion poll survey in the Autumn of 2004, 57 percent of respondents in the 25 EU member states said that they trustedthe European Parliament, while only 52 per cent said that they trusted theEuropean Commission, and 45 per cent said that they trusted the

    European Council – which is composed of the heads of government of member states. One can argue that these gures are relatively low, but ourresearch shows that there are good reasons for citizens to trust theEuropean Parliament! The European Parliament is a real parliament,with real parties and real democratic politics.

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    1 Development of the European Parliament

    In this chapter, our aim is to provide some essential backgroundmaterial for und erstanding the argument and evidence we present in therest of the book. 1 We focus on three aspects of the story of the EuropeanParliament: (1) the main powers of the institution and how these havechanged; (2) how the political parties and the party system in theEuropean Parliament have evolved; and (3) why the ‘electoral connec-tion’ from citizens to MEPs remains rather weak despite six rounds of European Parliament elections. The chapter concludes with a discus-sion of ‘roll-call votes’ in the European Parliament, which is the datawe use in the rest of the book to understand how politics inside theEuropean Parliament has changed. Roll-call votes are votes where the

    voting decision of each MEP is recorded. The roll-call voting recordsare published in the annexes to the minutes of the plenary sessions of theEuropean Parliament. Nowa days, they can also be found on the websiteof the European Parliament. 2

    1.1 Powers of the European Parliament

    The precursor to the modern European Parliament was the ‘Assembly’of the European Coal and Steel Community, which held its rst meeting

    on 10 September 1952. With the launch of the European EconomicCommunity (EEC) in 1958, the assembly chose to refer to itself as the‘European Parliament’, a moniker that was grudgingly accepted by thethen six EEC member states (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Lux-embourg and the Netherlands) and was ofcially endorsed in the SingleEuropean Act (SEA) in 1985.

    1 A very useful tool for understanding the functioning of the European Parliament is thedetailed and comprehensive book by Corbett, Jacobs and Shackleton ( 2005 ).

    2 The website of the European Parliament is www.europarl.europa.eu . Under the ‘plenarysessions’ part of the site one can click on the minutes (by date), then click on a givendate, and then look at the roll-call voting records in either MS Word or pdf format.

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    Until 1979 the European Parliament was composed of delegates fromnational parliaments. In the early 1970s as part of a plan to reinvigorateEuropean integration the governments decided that the EuropeanParliament should be elected directly by the citizens. The rst ‘directelections’ were held in June 1979 and elections have been held every veyears since, with the sixth elections taking place between 10 and 13 June2004.

    The size of the parliament has changed dramatically. It started with78 members; grew to 142 in 1958; reached 198 with the accession of theUnited Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark; and grew to 410 members in1979. The parliament then expanded with each successive enlargementof the EU: to 434 members after the accession of the Greece in 1981;518 after the accession of Portugal and Spain in 1986; 567 after theunication of Germany in 1994; 626 after the accession of Austria,Finland and Sweden; and 732 after the accession of the Czech Republic,Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakiaand Slovenia in 2004.

    The development of the powers of the European Parliament has beenno less dramatic. For most of its history the parliament was a purelyconsultative institution. But, since the mid- 1980s the parliament hasgained increasing power in the two traditional areas of authority of

    elected assemblies: to control the executive, and to make legislation.The main changes in these two areas are summarised in Table 1.1.

    1.1.1 Power to control the executive: a hybrid model

    Executive power in the EU, in terms of the right to set the policy agenda,is split between the European Council and the Commission. Whereasthe European Council, which brings together the heads of governmentof the member states, sets the long-term policy agenda, the Commission

    sets the short-term agenda, via a formal monopoly on the right to initiatelegislation. The European Parliament has very little power to inuencethe behaviour of the European Council. However, since the Treaty of Rome in 1958, the European Parliament has had the power to sack theCommission by passing a vote of censure in the Commission as a whole.This rst power of the European Parliament was consciously modelledon the way government worked at the national level in Europe, whereone of the main powers of parliaments is to remove the government(Rittberger, 2003 ). But the European Parliament’s power over the EUexecutive is not exactly as in a parliamentary model, where a parlia-mentary majority can ‘hire and re’ the executive. The Commission isnot elected by a majority in the European Parliament even though since

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    Table 1.1. Main changes in the powers of the European Parliament

