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The role of national legislatures in European integration first received serious attention in the mid-1990s in connection with debates on the EU's democratic deficit. Since then, both academics and politicians have entered a lively debate on how best to involve national parliaments in EU affairs. The purpose of this article is to examine critically the state of research on the role of national parliaments in European integration and to use that existing knowledge to suggest avenues for further research. The main argument is that through focusing almost exclusively on scrutiny of European affairs, the literature has failed to acknowledge the multiple constraints that impact on legislatures. There is a demand for more theory-driven analyses of actual behaviour that extend beyond describing formal procedures and organisational choices. Future research should also pay more attention to the strategies of political parties and to the incentives of individual MPs to become involved in European affairs.

The European Parliament (EP), like the US Congress, is often depicted as a parliament with strong committees and weak parties. This article compares the powers of the EP's committees with their counterparts in national legislatures and examines the role of party groups in the committees. Analysing the principles guiding the appointments to committees, the selection of committee chairs, and the distribution of reports within the committees, we show that national party delegations inside the transnational groups are often key gatekeepers in the division of spoils within the groups, with group leaders restricted in their ability to direct the actions of their committee members. The distribution of reports between party groups and national delegations produces interesting variation, with the two largest groups (PES and EPP) largely in control of key reports, while the size of national parties inside the main groups is the primary factor in explaining the output of national delegations. * We are grateful to Nick Clegg, Francis Jacobs, Michael Shackleton, Richard Whitaker and the editors of this special issue for their helpful comments. VIRGINIE MAMADOUH AND TAPIO RAUNIO

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Codecision has dramatically increased the level of interaction and interdependence between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Under Maastricht the two institutions were able to agree on a set of shared norms and rules to manage the interdependence arising from the conciliation procedure. The expansion and simplification of codecision under Amsterdam since May 1999 has started to generate significant strains on the further development of those norms and rules. In particular, it has provoked tension between the competing claims of efficiency and democracy in the framing of legislation. The way in which this is resolved will contribute substantially to the future institutional architecture of the EU.

It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the U.S. Congress, legislative-executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal-agent framework, this collection scrutinizes the conventional wisdom of 'executive autonomy' in foreign affairs, indicating that even though parliaments have arguably become more involved in foreign and security policy over time, any notions of parliamentarization need to be treated with caution. While expectations of consensus in the name of the national interest continue to play an important role in foreign policy decisionmaking, the papers highlight the role of party-political contestation structuring parliamentary debates and votes in this increasingly politicized issue area. This introductory paper introduces the analytical framework and hypotheses guiding the contributions in this collection, summarizes their main findings and suggests avenues for future research.

Over the last 20 years, the role of national parliaments in European Union (EU)

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