From "Grand Coalition" To Left-Right Confrontation

Abstract

In this article, the authors address the rationalist-constructivist debate head on. They start by discussing a significant empirical phenomenon in contemporary EU politics: the changing pattern of political competition in the European Parliament (EP), from a "grand coalition" of the two main parties in the 1994-1999 EP, to a new structure of left-right competition in the 1999-2004 EP. The authors then illustrate how rational choice and constructivist assumptions offer competing explanations of this shift in the "culture of competition" in the EP, which in turn generate competing empirically testable hypotheses. These propositions are tested using a logistic analysis of more than 400 roll-call votes in a period from the 1994-1999 and the 1999-2004 parliament. The authors conclude that neither basic theoretical framework performs well and that the best explanation needs to incorporate assumptions from both frameworks.