Members Of National Parliaments Research Articles

Modulation of Democracy: Partisan Communication During and After Election Campaigns

AbstractIt is well known that politicians speak differently when campaigning. The shadow of elections may affect candidates' change in tone during campaigns. However, to date, we lack a systematic study of the changes in communication patterns between campaign and non-campaign periods. In this study, we examine the sentiment expressed in 4.3 million tweets posted by members of national parliaments in the EU27 from 2018 to 2020. Our results show that (1) the opposition, even populists and Eurosceptics, send more positive messages during campaigns, (2) parties trailing in the polls communicate more negatively, and (3) that the changes are similar in national and European elections. These findings show the need to look beyond campaign times to understand parties' appeals and highlight the promises of social media data to move beyond traditional analyses of manifestos and speeches.

The comparative mortality of an elite group in the long run of history: an observational analysis of politicians from 11 countries

This study aims to compare the mortality rate and life expectancy of politicians with those of the age and gender-matched general populations. This was an observational analysis of mortality rates of politicians (i.e. members of national parliaments with available data on dates of birth, death and election, gender, and life tables) in 11 developed countries. Politicians were followed from date of first election until either death or the last available year with life table data. Relative mortality differences were estimated using standardised mortality ratios (SMRs). Absolute inequalities were quantified as the difference in survival by deducting a population’s remaining life expectancy from politicians’ remaining life expectancy at age 45, estimated using Gompertz parametric proportional hazards models. We included 57,561 politicians (with follow-up ranging from 1816–2016 for France to 1949–2017 for Germany). In almost all countries politicians had similar rates of mortality to the general population in the early part of the twentieth century. Relative mortality and survival differences (favouring politicians) increased considerably over the course of the twentieth century, with recent SMRs ranging from 0.45 (95%CI 0.41–0.50) in Italy to 0.82 (95%CI 0.69–0.95) in New Zealand. The peak life expectancy gaps ranged from 4.4 (95% CI, 3.5–5.4) years in the Netherlands to 7.8 (95% CI, 7.2–8.4) years in the US. Our results show large relative and absolute inequalities favouring politicians in every country. In some countries, such as the US, relative inequalities are at the greatest level in over 150 years.

Zehn Jahre „Frühwarnsystem“ in der Europäischen Union: Ein wirksames Instrument der Subsidiaritätskontrolle?

After having played a minor role in European politics for a long time, national parliaments were empowered to “guardians of subsidiarity” under the Lisbon Treaty. This article scrutinizes whether they have succeeded in influencing European Union legislation with reasoned opinions over the past ten years. A statistical analysis of all opinions up to 2020 shows that the Commission recalls draft legislative acts significantly more often after receiving at least one reprimand. A comparison of the parliamentary chambers suggests that these withdrawal decisions were not driven by strategic considerations such as a member state's voting weight in the Council. Both indicate that the “Early Warning System” works better in practice than previously assumed. This result should encourage members of national parliaments to make more active use of this instrument of subsidiarity control.

The Future of the European Fiscal Union: Survey Results from Members of National Parliaments in France, Italy and Germany

Using data from a unique survey of members of parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018, we estimate the effects of three dimensions on EU and euro area fiscal reform preferences: nationality, political ideology, and populism. We predict and confirm that a German populist party on the right is most opposed to a more developed European fiscal union, while a non-populist politician on the political left in France or Italy is most integrationist. Furthermore, the relative position of French and Italian policymakers is issue dependent and the Left dimension outweighs the German dimension in two out of seven reform issues. Finally, populism intensifies the polarizing impact of national interests.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It: A Natural Experiment to Identify European Politicians’ Benefit from Twitter Bots

Social media giants stand accused of facilitating illegitimate interference with democratic political processes around the world. Part of this problem are malicious bots: automated fake accounts passing as humans. However, we lack a systematic understanding of which politicians benefit most from them. We tackle this question by leveraging a Twitter purge of malicious bots in July 2018 and a new dataset on Twitter activity by all members of national parliaments (MPs) in the EU in 2018. Since users had no influence on how and when Twitter purged millions of bots, it serves as an exogenous intervention to investigate whether some parties or politicians lost more followers. We find drops in follower counts concentrated among radical right politicians, in particular those with strong anti-EU discourse. This is the first set of empirical, causally identified evidence supporting the idea that the radical right benefits more from malicious bots than other party families.

