ENGLISH

Democratic Politics in the European Parliament

By Simon Hix , Abdul G. Noury , Gérard Roland

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2007
ISBN
9780521872881, 052187288X, 9780511278051, 9780521694605, 0511278055, 0521694604
LCC
JN36 .H53 2007
Open Library ID
OL10436610M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1526193 bytes)
Series
Themes in European Governance
Pages
258\260
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-04-11 19:55:47

Description

With the European Parliament comprising politicians from many different countries, cultures, languages, national parties and institutional backgrounds, one might expect politics in the Parliament to be highly-fragmented and unpredictable. By studying more than 12,000 recorded votes between 1979 and 2004 this book establishes that the opposite is in fact true: transnational parties in the European Parliament are highly cohesive and the classic 'left-right' dimension dominates voting behaviour. Furthermore, the cohesion of parties in the European Parliament has increased as the powers of the Parliament have increased. The authors suggest that the main reason for these developments is that like-minded MEPs have incentives to form stable transnational party organizations and to use these organizations to compete over European Union policies. They suggest that this is a positive development for the future of democratic accountability in the European Union.

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