    Event (date) Control of the executive Making legislation

    Treaty of Rome(1958) Commission censure procedure.EP can remove Commission bya ‘double-majority’: an abso-lute majority of MEPs plustwo-thirds of votes cast

    Consultation procedure . Councilmust consult EP before passingmost legislation

    Budgetary Treaties(1970 & 1975)

    New budgetary procedure. EPcan reject EU budget and canamend certain budget lines(mainly excluding agricultureand regional spending)

    First EP Elections(1979) EP has a source of legitimacy that is independent from national governments and national parliaments

    Single EuropeanAct (1987)

    Cooperation procedure introduced .EP has two readings of billsbefore Council passes law (formost single-market legislation)

    Maastricht Treaty(1993)

    New Commission investiture procedure. European Councilmust ‘consult’ EP on nomineefor Commission PresidentCommission term of ofcereformed to coincide with EP’sve-year term

    Co-decision procedure introduced .‘Conciliation committee’convened if EP and Councildisagree, but Council canmake a new proposal if stillno agreement (replacingcooperation procedure)

    Opening session of Fourth Parliament(July 1994)

    EP votes on Commission Presi-dent . EP votes for JacquesSanter (260 in favour vs. 238against), setting the precedentthat the EP can vote on thegovernments’ nominee forCommission President

    EP rejects Voice TelephonyDirective . EP rejects a pieceof EU legislation for the rsttime, setting the precedenthat the Council cannotact unilaterally under theco-decision procedure

    Censure of Com-mission (March1999)

    Commission resigns. WholeSanter Commission resignsafter an EP report criticisingthe Commission and before anEP censure vote that is likely topass

    Amsterdam Treaty(1999)

    Investiture procedure reformed .EP has vote on EuropeanCouncil’s nominee forCommission President and onthe Commission as a whole

    Co-decision procedure reformed .Establishes a genuinebicameral system between theEP and Council (covers mostsocio-economic policies)

    Nice Treaty(2003)

    Investiture procedure reformed .European Council choosesCommission President and

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    the Maastricht Treaty the Commission must be approved by a majorityin the European Parliament. The European Parliament has genuinepowers to re the Commission, but this requires a two-thirds majority,which makes it difcult to use a ‘vote-of-condence’-like procedure tocensure the Commission. Let us develop these points in more detail.

    Under the Treaty of Rome, the Commission President was chosen byunanimity amongst the heads of government of the member states in theEuropean Council. The other members of the Commission were then

    nominated by each government and approved by a unanimous vote of the European Council. The European Parliament had no formal role inthis process. But, after the rst direct elections, the parliament decidedto hold an informal ‘vote of condence’ on each incoming Commission.This practice was formalised by the Maastricht Treaty, which allowedthe European Parliament to be ‘consulted’ on the choice of CommissionPresident, introduced a right of the parliament to veto the Commissionas a whole, and changed the Commission’s term of ofce to ve years tocorrespond with the European Parliament’s term.

    The European Parliament went a stage further, by interpreting itsright to be ‘consulted’ on the choice of Commission President as aformal right of veto (Hix, 2002a ). The European Parliament introduceda public vote on the Commission President designate. The governmentscould ignore the outcome of this vote. But when the rst such vote wastaken, in July 1994, the nominee for Commission President ( JacquesSanter) acknowledged that if the parliament voted him down he wouldwithdraw his candidacy because a Commission President would not beable to govern effectively without the support of the parliament. This de facto right of the European Parliament to veto the choice of CommissionPresident was then formalised in the Amsterdam Treaty, which cameinto force in 1999.

    whole Commission byqualied-majority (instead of unanimity), which increasesEP inuence in the process

    Rejection of Commission(October 2004)

    Team of Commissionerswithdrawn . Barroso withdrawsproposed Commission on dayof EP investiture vote becausethe EP is likely to reject theCommission

    Table 1.1. ( Cont .)

    Event (date) Control of the executive Making legislation

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    Following the Maastricht Treaty, the European Parliament alsointroduced committee hearings of the nominees for the members of theCommission. These hearings were consciously modelled on the USSenate hearings of nominees to the US President’s cabinet. However,unlike the US Senate, the European Parliament does not have the powerto reject individual Commissioners, but only the Commission as awhole.

