European integration and national parliamentary oversight institutions

Winzen, Thomas

doi:10.1177/1465116512467088

Cited by 76 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 69 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…'Indeed, research on explaining cross-national variation in the level of scrutiny in EU matters indicates that the overall strength of the legislature "spills over" to European affairs, with stronger control of the government in domestic matters producing also tighter cabinet scrutiny in European affairs' (Raunio 2009: 330, FN 11). The second factor draws on motivation-based explanations and can be summarised under the heading of public and/or elite opinion, including the degree of public support for the EU in the member state and/or the existence of anti-European parties (Raunio and Wiberg 2000, Raunio 2005, Winzen 2013). In Raunio's comparative study (2005), based on a fuzzy set QCA analysis, the power of parliament independent of integration emerged as the only necessary condition, whereas the combination of having a powerful parliament and a Eurosceptic electorate were sufficient conditions for producing tighter procedures for the control of the government in EU matters.…”

Section: Delegation and Ownership In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

Auel¹,

Höing²

2015

West European Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The eurozone crisis suggests a significant reinforcement of the executive dominance in EU policy-making. Opaque emergency decisions taken at European summits as well as treaties established outside of the EU legal framework facilitate the side-lining of democratically elected chambers. This development entails the risk of a new wave of deparliamentarisation in EU policy-making. An effective scrutiny of the crisis management by national parliaments is, however, indispensable to take national ownership of the reforms in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper therefore investigates national parliaments' involvement in the development of instruments to combat the crisis. Based on a quantitative data set of crisis-related parliamentary activities in 2010-2012, we observe a very uneven engagement in the scrutiny of the crisis management. Institutional prerogatives in EU affairs as well as macro-economic factors can partly explain the observed variation. Surprisingly, however, crisis-related parliamentary activity is not a reaction to Eurosceptic attitudes either in parliament or the public.

show abstract

Section: Delegation and Ownership In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

Auel¹,

Höing²

2015

West European Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The most recent research suggests that there is considerable variation between national parliaments in their involvement in euro crisis governance. Differences between more active and weaker legislatures have been aggravated, with the latter in particular struggling to establish any real control over euro area decisions (Auel and Höing, 2014;Benz, 2013;Deubner, 2013, Rittberger andWinzen, 2015). The inevitable conclusion must be that domestic parliamentary scrutiny of European economic governance is far from optimal.…”

Section: European Council and European Economic Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There remain, however, strong national differences as to both how powerful EACs are and the extent to which the regular standing committees become involved in EU affairs (e.g. Hefftler et al, 2015;Auel and Christiansen, 2015;Karlas, 2012;Winzen, 2013a;2013b).…”

Section: The Functions Of National Parliaments and Eu Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The EWM distracts from the scarce parliamentary resources that could be devoted to either directly controlling the governments or to accounting to citizens in EU affairs. Were these existing mechanisms operating at peak whether in the context of early agreements in the co-decision procedure or in the rapidly changing circumstances of the euro crisis (Auel and Christiansen, 2015;Hefftler et al, 2015;Winzen, 2013a;2013b). We have to be careful here not to exaggerate the amount of EAC or parliamentary staff resources assigned to EWM, but the key observation is that even for parliaments with cost-efficient procedures time devoted to subsidiarity checks cannot be spent on other EU affairs -such as selection of key documents (see the next section) or producing information for MPs or citizens.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Redirecting national parliaments: Setting priorities for involvement in EU affairs

Wilde

Raunio

2015

Comp Eur Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While national parliaments in the European Union have learned to internalize new opportunities for influence given to them by the Lisbon Treaty, European integration has evolved and places ever more serious demands and constraints on domestic legislatures. Following the euro crisis, key decisions about national macro-economic policies are taken in the European Council and the European Semester. These are the issues traditionally at the heart of both democratic governance and citizens' concerns. Relating these developments to the key functions national parliaments ought to perform, we develop the normative argument that a redirection of national parliaments' resources away from less salient matters and particularly the Early Warning Mechanism toward the European Council and European economic governance would be welcome.

show abstract

“…9 See, for example, Moravcsik (2012) on the politics of EU banking, and Winzen (2013) and de Wilde (2014) on the attitudes of national parliaments towards the EU institutional process.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises, Institutional Reform, and the Future of EU Democracy

Genovese

Schneider

2012

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The handling of the recent sovereign debt crisis in Europe has raised fears that decision making among European countries has become less democratic, and that technocrats now call the shots in the European Union (EU). In this article we confront this view by proposing an alternative theory for the effects of financial crises in this supranational organization. We argue that national parliaments in Europe refrain from demanding control of EU institutions during a financial crisis if they think their request may undermine the credibility of governments in other member states their policies depend on. A crisis should then depress demand for political reforms in monetarily independent countries that are in financial trouble, but not in countries whose fiscal and monetary status rely on the economic reputation of the Union as a whole. We show evidence in support of our theory with qualitative evaluations and econometric regressions, using different types of data for the years between 1950 and 2010. Our findings let us reconsider that the recent Eurocrisis has depleted the power of the European legislatures. * Stanford University; genovese.federica@gmail.com † University of Konstanz; gerald.schneider@uni-konstanz.de. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the meeting of the 2012 German Political Science Association (DVWP) at the University of Tübingen and at research seminars at the Free University Berlin, Leiden University, WZB, Tel Aviv University and the Institute for Advance Studies Toulouse. We thank the participants and Zareh Asatryan, Simon Hix, Martin Höppner, Kai Konrad, Rhea Molato, John Roemer, Thomas Sattler, Tal Sadeh, Enrico Spolaore, Aneta Spendzharova, Bernard Steunenberg, Jean Tirole and Vera Tröger for constructive comments. We are also grateful to Alexander Bräunig for research assistance and Cristina Bodea, Tal Sadeh and Thomas Winzen for sharing data. Replication data and files will be found at the homepage of the first author. The political economy literature disagrees over the conditions under which a country introduces political reforms following a severe economic shock. A main proposition within this body of research boils down to the expectation that governments do not launch policy reforms without the pressure from crises. Rodrik (1996: 27) Addressing the question whether 'smoke follows fires' in light of these concerns, this paper examines the institutional consequences of financial collapses in Europe. We present an argument that links together lessons from the literature on the effects of crises on policy, coalition building and unanimity voting, seeking to explain the trajectory of supranational decision making in the continent from the post-war years until today. On the one hand, remarkable integration and progressive legalization have occurred in the aftermath of crises in modern Europe. This observation leads us to believe the EU is a supra-nationalist democracy with the capacity to introduce institutional changes that are more universally beneficial than the status...

show abstract

European integration and national parliamentary oversight institutions

Cited by 76 publications

References 69 publications

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis: Taking Ownership in Difficult Times?

Redirecting national parliaments: Setting priorities for involvement in EU affairs

Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises, Institutional Reform, and the Future of EU Democracy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About