National Party Politics and Supranational Politics in the European Union: New Evidence from the European Parliament

Clifford Carrubba, Matthew Gabel, Lacey Murrah, Ryan Clough, Elizabeth Montgomery and Rebecca Schambach ()
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Clifford Carrubba: Department of Political Science, Emory University
Matthew Gabel: Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky
Lacey Murrah: Department of Political Science, Emory University
Ryan Clough: Department of Political Science, Emory University
Elizabeth Montgomery: Department of Political Science, Emory University
Rebecca Schambach: Department of Political Science, Emory University

No 2005-04, Working Papers from University of Kentucky, Institute for Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations

Abstract: Political parties play an important role in structuring political competition at different levels of governance in the European Union (EU). The political parties that contest national elections also participate in the EU legislative institutions, with the governing parties at the national level participating in the Council of Ministers and a broad range of national parties represented in the European Parliament (EP). Recent research indicates that national parties in the EP have formed ideological coalitions -- party groups -- that represent transnational political interests. These party groups appear to manage legislative behavior such that national interests -- which dominate the Council of Ministers -- are subjugated to ideological conflict. In this paper, we demonstrate that the roll-call vote evidence for the impact of party groups in the EP is misleading. Because party groups have incentives to select votes for roll call so as to hide or feature particular voting patterns, the true character of political conflict is never revealed in roll calls.

JEL-codes: H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2005-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ifr:wpaper:2005-04

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