Does Institutional Setting Affect Legislators’ Use of Twitter?

This study investigates whether members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and members of national parliaments (MNPs) use social media in distinctive ways. Specifically, it examines whether institutional differences affect the frequency, quality, and nature of legislators’ Twitter communications. Controlling for factors that previous studies find significant, we select for two kinds of legislators: (i) MEPs who are serving in the 2014–19 term and who served as MNPs immediately before their election to the EP and (ii) MEPs who served in the 2009–14 term and have subsequently become MNPs. We compare selected legislators’ tweets over a three‐month period during their EP tenures with their Twitter behaviors over an analogous period during their NP tenures. The statistical results demonstrate few significant differences between MEPs and MNPs. A preliminary qualitative probe suggests that legislators’ tweet patterns may owe less to the institution they serve and more to their policy responsibilities and leadership positions within particular institutions.

Communication Without Legislation? A Cross-National Field Experiment on Members of Parliament

Do legislators communicate with constituents about affairs that they cannot legislate? An influential literature underlines the communication of what legislators do in the legislature to their constituents. This article questions the hypothetical link between communication and legislation. I conduct a cross-national field experiment on members of national parliaments (MPs) to investigate how they behave when ordinary citizens require them to explain what they cannot legislate. Overall, the results show that MPs are evenly responsive to explanation requests within and outside their legislative competence. Likewise, their replies to inquiries on what they can and cannot legislate are equally quick and just as detailed. Further analysis reveals that electoral incentives motivate MPs to account for even those affairs that they cannot legislate. This suggests that, with regard to the content, legislators’ communicative accountability may be larger than previously supposed.

Vragen naar de bekende weg?

This paper analyses the information sources members of the Dutch Lower House base their questions on with regard to EU affairs in the period 1995-2013. Knowledge of the type of information sources to base questions on is vital for determining what the conditions are under which members of national parliaments can scrutinize the decisions taken by the national government at the EU level. The involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs is according to many scholars a necessary condition for closing the democratic deficit of the European Union, especially when the turnout in elections for the European Parliament remains low and for national parliaments remains stable and relatively high. An original dataset is constructed including all sets of written parliamentary questions on EU affairs asked by Dutch MPs in the period 1995-2013, categorized by different types of information sources on which the question is based. These different categories of information sources are regressed with a variable measuring the Treaty changes impacting on the intensity of contact between MPs of different national parliaments and several variables measuring the characteristics of Dutch MPs and their parties. The findings indicate that Dutch MPs base their written questions primarily on coverage on EU affairs by national newspapers. Moreover, MPs are more likely to use sources rooted in a national context for asking questions when they are a member of a party with a negative attitude towards European integration. These findings imply that parliamentary control via written questions over the decisions of the national executive at the EU level can be strengthened by increasing national media coverage on EU affairs, allowing the EU public sphere to develop further in the future.

Under the radar? National parliaments and the ordinary legislative procedure in the European Union

This study aims to bring together insights from scholars working on the ordinary legislative procedure with research on national parliaments and European Union (EU) affairs. It is assumed that members of national parliaments – when choosing directives in negotiation at the EU level in need of scrutiny – are confronted with variation in information processing costs, as well as in benefits in terms of policy influence and votes. Hypotheses are formulated on how the cost–benefit calculus can influence the scrutiny of directives agreed upon through the ordinary legislative procedure. An analysis of parliamentary activity in the Dutch and British lower houses on 293 directives indicates that directives which are longer in negotiation at the EU level, on which explanatory memoranda are published, receive media attention and are concluded without informal trilogues in second/third reading, are more scrutinized.

The National Parliamentary Arena and Methods of Open Coordination: Explaining the Frequency of OMC-related Executive-legislature Interactions

This article tests the importance of different factors for the frequency with which information from open methods of coordination (OMCs) is used in parliamentary debates. Previous research has shown that OMCs provide the executive and the legislature with information on best and worst national policy practices, enabling them to adopt different strategies. First, a national government can fame its own policies with the use of information from OMCs. Second, information from OMCs can be used by parliamentarians of opposition parties to shame the policies of the incumbent government. A study of Dutch parliamentary debates indicates that the Dutch government uses more information from OMCs to fame its own policies when OMCs have a developed infrastructure and/or a treaty base. Parliamentarians from opposition parties use more information from OMCs adopted for policy areas in which there was already EU-level activity prior to the OMC, and the government provided information on the substance of OMCs to members of national parliaments.

