National Parliamentarians Research Articles

Parliamentary acceptability of EU military deployments in member states: beyond rubber-stamping?

ABSTRACT This article examines national parliamentary debates in 13 EU member states of eight CSDP military deployments underway between 2016 and 2021. It reviews discussions about whether, and why, to send troops on EU missions and operations, and the extent to which these debates differ from expectations in the literature derived from involvement in NATO operations. The survey includes small states, which have been previously excluded from such analysis. Drawing on a dataset of 411 statements by national parliamentarians from across Europe, the article employs eight discursive frames to understand how MPs articulate their acceptance (or not) of CSDP deployments. We supplement this with detailed data on national troop contributions. We find that CSDP debates in national parliaments resemble those of ‘high-salience’ deployments when considering frame usage and party position. We present limited evidence supporting the claim that small states frame deployment debates similarly to large states.

Государство как ценность: репрезентация образа будущего в речах российских парламентариев

The article is devoted to studying the representation of state as value in the speeches of the deputies of the State Duma from the viewpoint of the image of Russia’s future. As a starting point, the authors used the pentabasis model, where the image of the future is presented in the form of five elements, one of which is the state, interpreted via trust in political institutions. The theoretical basis of the study was the concept of Stein Rokkan and his followers, according to which the state formation involves building socio-cultural boundaries that indicate belonging to a political community. The empirical basis was the transcripts of speeches of deputies on current socio-economic, political and other issues at the plenary sessions of the State Duma of VII— VIII convocations. The research was carried out by the method of discourse analysis. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that national parliamentarians are deeply concerned about the problem of trust. Although decisions on the most fundamental issues are made via consensus, deputies feel a lack of trust among certain groups of the population, which requires them to exert additional efforts to justify their initiatives. The topics they most often turn to include welfare state, center-regions relations, and economic development. At the same time, they rarely directly touch upon the prospects of domestic political institutions, as well as the topic of the image of the future in general, which may be explained by both a shortage of strategic ideas and external restrictions on parliamentary discourse.

Vertical inroads of religion into European parliamentary politics: how socialisation and national party affiliation shape German MEPs’ consideration of religion

ABSTRACT German members of the European Parliament (MEPs) offer a particularly interesting subject to study when aiming to explore religious influence in Europe’s multilevel parliamentary politics. German MEPs not only represent the largest share of parliamentarians, but also originate from a country context where until very recently, the ruling parties promoted close ties between politics and religion. Relying on an online survey and interviews with MEPs collected as part of the Religion in the European Parliament and in European multilevel governance II (RelEP2) project, this study explores the religious profile of German MEPs. It contrasts it with the profile of national parliamentarians, and discusses how national characteristics such as political socialisation and state-church relationship inroad German MEPs’ attitudes and behaviour. We discover that in European parliamentary politics, the influence of religion is often more unconscious. This interpretation, however, is very much affected by the individual socialisation of German MEPs and the strategies of their national parties, exemplifying the dominance of vertical inroads of religion over horizontal ones.

ON THE GROUNDS OF CRIMINALIZATION OF ACTIONS, PROVIDED BY ART. 114-2 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE OF UKRAINE

The article is devoted to a critical analysis of the decision of the national parliamentarians to add a new article to the Criminal Code of Ukraine 114-2 and is aimed at obtaining a scientifically based answer to the question of whether there were grounds for the criminalization of the acts described therein, and if so, which ones. In particular, based on the results of writing the article, it is concluded that, firstly, the establishment in 2022 of criminal liability for the unauthorized dissemination of militarily significant information had a strong social basis and was caused by a number of reasons at once, the main of which, of course, was a significant and the sudden change in the social situation in our country, which was the result of Russia’s large-scale and open attack on Ukraine; secondly, being the main reason for the criminalization of the act under investigation, the corresponding aggression of the Russian Federation simultaneously played the role of a catalyst for the emergence of a number of other interdependent processes, the development of which put on the agenda the question of the objective necessity of introducing criminal liability for the relevant acts, namely, unfavorable the dynamics of the unauthorized dissemination of militarily significant information, a change in the perception of the degree of public danger and the generally recognized moral assessment of this act; thirdly, one of the important reasons for the criminalization of the investigated behavior was the significant development of a new group of social relations that took place on the basis of economic or technical progress - informational relations. The same fact that, despite the ongoing war since 2014, the issue of criminalization of the behavior described in Art. 114-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, became the agenda only in 2022 is explained by the fact that: a) until 2022, the war with the Russian Federation was not of a large-scale nature; b) starting from the end of 2015, the intensity of hostilities in Donbas decreased significantly.

