European Affiliations or National Interests? Analyses of Voting Patterns on Trade Policy in European Parliament

Kang Yoo-Duk ()
Additional contact information
Kang Yoo-Duk: Language and Trade Division, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Room 422, Main Building, 107, Imun-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul02450, Republic of Korea

TalTech Journal of European Studies, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 19-48

Abstract: This article examines the determinants of voting patterns within the European Parliament for EU trade legislations including EU trade agreements. Given that trade is a very sensitive issue for particular Member States, our question is to verify whether members of European Parliament (MEP) tend to vote in line with their political affiliation or national identity prevails in voting for trade-related issues. Our results from EU trade agreements with Korea and Columbia/Peru show that MEPs tend to vote with others in their political groups in trade legislations and their voting pattern is not very different from the overall voting pattern observed in other policy areas. This trend is confirmed by both the comparison of intra-voting cohesion index and the empirical test based on the probit model. Country-specific variables do not explain well the voting behavior of MEPs in trade issues. However, it is noteworthy that some MEPs voted in line with their national interests in case of EU-Korea FTA.

Keywords: European Parliament; free trade agreement; national identity; political affiliation; probit model; voting pattern (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bjes-2019-0036 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:bjeust:v:9:y:2019:i:4:p:19-48:n:2

DOI: 10.1515/bjes-2019-0036

Access Statistics for this article

TalTech Journal of European Studies is currently edited by Tanel Kerikmäe and Matti Rudanko

More articles in TalTech Journal of European Studies from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().