Effektive Kontrolle Europäischer Politik durch nationale Parlamente
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Europeanization has caused deparliamentarization. By studying institutional provisions and formal scrutiny rules, existing studies claim that many parliaments have successfully ‘fought back’ by undertaking major reforms during the last years. In contrast, our research project had a distinct focus on explaining scrutiny behavior from a party politics perspective. Specifically, we collected a unique dataset on committee referrals of EU policy proposals in ten national parliaments as well as information on co-authorship of statements/ resolutions in a subset of four national parliaments. Our results provide evidence that, similar to domestic politics, parliamentary scrutiny of EU politics is motivated by overcoming either governmental or ministerial drift of the national position. However, the use of parliamentary control is contingent on the factors of the political systems, in particular on the partisan composition, discipline and cohesiveness of the government. An opposition facing a cohesive and highly disciplined majority government has to rely on different scrutiny strategies than an opposition facing a weakly disciplined minority government. Moreover, we find that parliamentary scrutiny has been used as a strategic tool to avoid further concessions in EU level negotiations. The effects of parliamentary scrutiny are even more complex. On the one hand, can an early involvement of parliaments contribute to a timely transposition of EU directives. Preposing the necessary deliberations and negotiations to the decision-making stage reduced the time needed during the transposition stage. On the other hands, does an early involvement of parliament risk to harden political fronts by waking the proverbial “sleeping dog”. We found the latter risk particularly virulent for highly salient proposals. Moreover, we found that parliamentary scrutiny reinforces the control of national parties over “their” members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Yet this effect is biased to the favor of governing parties, which find it easier to track their MEPs voting behavior. Therefore, our findings suggest that naitonal parliaments’ overall ability to effectively influence EU policy outcomes depends on the recurring themes of the democratic deficit literature: the distribution of power and the transparency of EU decision making.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- (2013). ‚Whistle Blowing and Opposition Control: Parliamentary Scrutiny in the European Union.‘ European Journal of Political Research, 52(6): 715-746
Finke, Daniel und Tanja Dannwolf
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12014) - (2014). ‚Domestic-level Parliamentary Scrutiny and Voting Behavior in the European Parliament.‘ Government and Opposition, 49(2):207-231
Finke, Daniel
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2013.27) - (2015). 'Beyond Rules and Ressources: Parliamentary Scrutiny of EU Policy Proposals.' European Union Politics, 16(4): 490-513
Finke, Daniel and Annika Herbel
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116515584202) - (2015). ‚Who let the dogs out? The Effect of Parliamentary Scrutiny on the Implementation of EU Law.’ Journal of European Public Policy, 22(8): 1127-1147
Finke, Daniel und Tanja Dannwolf
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2014.1000364) - (2017). 'Bicameralism in the European Union: Parliamentary Scrutiny as a Tool to reinforce Party Unity‘, West European Politics, 40(2): 275-294
Finke, Daniel
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2016.1188549) - (2017). Parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. West European Politics, 40(1), 161-182
Herbel, A.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2016.1240405) - (2018) 'Institutional conditions for effective parliamentary oversight of European Union politics. West European Politics
Finke, Daniel
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1474418) - (2018). 'Coalition Politics and Parliamentary Oversight in the European Union, Government and Opposition, 53(3):388-415
Finke, Daniel
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2016.28)
