Whom to Represent? Role Orientations of Legislators in Europe

Abstract

This chapter is the fifth of six on the question of political representation in the EU. It analyses to what extent institutional differences between the member‐states of the EU are constraining the attitudes of representatives in respect of one major aspect—whom to represent; this is done by exploring the role orientations of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and comparing them with those of members of 11 national parliaments (MNPs). The first section of the chapter presents a brief conceptualization of representational roles by looking at general conclusions from previous research, and defining 5 representational foci in two dimensions: group specificity (party voters; specific (interest) groups) and regional scope (constituency; all people in the nation concerned; all people in Europe). The next section looks at the distributions of these five foci of representation across parliamentary levels (MEPs or MNPs) over the 15 member‐states of the EU; data are from the 1996 European Parliamentarians Study, and indicate striking differences between countries. The last (and largest) section of the chapter looks for explanations for these differences in foci of representation. These include personal factors (social background; political experience), institutional settings (the regional dimension—the relationship between role orientation, competitiveness and electoral systems; the group dimension—the relationship between role orientation and the encompassiveness and inclusiveness of interest group systems; and the European focus of representation in relation to the size and experience of a member‐state).

Participation and Political Competition in Committee Report Allocation

“…Research on indirect representation asks how and to what extent the range of political opinions within the public is translated into parliamentary seats. In the European Parliament, this literature has focused on either European elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980;Bowler and Farrell, 1993;Van der Eijk and Franklin, 1996;Carrubba, 2001), or representative role perceptions (Thomassen and Schmitt, 1997;Katz, 1997Katz, , 1999Marsh and Wessels, 1997;Thomassen, 1999, 2000;Wessels, 1999), or the social characteristics of representatives (Norris and Franklin, 1997). Most of this research has concluded that representation in the EP works only moderately well at best: the electoral connection is weaker than in domestic parliamentary systems, MEPs have different preferences on specific policy issues than their constituents, and the EP as a whole is socially quite unrepresentative.…”

The challenges of territorial representation at the supranational level: The case of French MEPs

“…As several studies have shown, the representational roles and the way MEPs engage in various activities in the EP are often related to whom they want to represent (Wessels, 1999;Farrell and Scully, 2007). In this last section, we will examine the extent to which the focus of representation of the French MEPs is related to their style of representation (that is, their views on how they ought to represent) and to their role orientation (that is, their definition of their job and their normative conception of the aims of their activities) (Eulau et al, 1959;Wahlke et al, 1962;Davidson, 1969).…”

Protesters, Parliamentarians, Policymakers: The Experiences of Australian Green MPs

“…The vast majority of existing role orientation studies focus on the differences between legislatures and their respective electoral systems, and subsequently do not discriminate between MPs of particular parties in reporting their findings (see for example Patzelt 1997, Wessels 1999, Thomassen and Esaiasson 2006. 2 Of those studies that have examined the impact of party orientation on role perceptions, the results are mixed.…”