Building parliamentary capacities for advancing the disaster risk reduction agenda: Notes and reflections from a capacity-building field training for parliamentarians of the Americas and the Caribbean

As the escalating impacts of climate change exert greater pressure on national governments and their constituents, particularly in marginalized communities, legislators will need to leverage their roles to support national and local efforts to build disaster resilience. This will require a better understanding of risk, but also of the interconnections between the climate and disaster agendas. This is vital for legislators to strategically apply their capabilities to achieving the targets outlined by their respective national governments. The role of individual national parliamentarians in advancing the priorities of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction remains largely unexplored in scholarly research. However, these individuals play pivotal social and political roles with varying degrees of power, networks, and local influence. Such roles can enhance communities' capacity to participate in building disaster resilience. A significant hurdle for parliamentarians is comprehending the priorities and mechanisms necessary to develop a robust and coherent disaster risk management system. This involves navigating the intricate conceptual dimensions of the disaster risk reduction agenda and bridging these concepts with their everyday functions as parliamentarians. We contend that field briefings and co-production offer an effective platform for enhancing parliamentarians' capacity to grasp the concepts surrounding climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. This article presents reflections drawn from a parliamentary training on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction with insights from the three-day capacity-building workshop with national legislators from the Americas and the Caribbean. The project was done in partnership between the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and an inter-parliamentary organization.

Political groups over national parties: Measuring the Europeanization of the political arena through MEPs’ Twitter interactions

The question of the democratic character of the European Union (EU) has been a center-point of decades of political research. An important critique suggests that the development of the European political arena is still incomplete, with European parliamentarians primarily orienting themselves to national issues and politicians, implying a problematic mismatch between the political arena and their policy jurisdiction. Research has however been limited by methodological difficulties of capturing the level of Europeanization of the political arena. This paper contributes a novel method for measuring Europeanization by studying interactions between the European Parliament to their national parliamentarians on Twitter in 15 EU countries. Contrary to expectations in the literature, we find substantial Europeanization of the political arena. The level of Europeanization furthermore varies greatly across countries and political groups. This has important implications on the debate on EU’s democratic deficit, as communication across different levels of parliament indicates democratic debate.

SECURING AN ADMINISTRATIVE CLAIM: LIMITS OF THE COURT’S POWERS

The article analyzes the architectonics of legislative changes, the subject of legal regulation of which is the institution of ensuring administrative claims by courts in Ukraine. Securing an administrative lawsuit means a legally defined procedural mechanism, which consists in the use of a court in which an administrative case is pending, until its resolution of statutory measures to enable the actual implementation of future court decisions, if it is in favor of the plaintiff. It has been established that the institution of securing an administrative claim is permanently and progressively narrowing significantly, as a number of public authorities have been removed from the subjective composition of its procedural distribution. These are: the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the High Council of Justice, the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine and other state bodies. The practice of nation-building shows that the tendency to narrow the institution of securing an administrative claim is actively supported by national parliamentarians. The change in the political situation in Ukraine after the removal of the head of state in February 2014 from his post in no way had a positive effect on preventing further «depletion» of the institution of administrative lawsuits, which led to «procedural weakening» of administrative courts, rather than strengthening them. In view of such legislative changes, the powers of administrative courts in Ukraine in terms of their application of this important procedural institution, contrary to international requirements, are gradually decreasing. This means a proportional narrowing of the procedural rights and opportunities of the plaintiff and, as a consequence, the leveling of guarantees of ensuring the constitutional rights of man and citizen in Ukraine. Key words: ensuring an administrative claim, the institution of procedural law, constitutional rights and guarantees of man and citizen

The influence of Eurosceptic challenger parties on mainstream party behaviour: Is oppositional behaviour contagious?