EU soft law and the functioning of representative democracy: the use of methods of open co-ordination by Dutch and British parliamentarians

The Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) promises to involve a broad range of actors, including members of national parliaments. Several scholars showed that the OMC breaks this promise by affecting the national policy-making process outside of the control of national parliaments. However, this finding can be called into question; scholars drew heavily on anecdotal evidence and did not take sufficiently into account differences between OMCs and member states. This article empirically investigates the use of three OMCs by parliamentarians in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to assess the performance of national policies related to the knowledge-based society theme. It will be shown that the use of information from OMCs by parliamentarians is dependent on the information provided by the government on the policies OMCs touch upon and the presence of simple benchmarks in an OMC. Moreover, parliamentarians in a consensus democracy use the OMC more frequently.

The politics of adaptation: The Europeanisation of national parliamentary systems

Parliamentary systems can be characterised by particular patterns of interaction between the executive, the majority parties and the opposition parties in parliament. The basic argument outlined in this paper is that in order to understand the impact of European integration on national parliamentary democracies we have to find out how these patterns are adjusted. The article starts by identifying the basic social mechanisms that drive the interaction of the mentioned groups of actors and by describing how they are modified in European multi-level governance. In this context, members of national parliaments are faced with a dilemma: Successful scrutiny can undermine the effectiveness of European governance whereas a permissive parliament causes a legitimacy deficit. Through case studies on the Europeanisation of the parliamentary systems in the UK, in Denmark and in Germany, the authors show how members of parliaments cope with this challenge and which strategies they apply to avoid the dilemma.

Path-Dependent Institutions and Strategic Veto Players: National Parliaments in the European Union

According to the prevailing concept of 'dual legitimacy', national parliaments constitute an important source of democratic legitimacy in the EU. Reinforced parliamentary scrutiny and control of the national representatives in the Council of Ministers seem to contribute to a more democratic Europe. However, if parliaments tie the hands of their governments when they negotiate at the European level, effectiveness of policy-making is jeopardised and national interests may be defeated. Realising this dilemma, members of national parliaments develop strategies to deal with conflicting requirements of national party politics and European policy-making. These strategies and their implications for democracy are influenced by the path-dependent institutional changes in national parliamentary systems. They therefore vary considerably between member states.

Politically-Connected Firms: Can They Squeeze the State?

For a sample of 42 countries, I examine firms whose controlling shareholders and top managers are members of national parliaments or governments. I find that this overlap is quite widespread, especially in highly corrupted countries. Connected companies enjoy easier access to debt financing, lower taxation, and stronger market power. These benefits increase when companies are connected through their owner, with a minister, or a seasoned politician. Furthermore, these benefits are generally larger when the firm operates in a country with high corruption, low protection of property rights, a highly interventionist government, or a non-democratic government. Even though these connections provide significant benefits, connected firms under-perform their peers on an ex-ante basis. Therefore connections, by driving benefits to relatively poorly performing firms, distort the allocation of funds and investment decisions.

The Oslo Conference, 1955

THERE maturity in the discussion of problems in international relations. By this standard the Oslo Conference1 on Democracies and World Problems set a high standard. It was convened a moment when the Federal Republic of Germany had been admitted to full membership in NATO ; when sovereignty had lately been restored to Austria as one earnest of European recovery, when the United Nations was rounding out ten years of activity, and when it was expected that the Geneva meetings at the summit might add to a developing mentality of public confidence without overdoing the great power, (or perhaps more correctly, a Big Four) emphasis in the maintenance of peace throughout the world. The Conference had the additional advantage of participants skilled in parliamentary or international negotiations: of the forty-four delegates, ten were or had been members of national parliaments, thirteen were in academic posts and least twelve others had had a professional connection either with the conduct of international business or the serious study of international affairs. The June sunshine of Oslo, the sturdy democratic spirit of the Norwegian people, and the ready currency of the English language all combined to make the Conference a pleasant and an enlarging experience. For purposes of discussion the Conference was divided into three groups, whose fields of reference may be summarized as follows: first, the problem in terms of Western and Soviet policies; the impact of new weapons on East-West