    Under the Amsterdam Treaty, because the Commission Presidentand the Commission as a whole were still proposed by unanimity in theEuropean Council, the European Parliament’s power to inuence theelection of the Commission was limited. In practice, if the prime min-isters who backed the Commission in the European Council couldpersuade the MEPs from their parties to back the Commission in theparliament, then unanimous agreement in the European Council wouldalmost certainly mean majority support for the Council’s proposedPresident and team of Commissioners in the parliament. For example,in July 1994, despite opposition amongst most socialist, liberal, greenand radical-left MEPs to his nomination, Jacques Santer (a centre-rightpolitician from Luxembourg) won the vote in the parliament by 260 to238 because he was supported by all the MEPs on the centre-right plusalmost all of the MEPs from the socialist parties in government, whose

    leaders had supported Santer in the European Council (Gabel and Hix,2002a ).The Nice Treaty changed this in February 2003 by introducing

    qualied-majority voting in the European Council for electing theCommission President and the Commission as a whole. This sig-nicantly increased the power of the European Parliament to inuencethe make-up of the Commission. Because a qualied-majority coalitionin the European Council is smaller than a unanimous coalition, theEuropean Council is now less able to impose its choice of Commission

    President or the Commission as a whole on the Parliament.This was immediately apparent in the battle to succeed Romano

    Prodi as Commission President. Many of the good candidates seemed tobe from the centre-left or the liberals. However, the newly electedparliament in June 2004 had a centre-right majority, and Hans-GertPoettering, the leader of the largest group (the European People’sParty), insisted that the governments must propose a candidate from thecentre-right, in line with standard practices in parliamentary govern-ment. Also, a Franco-German deal to choose Guy Verhofstadt, theliberal Belgian Prime Minister, was rejected by the other member states.A qualied-majority of governments eventually supported Jose ´ ManuelDura˜o Barroso, the conservative Portuguese Prime Minister, presumably

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    against the wishes of France and Germany. Barroso was duly backed bya centre-right/liberal coalition in the European Parliament. But, as wediscussed in the Introduction, the European Parliament was thenprepared to reject the proposed team of Commissioners. This was acredible threat at least partly because the German socialist and Frenchconservative MEPs, whose party leaders had been in the losing minorityin the European Council, had no incentive to support the Commissionin the vote.

    The Constitutional Treaty proposed to introduce an ambiguousclause whereby the European Council would ‘take into account theresults of the European elections’ when nominating a Commissionpresident. This could be interpreted not only as a continuation of cur-rent practices but also along the lines of a more standard model of parliamentary government, where the head of state, such as the Dutchor Belgian monarch, or the German or Italian president, ofcially‘nominates’ the leader of the party that won the election as the formateur of the government.

    While there thus has been some movement towards the parliamentarymodel in the choice of the Commission President, the latter has verylittle leeway in the choice of the other members of the Commission.These are usually proposed by the incumbent national governments and

    accepted by the newly elected Commission President. The Barrosoepisode related in the Introduction was the rst time in the history of EUinstitutions that the European Parliament forced a Commission Pre-sident to withdraw a Commissioner whom the European Parliamentconsidered to be inappropriate. The will of the European Parliament thusprevailed against the will of the Italian government.

    While only a majority vote is needed in the European Parliament toapprove the Commission, it is much more difcult for the EuropeanParliament to sack the Commission. The existing rules for passing a

    ‘censure’ motion make it difcult for such a motion to pass simplybecause the majority in the Parliament no longer supports the policiesof the Commission. A censure vote requires a ‘double majority’: a two-thirds majority in the vote, which must also be an ‘absolute majority’ (50per cent plus 1) of all MEPs. Given the arithmetic of party compositionin the European Parliament, this double-majority threshold can inpractice be reached only if the main parties on the left and right votetogether, which they will only do for non-policy reasons, such as cor-ruption, mismanagement or serious incompetence. Hence, this is closerto the power of the US Congress to impeach the US President for whatthe US Constitution calls ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ than thepower of the majority in a domestic parliament in Europe to withdraw

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    its support for the government. While this threshold is quite high, anargument can be made against a lower threshold. If it is too easy to votedown an executive in a parliament, this can trigger unnecessary gov-ernment crises and long periods of vacuum of power. This is avoided insome countries such as Germany by a ‘constructive vote of condence’,whereby the executive can be sacked by a majority in the parliamentonly if an alternative government is elected by the parliament toreplace it.