Previous research has looked at how Eurosceptic challenger parties can cause mainstream parties to change their policy positions and bring about adjustments to their programmes. We explore whether this contagion effect extends to the parliamentary behaviour of mainstream parties in European Union (EU) affairs. The empirical analysis is based on a large-scale study of 6215 statements made by national parliamentarians in the European Affairs Committee of Sweden between 1995 and 2016. A dynamic panel analysis of the data shows that the oppositional behaviour of Eurosceptic challenger parties has a significant impact on the opposition statements made in EU affairs by mainstream parties. These findings have important implications for the general understanding of factors that drive national EU opposition.

Who Teams Up with the European Parliament? Examining Multilevel Party Cooperation in the European Union

AbstractAs in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade.

The framing of malnutrition by parliamentarians in Uganda.

The quest for political commitment to reducing malnutrition in sub-Sahara Africa draws attention to the role of national parliamentarians. Whereas parliamentarians have the authority to ratify legislation, monitor policies and budgets and transform behaviour, to date little is known about how malnutrition is understood and debated in sub-Saharan African political arenas. This study addresses that gap by exploring how (mal)nutrition has been framed by parliamentarians in Uganda between 2001 and 2017. Applying framing theory we performed a qualitative content analysis of 131 Parliament Hansards transcripts to determine the different meanings of nutrition. Our analysis distinguishes seven co-occurring frames that entail different, sometimes competing, understandings of the drivers and possible solutions of malnutrition. The frames are: (i) the emergency nutrition frame, (ii) the chronic vulnerability frame, (iii) the school feeding frame, (iv) the disease-related frame, (v) the diversification frame, (vi) the overnutrition (among politicians) frame and (vii) the poverty and inequality frame. These frames are sponsored by different groups of parliamentarians, most notably politicians representing constituencies with high degrees of malnutrition, the president, some ministers and politicians in parliamentary forums concerned with children and women issues. Our analysis helps to understand why policy measures get prioritized or disregarded by policymakers. Overall, we show that frame sponsors prioritize short-term tangible solutions, such as food assistance and agricultural inputs, over longer term solutions. We suggest that a more comprehensive policy frame is prerequisite to developing a more effective governance approach to malnutrition in Uganda.

Good news after all? Reactions to Brexit in national parliaments

ABSTRACT National parliaments have been increasingly involved in EU affairs including in the reforms of EU institutions which, in most countries, they must ratify. How national parliamentarians (MPs) view and react to the challenge of Brexit is therefore of the uppermost significance for the future of European integration. The objective of this article is to analyse whether national MPs (outside the UK) see Brexit as a threat or an opportunity for the EU. It hypothesises that MPs’ evaluation of Brexit depends on three sets of factors: their ideology, their general attitude toward European integration and their country’s exposure to the consequences of Brexit. The empirical analysis relies on a survey of national MPs from nine EU countries conducted in 2017–2018. It shows that their perceptions of Brexit are part of a broader set of attitudes toward European integration and that there is a cleavage between pessimist and optimist MPs.

Women’s Participation in Bangladesh Politics, The Gender Wall and Quotas

This article presents qualitative data from interviews conducted with female national parliamentarians and local government councillors in Bangladesh regarding barriers to women’s participation in electoral politics. The evidence suggests that a gender wall comprised of institutional, historical, socio-economic and cultural factors continues to prevent Bangladeshi women’s full participation in formal politics at both national and local levels. Since Bangladesh now operates a policy of affirmative action through reserved seats for female politicians, the question arises to what extent this can be seen as a useful longer-term strategy to counteract gender discrimination.

