Understanding Members of the European Parliament: Four waves of the European Parliament Research Group MEP survey

Whitaker, Richard; Hix, Simon; Zapryanova, Galina

doi:10.1177/1465116516687399

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…8. Note that response rates tend to be an issue, as Whitaker et al (2017) discuss at length, in the context of a series of similar surveys conducted only on MEPs rather than candidates. Response rates in these data vary greatly, particularly by country, from a relative low of 5-20% in countries like Italy or France to consistently high 20-40% in Germany (Giebler et al, 2010: 228-239).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring candidate selection mechanisms in European elections: Comparing formal party rules to candidate survey responses

Meserve

Palani

Pemstein

2017

European Union Politics

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Students of party organization often rely on politicians’ perceptions when measuring internal party institutions and organizational characteristics. We compare a commonly used survey measure of political parties’ European Parliament candidate selection mechanisms to measures that the authors coded directly from parties’ selection rules. We find substantial disconnect between formal institutions and survey respondent perceptions of selection mechanisms, raising questions about measure accuracy and equivalency. While this divergence may be driven either by distinctions between de jure and de facto selection procedures or by respondent error, we find the differences between the two measures are unsystematic. Our findings suggest that authors studying party characteristics must decide whether their research question calls for survey or formal institutional measures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring candidate selection mechanisms in European elections: Comparing formal party rules to candidate survey responses

Meserve

Palani

Pemstein

2017

European Union Politics

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“…First, it moves from an analysis of the roll call votes (RCV) on the final resolution to describe MEPs' voting behaviour and EPGs' internal cohesion. 7 Most of the literature on political positioning and party competition within the European Parliament is based on quantitative analysis of RCV (Bakker et al, 2015;Whitaker et al, 2017). This approach sheds light on the factors that can explain the MEPs' voting behaviour and the level of cohesion within the European Parliament groups.…”

Section: Main Hypotheses and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

New Tensions over Social Europe? The European Pillar of Social Rights and the Debate within the European Parliament

Vesan

Corti

2019

J of Common Market Studies

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In September 2015, the European Commission launched a new political initiative --the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) --with the stated aim of strengthening the social acquis of the European Union and promoting upward social convergence across eurozone countries. In January 2017, the European Parliament voted in a resolution supporting the EPSR. This article examines the positioning of the parliamentary political groups to grasp the tensions that emerged during the debate. In so doing, it provides empirical evidence of the existence of a complex 'clash syndrome' in European social policies which results from the combination of vertical and horizontal forms of euroscepticism. The main argument is that the coexistence of multiple political tensions may hamper the development of a stronger Social Europe, but may also lead to the emergence of new political coalitions through the 'criss-crossing' of different lines of conflict.

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“…The in‐depth qualitative strategy chosen combines the analysis of extensive interview data, committee debates, working documents and the actual rules that were produced in the process. The reliance on different sets of data captures the explicit attitudes that policy makers may express, similar to those that have been captured by surveys on self‐assessed political attitudes of MEPs (Whitaker et al ., 2017). The qualitative approach is however also helpful for studying how particular ideas, captured by the two logics, may play out in practice over time in the context of a legislative process that generates specific policy outcomes.…”

Section: Democratizing Versus Protecting: Tensions In Eu Institutional Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Democratize or to Protect? How the Response to Anti‐System Parties Reshapes the EU's Transnational Party System

Norman

2021

J of Common Market Studies

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This article studies how efforts to democratize the European Union's (EU) decision-making procedures are reshaped by the growing influence of anti-system parties in Europe. This new political landscape exacerbates a fundamental democratic dilemma for the EU: to either open up, and further democratize its institutions or to work to protect those institutions from the influence of anti-systemic actors. The article analyses how political elites engage with this dilemma by studying a process unfolding from 2010 to 2019 through which reforms to the EU's transnational party system were introduced. Building on extensive interview and debate data the analysis demonstrates that, while a democratizing logic informed early stages of the process, a protective logic gradually became dominant. The article goes on to discuss the possible implications of this shift for the continued democratization of the EU and identifies this dimension in EU politics as a pertinent field for further study.

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Understanding Members of the European Parliament: Four waves of the European Parliament Research Group MEP survey

Cited by 20 publications

References 16 publications

Measuring candidate selection mechanisms in European elections: Comparing formal party rules to candidate survey responses

Measuring candidate selection mechanisms in European elections: Comparing formal party rules to candidate survey responses

New Tensions over Social Europe? The European Pillar of Social Rights and the Debate within the European Parliament

To Democratize or to Protect? How the Response to Anti‐System Parties Reshapes the EU's Transnational Party System

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