    Not surprisingly, given the very high threshold to censure the Com-mission, no censure motion has ever been passed, despite severalattempts to do so. The closest the European Parliament came to doingthis was in March 1999, when the Commission led by Jacques Santerresigned en masse before a censure vote that was likely to go against theCommission. Also, this case ts the idea that the European Parliamentcan censure the Commission only for non-partisan reasons, because theaccusations of mismanagement and nepotism in the Santer adminis-tration were the most serious ever aimed at the Commission, and so ledto a large cross-party coalition in favour of censuring the Commission,as we show in Chapter 10.

    In other words, the relationship between the European Parliamentand the Commission is a hybrid form of government. As in a parlia-

    mentary model of government, the European Parliament has anincreasingly inuential say in the election of the Commission, retains thesole right to sack the Commission as a whole, and does not have thepower to reject or remove individual Commissioners. However, as in aseparation-of-powers model of government, the Commission cannotdissolve the European Parliament and so threaten the MEPs with newelections if they refuse to back a key legislative proposal, and because adouble majority is required to remove the Commission, once installedthe Commission is unlikely to be removed before the end of its term.

    1.1.2 Power to make legislation: from a lobbyist to a co-legislator

    The European Parliament initially only had the power to be consultedon legislation. By the end of the 1990s, however, in most importantareas of legislation, the European Parliament had equal power with thegovernment ministers in the Council.

    The Treaty of Rome established that the Commission has the soleright to initiate legislation in all areas. As far as the European Parliamentis concerned, the Treaty of Rome established the so-called ‘consultationprocedure’, whereby the European Parliament is required to be con-sulted on the Commission’s proposed legislation before it is adopted by

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    the Council. If the European Parliament proposes amendments to leg-islation, there is no obligation on either the Commission or the Councilto accept these amendments. A ruling of the Court of Justice in 1980conrmed that the Council could not adopt legislation without theEuropean Parliament issuing an opinion, which enabled the parliamentto exercise some inuence by threatening to delay issuing an opinion.But, in practice, under the consultation procedure, the European Par-liament is no more than a ‘lobbyist’ of the Commission and the Council.

    The rst major development in the European Parliament’s legislativepowers was the introduction in 1970 and 1975 of a new procedure foradopting the annual budget of the then European Community. Thelimit on the revenue available to the Community was xed by themember states. But, within this overall limit, annual expenditure wouldbe determined jointly by the European Parliament and the Council. TheEuropean Parliament now had the power to reject the budget as a whole,to increase or reduce expenditure within certain limits, and to redis-tribute revenues between the lines in the budget.

    However, these budgetary amendment powers applied only to the‘non-compulsory expenditure’ part of the budget, which excludes themain items of the EU spending on the agricultural price support andregional development. Also, the size of the EU budget is small relative to

    national government budgets, constituting about 1 per cent of EUGDP, which is approximately 3 per cent of the total public expenditurein the EU. In other words, compared with national parliaments, theformal powers of the European Parliament to tax and spend remainlimited.

    Nevertheless, the legislative powers of the European Parliament weresubstantially extended by treaty reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. In1987 the SEA introduced the ‘cooperation procedure’. This proceduregave the European Parliament two readings of legislation and reduced

    the ability of the Council to overturn amendments proposed by theParliament. For the rst time the European Parliament had some leg-islative agenda-setting power, even if this power was conditional onsecuring support from the Commission for the amendments and ndinga majority in the Council to support the parliament’s proposals(Tsebelis, 1994 ). The cooperation procedure only applied to ten articlesin the treaty, but these included most areas of the single-marketprogramme, specic research programmes, certain decisions relating tothe structural funds and some social and environmental regulation.

    In 1993 the Maastricht Treaty then effectively replaced the co-operation procedure with the ‘co-decision procedure’. Under theco-decision procedure, if the European Parliament and Council disagree

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    after two readings in each institution, a conciliation committee is con-vened, composed of an equal number of representatives from the Eur-opean Parliament and Council. An agreement in the conciliationcommittee is then subject to ratication without amendment in a thirdreading in the European Parliament and Council.