BÜYÜKŞEHİR İLÇELERİNDEKİ BELEDİYE MECLİS ÜYELERİNİN PROFİLİ ÜZERİNE BİR ARAŞTIRMA: TRABZON ÖRNEĞİ

Belediye meclis üyeleri, gerek yerel demokrasi çerçevesinde halka en yakın temsilciler olmaları, gerekse halkın yerel ölçekteki talep ve şikâyetlerini siyasal sisteme iletmeleri açısından kilit rol oynamaktadırlar. Literatürde belediye meclis üyelerinin profilini konu edinen birçok çalışmanın bulunmasında söz konusu konumları etkili olmaktadır, ancak bu çalışmalarda genellikle büyükşehir veya merkez ilçe belediyelerindeki meclis üyelerine odaklanıldığı görülmektedir. Oysa yerel demokrasi, halka en yakın olan birimlerin (ilçe veya belde belediye meclisleri) etkinliğine vurgu yapmaktadır. Buradan hareketle, araştırmanın amacı, literatürdeki diğer çalışmaların aksine, büyükşehirdeki ilçe belediye meclis üyelerinin profilini ortaya çıkarmak ve söz konusu profili temsil açısından ulusal meclis ve büyükşehir belediye meclisindeki üye profilleriyle karşılaştırmaktır. Bu bağlamda, Trabzon ilinde yer alan on sekiz büyükşehir ilçe belediye meclisinin üyeleriyle görüşülmüş (272 kişi) ve elde edilen verilerin (cinsiyet, yaş, doğum yeri, eğitim durumu, meslek, yabancı dil bilme durumu, muhtarlık veya belediye başkanlığı deneyimine sahip olma durumu ve meclis üyeliği dönem sayısı) dağılım oranları veya aritmetik ortalamaları ışığında genelde Trabzon ilinin, özelde ise söz konusu büyükşehir ilçe belediyelerinin meclis üyesi profili ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Ulaşılan bulgular, ilçelerdeki belediye meclis üyelerinin ulusal parlamenterlere ve büyükşehir belediye meclis üyelerine nazaran temsil edilen kesime daha yakın gözüktüğünü gözler önüne sermektedir.

Safeguarding, shifting, splitting or sharing? Conflicting conceptions of popular sovereignty in the EU-polity

ABSTRACTIn the aftermath of the Euro-crisis, refugee crisis and Brexit, Europe’s finalité politique once again became a topic of heated debate. Both Eurosceptic nationalists and defenders of the EU appeal to the democratic principle of popular sovereignty, but they offer conflicting interpretations. This study seeks to offer a fine-grained framework to analyze this normative conflict of sovereignty. I distinguish four conceptions of popular sovereignty in Europe’s transnational polity; each is linked to a parliamentary arrangement. First, national popular sovereignty proposes a safeguarding of sovereign nation-states. Second, European popular sovereignty suggests that decision-making power should shift from the member-states to a European superstate. Third, simultaneous popular sovereignty suggests that national peoples and EU citizens should be represented in the EU. Fourth, shared popular sovereignty points toward national parliamentarians being the central locus of democratic authority in the EU. These conceptions thus result in conflicting institutional prescriptions.

Eurosceptic Challenger Parties and Political Opposition in European Union Politics: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

Despite extensive research on Eurosceptic challenger parties, our knowledge of their influence on political opposition has so far been sparse. In this article we make an in‐depth assessment of parliamentary EU opposition, based on 4,264 statements made by national parliamentarians in the European Affairs Committees (EACs) of Denmark and Sweden. Our analysis shows that the presence of Eurosceptic challenger parties in the national parliamentary arena impacts patterns and practices of EU opposition significantly. A greater presence of ‘hard’ Eurosceptic parties in parliament is associated with more opposition in EU politics. These parties deliver a vast majority of the polity‐oriented opposition towards the EU and present more policy alternatives than mainstream parties. The findings presented have implications for our understanding of national parliamentary EU opposition as well as for the assessment of the impact of Eurosceptic challenger parties on the process of European integration.

Transnational Representation in EU National Parliaments: Concept, Case Study, Research Agenda

This article introduces the notion of ‘transnational representation’ to refer to claims by national parliamentarians on behalf of citizens of other national constituencies. Thus defined, transnational representation combines insights from the constructivist turn in the theory of democratic representation with a renewed focus on national parliaments as the prime institutional sites of representation. A focus on transnational representation advances the debate on democratic representation in an age of internationalisation in two ways. First, it allows for a systematic and comparative analysis of how representation in parliaments responds to internationalisation. Second, it suggests a new perspective on the possible alignment of political representation with the range of affected interests. We illustrate these two claims with a case study of transnational representation in parliamentary debates on the European Financial Stability Facility and by outlining an agenda for further research.

