Parliaments, Public Opinion and Parliamentary Elections in Europe

Abstract

The contributions collected in this Max Weber Working Papers Special Issue were first delivered at a conference held at the European University Institute and jointly organised by the Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies and the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies in March 2015 on ‘Parliaments and parliamentary elections in Europe’. Following the transformations undertaken by the European and national parliaments after the Treaty of Lisbon, the 2014 European elections, the unprecedented politicization and the challenges posed to representative democracy by the Eurozone crisis, the Special Issue aims to investigate three intertwined themes. (I) Parliamentary representation: European and national at the same time?; (II) national parliaments in EU policymaking; and (III) dynamics of Euroscepticism and its effects on law-making. In particular the papers deal with the ability of parliaments to democratically represent people in the European Union today and to affect the European integration process, with the asymmetric involvement of national parliaments in the EU, their dynamics of cooperation as well as between them and the European Parliament, and finally, with the implications on EU democratic legitimacy of recent developments regarding parliamentary input provided at a very early stage of the European policymaking. Other issues, such as transposition and the representation of eurosceptics in the European Parliament are also dealt with.