    However, under the Maastricht Treaty version of the co-decisionprocedure, if the European Parliament and Council failed to reach anagreement in the conciliation committee, the Council was able to re-propose the text agreed to by the governments before conciliation. If thishappened, the European Parliament could then only accept or reject thenew proposal. This provision was inserted by the governments to allowthem to maintain a dominant position, since faced with a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ proposal from the Council the European Parliament would bemore likely to back new EU legislation rather than to veto it, especiallyif the legislation would promote European integration (Tsebelis, 1996 ;cf. Scully, 1997b ). The co-decision procedure originally applied to mostareas of single-market legislation that had been covered by the coop-eration procedure and several new areas introduced by the MaastrichtTreaty, such as public health, consumer protection, education andculture.

    Nevertheless, the rst time that the European Parliament and the

    Council failed to reach an agreement in the conciliation committee andthe Council duly re-proposed the agreement reached by the govern-ments at an earlier stage, the European Parliament voted immediately toreject the draft bill rather than accept that the Council could act uni-laterally (on a directive on Open Network Provision in Voice Tele-phony). This was the rst time that the European Parliament hadsuccessfully blocked a piece of EU legislation, and established the pre-cedent that the co-decision procedure in practice nished if a joint textcould not be agreed upon in the conciliation committee (Hix, 2002a ).

    Consequently, in 1999 the governments reformed the co-decision pro-cedure, effectively bringing the Treaty rules into line with the now-established practice: that legislation could not be passed without thepositive consent of a qualied-majority in the Council and a simplemajority in the European Parliament. The Amsterdam Treaty alsoextended the co-decision procedure to cover almost all regulation of theEU single market (such as environment policy, health and safety, socialpolicy and harmonisation of standards) and some areas of policy on thefree movement of persons, immigration and asylum. As a result of thesereforms, the main EU legislative procedure is now a genuine bicameralprocedure, under which the Council and the European Parliament haveequal power (cf. Crombez, 2001 ). The Constitutional Treaty that was

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    rejected in the French and Dutch referendum proposed to generalise theco-decision procedure as the main legislative procedure in the EU.

    Given the new legislative powers of the European Parliament, it is notsurprising that there are increasing battles between the parliament andthe Council in the adoption of EU legislation. However, without aninbuilt government majority in the European Parliament, which canforce its ‘backbenchers’ in the parliament to support it, coalitions in theEuropean Parliament shift from issue to issue. For example, in theadoption of the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive in 2000, which intro-duced rules on the recycling of cars, a centre-right majority in the fthparliament (1999–2004) watered down the draft legislation supportedby the ‘red–green’ majorities in the Council and Commission. Mean-while, in 2001, a centre-left coalition in the same parliament rejected thedeal in the Council on the Takeover Directive, which would have lib-eralised rules on hostile takeover bids, as we show in Chapter 11.

    In sum, the European Parliament has developed signicant inde-pendent legislative amendment and agenda-setting powers. Despite theCommission’s exclusive right of initiative, the European Parliament isan elected body that is independent of the executive and shows thisindependence. It has also repeatedly shown its independence from theCouncil. The European Parliament is clearly not simply a rubber stamp

    for an executive with a parliamentary majority. At the domestic level inEurope, where governments usually command a parliamentary majority,legislation is rarely amended by parliaments against the wishes of theexecutive. In contrast, approximately 50 per cent of legislative amend-ments proposed by the European Parliament become law (cf. Tsebeliset al., 2001 ; Kreppel, 2002a ). In fact, because the majority in theEuropean Parliament is not forced to support everything the Commis-sion or the Council proposes, it is not unreasonable to say that theEuropean Parliament is one of the most powerful legislative chambers in

    the world.

    1.2 Political parties in the European Parliament:a ‘two-plus-several’ party system

    The European Parliament’s internal rules and procedures have evolvedin response to these changing executive-control and legislative powers(esp. Kreppel, 2002b ; Corbett et al., 2005 ). Specically, the EuropeanParliament has developed an elaborate internal division of labour. Thework of scrutinising legislation and proposing amendments is dividedbetween standing committees. Similarly, the work of organising theagenda is divided between a number of leadership organs, such as the

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    Bureau, which is composed of the President of the Parliament, thefourteen Vice-Presidents and the ve Quaestors (who act as spokes-persons for the individual MEPs and protect their interests).

