When politics prevails: Parties, elections and loyalty in the European Parliament

Abstract

In many political systems, legislators serve multiple principals who compete for their loyalty in legislative votes. This article explores the political conditions under which legislators choose between their competing principals in multilevel systems, with a focus on how election proximity shapes legislative behaviour across democratic arenas. Empirically, the effect of electoral cycles on national party delegations’ ‘collective disloyalty’ with their political groups in the European Parliament (EP) is analysed. It is argued that election proximity changes the time horizons, political incentives and risk perceptions of both delegations and their principals, ‘punctuating’ cost‐benefit calculations around defection as well as around controlling, sanctioning and accommodating. Under the shadow of elections, national delegations’ collective disloyalty with their transnational groups should, therefore, increase. Using a new dataset with roll‐call votes cast under legislative codecision by delegations between July 1999 and July 2014, the article shows that the proximity of planned national and European elections drives up disloyalty in the EP, particularly by delegations from member states with party‐centred electoral rules. The results also support a ‘politicisation’ effect: overall, delegations become more loyal over time, but the impact of election proximity as a driver of disloyalty is strongest in the latest parliament analysed (i.e., 2009–2014). Furthermore, disloyalty is more likely in votes on contested and salient legislation, and under conditions of Euroscepticism; by contrast, disloyalty is less likely in votes on codification files, when a delegation holds the rapporteurship and when the national party participates in government. The analysis sheds new light on electoral politics as a determinant of legislative choice under competing principals, and on the conditions under which politics ‘travels’ across democratic arenas in the European Union's multilevel polity.

Love, convenience, or respectability? Understanding the alliances of the Five Star Movement in the European Parliament

“…The increasing politicisation of the EU (cf. Grande and Kriesi, 2014) has created ‘the conditions under which politics travels across the EU’s multilevel system’ (Koop et al ., 2017: 3) and fostered the interplay between domestic and supranational arenas. This may suggest that far from being an exceptional case, the M5S’s approach to transnational alliances just reflects the increasingly intertwined character of the EU polity.…”

EU Actors under pressure: politicisation and depoliticisation as strategic responses

“…Bottom-up politicisation focuses on how the growing visibility of, polarisation around and engagement with Europe at the domestic level impacts on actors at the EU-level. This is an increasingly relevant but under-studied dimension of supranational governance (for exceptions, see Börzel & Risse, 2018;Koop, Reh, & Bressanelli, 2018;Schmidt, 2019).…”

Power versus Ideology: Political Group Switching in the European Parliament

“… Koop, Reh, and Bressanelli (), however, show that, on final legislative codecision votes, proximity of planned national and European elections drives up disloyalty in the EP, particularly by delegations from member states with party‐centered electoral rules.…”