Policy positioning in the European Parliament

Abstract

Party politics in the European Parliament consists of competition between transnational party groups, each consisting of multiple national member parties from the EU's 27 member states. Characterizing the policy space that these parties inhabit and their ideological positions is both practically and conceptually challenging. In this paper we characterize this policy competition by tracking EP political groups from three separate, original expert surveys taken in 2004, 2007, and 2010. We look at the relative positioning of the groups on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as changes in party group policy since 2004. Additionally, we characterize the policy cohesion of party groups by examining the relative positions of each group's constituent parties, using independent national level expert surveys. The results reinforce previous findings that EP party groups not only occupy the entire range of the left-right spectrum, but also are clearly distinguishable from one another in policy terms. Moreover, their national party makeup consists of parties that are broadly cohesive in terms of their policy locations.

Bicameralism, nationality and party cohesion in the European Parliament

“…Hix et al 2007) and on ideological congruence (McElroy and Benoit 2010;2012). However, the similarity in our research findings was not a foregone conclusion.…”

“…McElroy and Benoit examine the ideological cohesion of national parties in EP party groups based on expert judgements of those parties' ideological positions (McElroy and Benoit 2010;2012). Thomassen and Schmitt (1999;see also Thomassen et al 2004) use data from surveys of MEPs to determine how cohesive and distinctive party groups are in relation to a set of broad policy questions.…”

Voting Behaviour in the European Parliament and Economic Governance Reform: Does Nationality Matter?

“…Intra-party cohesion, signalling consistency in voting behaviour among MEPs from the same ideological area, has been steadily increasing over time. Recent studies reinforce previous findings that EP party groups not only occupy the entire range of the left-right spectrum, but also are clearly distinguishable from one another in policy terms (McElroy and Benoit 2011). Furthermore, scholars showed that party groups, rather than nationality, have played a huge role in coalition formation in the EP from its very establishment (Kreppel and Tsebelis 1999;Kreppel 2000).…”

Bicameralism in the European Union: parliamentary scrutiny as a tool for reinforcing party unity

“…2 Furthermore, the distance between MEPs and their EPGs on each of the two dimensions is controlled for, and the position of the EPG is approximated by the mean of its members' positions. This procedure can be justified with reference to McElroy and Benoit (2012), who find that the position of all major EPGs is relatively close to the mean of the members. These distances are expected to be very powerful controls, because they address the individual MEPs' ideological motivation to deviate from their EPG.…”