    However, by far the most important division-of-labour organizationsin the European Parliament are the ‘political groups’ (cf. Hix et al.,2003 ). These groups control who is elected as the President of theParliament, who will become a committee chair, which MEP writeswhich legislative report, who can speak in the plenary debates and forhow long, which way the MEPs vote in each issue, and just about everyother important issue in the European Parliament. As such, the politicalgroups in the European Parliament are similar to parliamentary partiesin national parliaments in Europe, and are probably more powerful thanthe Democratic and Republican caucuses in the US Congress.

    When the Common Assembly of the European Coal and SteelCommunity rst convened on 10 September 1952 there were no ideo-logically based political groups. Following the tradition of other inter-national assemblies, such as the Consultative Assembly of the Councilof Europe, the members of the Assembly sat in alphabetical order. Also,during the constituent meeting of the Common Assembly there were anumber of decisions that suggested that the new Assembly would beorganised around national rather than ideological or partisan afliations.

    It was decided, for example, that there should be ve Vice-Presidents sothat every member state could have a representative as either Presidentor a Vice-President on the Executive Bureau of the new Assembly.

    The rst formal recognition of the existence of transnational partydivisions within the Assembly did not occur until January 1953. Duringthe discussion and debate over the new Assembly’s Rules of Procedure itwas suggested that the nomination of members to committees attemptto balance both representation of the various member states and ‘thevarious political traditions’. This was a watershed, and by March 1953

    there was a de facto division into three political party groupings: Chris-tian Democrat, Socialist, and Liberal. These were the primary partyfamilies of continental Western Europe at the time. This de facto exis-tence of the political groups led the new Rules Committee to conduct astudy on the implications of political party group formation and suggestcourses of action.

    The report from the Rules Committee, which was adopted in June1953, emphasised the crucial role of political parties in the internalorganisation of the assembly. The report noted that the groups had, inpractice, already formed and all that was needed was to establish someform of formal recognition. This recognition took the form of an addi-tion to the Rules of Procedure, which stated that members of the

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    assembly could form groups according to ‘political persuasion’. All thatwas required to form a group was a declaration of formation includingthe name of the group, its executive and the signatures of its members.The only restrictions were, rst, that groups be politically and notnationally based; second, that they have at least nine members; andthird, that no individual could belong to more than one group.

    From this point forward the political groups developed as the mainaggregate organisational entities in the European Parliament. Thegroups were given nancial support. Each group organised independentsecretariats and was given ofce space within the European Parliament’sbuildings in Strasbourg and later in Brussels. Debates in the parliamentalso began to be organised on the basis of ofcial group positions insteadof individual members’ statements. By the time the rst Europeanelections were held in 1979, the political groups dominated all aspects of the parliament’s work, from deciding who is elected to be the parlia-ment’s president, to assigning committee positions, to organizing theagenda of the plenary.

    Regarding the balance of power between the political groups, asTable 1.2 shows, since the rst European elections there have been alarge number of groups, and the membership and names of these groupshave continuously changed. Nevertheless, there are six main political

    ‘families’ that have remained relatively consistent across all six electedparliaments:

    Social democrats – the Socialist Group, which in 1992 became theGroup of the Party of European Socialists (PES), incorporates all themain socialist, social democratic and labour parties in Europe and hashad the most consistent membership of all the groups.

    Centre-right – in contrast to the unity of the social democrats, thecentre-right has been split into several Christian democratic,

    conservative and nationalist groups, but by 1999 (in the fthparliament) most of these parties had joined the European People’sParty-European Democrats (EPP-ED), with only a small number of conservatives and nationalists staying in the Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN).

    Liberals – between these two main forces, the third main politicalparty, which in its latest incarnation is called the Alliance of Liberalsand Democrats for Europe (ALDE), brings together the variousliberal, centrist and democratic parties in Europe.

    Radical-left – to the left of the social democrats, the various left-socialist, ex-communist and other radical-left forces were originallydivided between two groups but since the fourth parliament they have

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    T a b l e 1 . 2 . P o l i t i c a l p a r t i e s i n t h e e l e c t e d E u r o p e a n P a r l i a m e n t

    D e s c r i p t i o n

    ( p a r t y g r o u p s )

    F i r s t

    P a r l i a m e n t

    ( J u l y 1 9 7 9 )

    S e c o n d

    P a r l i a m e n t

    ( J u l y 1 9 8 4 )

    T h i r d

    P a r l i a m e n t

    ( J