GENDER, DECOLONISATION, EDUCATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF GENDER RELATIONS BY LUCY WAIRIMU KIBERA

An examination of literature on gender inequality has revealed that most women are disadvantaged in education as they constitute two thirds of the 750 million illiterates in the world. In addition, only one third of women have studied Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects that lead to financially rewarding careers compared to social-science related subjects that are studied by most women. Women are also underrepresented in research and development and professional ranks at university with 28.8 and 25 percent respectively. Women are further marginalized in terms of land ownership at 20% and in labour market at 48.5 percent compared to males with 75 percent. In addition, women earn less by 23 percent for a similar job performed by men. Women’s work mainly involves domestic work which is unpaid for. On the whole, women work nearly one hour longer than men since those who work for paid employment have to combine it with domestic work. In addition, only 11 and 12 women are heads of states and governments respectively out of 190 nations globally while only 22.8 percent of all national parliamentarians are women. Finally, health of women is endangered because they are not in charge of their reproductive health. Generally, girls and women are prone to sexual harassment and physical violence at 38 percent. In decolonising and degendering the gender divide and inequalities, social institutions such as the family, school and government must embrace new belief systems that give equal opportunities to women and men to develop their potentials to the fullest for self-development, fulfilment and determination and the benefit of the whole society.

Challenges to decentralisation in Ghana: where do citizens seek assistance?

ABSTRACTDecentralisation in Ghana, and across sub-Saharan Africa, faces a number of challenges to successful local governance provision because there are a number of formal and informal actors to choose from. Citizens may take problems they want a governance provider to solve to a member of parliament or a district assembly person, a traditional chief or a police officer, a neighbour or an NGO. In this article we report on a four-constituency survey administered to explore and understand how citizens choose between the options of local institutions available to them in order to solve a problem important to their community or themselves. We find that formal national (Parliamentarians) and informal traditional (Chiefs) institutions are where respondents turn for assistance most often instead of constitutionally described local modes of governance (District Assemblies). We consider the implications of this finding in terms of decentralisation in Ghana and the need to build institutions that are context-sensitive and reflect how citizens understand political options.

Conflict of interest regulation in European parliaments: Studying the evolution of complex regulatory regimes

AbstractThe growing complexity of parliamentary ethics regulation adopted over the last decades makes the systematic examination of its nature and the rationales underpinning regulatory choices an important endeavor. In this paper we introduce conceptualizations and measurements of conflict of interest (COI) regulation directed toward assuring the impartial and unbiased decisionmaking of national parliamentarians. We distinguish the strictness of rules, the nature of enforcement, sanctions, and transparency requirements as core elements defining COI regimes. Applying our framework to 27 European democracies, we select two cases for in‐depth analysis in which legislators chose very different solutions in response to growing pressures to regulate themselves, to inductively explore the drivers underpinning the choice of COI mechanisms: the United Kingdom, which adopted a highly transparency‐oriented regime, and Belgium, which adopted a highly sanction‐oriented COI regime. Echoing neo‐institutionalist perspectives, the longitudinal analyses indicate how the two democracies’ different institutional environments shape distinct answers to similar functional pressures.

Why national parliamentarians join international organizations

It is customary to argue that international organizations (IOs) are very much dominated by national executives, with national parliaments wielding no or at best marginal influence. According to this accepted wisdom, there cannot be many reasons for national parliaments and their members to be active within IOs. However, we can observe a movement towards the parliamentarization of IOs, materialized in a growing number of parliamentary bodies with increasing competencies that accompany governmental actions and decisions. My paper wants to shed light on the underlying incentive for members of national parliaments (MPs) to engage in these international parliamentary assemblies (IPAs). Proceeding from the assumption that IPAs can enable parliamentarians to fulfil their representation and control function, I argue that (1) district level factors related to internationalization can explain why some MPs become members of IPAs, and (2) opposition parties can use the information generated in IPAs to control governmental activities in International Organizations. I test the claims with data of all parliamentarians of the recent legislative period of the German Bundestag and personal interviews with 10 IPA members. The results suggest that especially district incentives are positive predictors for membership in the different assemblies, whereas variance in membership can hardly be explained by party-level factors.