Parliamentary Institutions in Regional and International Governance

Functions and Powers

Andrea Cofelice

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429839023
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume offers an original and theoretically grounded conceptualization and measurement of international parliamentary institutions and their role in ensuring the accountability of regional international organizations. Through a comparative analysis of the establishment, evolution, institutional organization, oversight and policymaking functions of 22 parliamentary institutions, mainly from European, African and Latin American regional international organizations, the book serves a twofold purpose. First, it allows assessment of the extent to which parliamentary institutions have (measurable) influence on the outcome of regional organizations' decision-making processes. Second, drawing on the literature on new institutionalism and comparative regionalism, the volume investigates the conditions under which the influence of parliamentary institutions is expected to grow, thus advancing the understanding of the variation and development of this poorly explored type of international institution.

The book is aimed at scholars of global governance, international organization and comparative regionalism, and will also be of interest to parliamentarians and parliamentary practitioners from national and international institutions.

1 What are the conditions? A review of the literature on parliamentary empowerment

1.1 The new institutionalism

The puzzle of the empowerment of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs) has been tackled first and foremost by the ‘new institutionalism’ literature which, treating institutions as dependent variables, offers a number of hypotheses regarding their creation and change (Hall and Taylor 1996). Within this literature, the main schools of thought, i.e. rational choice, constructivism and neo-functionalism, have all confronted themselves with this puzzle and managed to formulate four main alternative hypotheses concerning IPIs’ empowerment (Rittberger 2005; Rittberger and Schimmelfennig 2006; Rocabert, Schimmelfennig and Winzen 2014): the ‘efficiency-enhancing hypothesis’ (Hix 2002); the ‘policy-seeking hypothesis’ (Pollack 1997; Pollack 2003; Bräuninger et al. 2001), the ‘legitimacy-seeking hypothesis’ (Moravcsik 1998; Moravcsik and Nicolaidis 1999; Rittberger 2005; Rittberger and Schimmelfennig 2006) and the ‘inter-institutional bargaining hypothesis’ (Kreppel 2002; Kreppel 2003; Stacey and Rittberger 2003; Schimmelfennig 2003; Costa and Magnette 2003; Rittberger 2005; Costa and Brack 2013).

Both the efficiency-enhancing and the policy-seeking hypotheses are based on assumptions of rational choice, according to which social and political actors, having a fixed set of preferences, create or change institutions entirely instrumentally, so as to maximize the attainment of these preferences, and do so in a highly strategic manner that presumes extensive calculation (Hall and Taylor 1996: pp. 942–946).

The efficiency-enhancing hypothesis

The efficiency-enhancing hypothesis assumes that institutional choices aim at reducing the transaction costs associated with decision-making, thus obtaining efficiency-enhancing effects. Hix (2002) illustrates this by analysing the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam, when European Union (EU) member states decided to reform the co-decision procedure, introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht, to enhance its efficiency. The co-decision procedure had involved up to three readings of legislative proposals in the Council of the EU: if the Council and European Parliament (EP) had not reached agreement after the second reading, the Council had the right to reaffirm its common position at the third reading. Unless the EP managed to reject it by an absolute majority of its members, the proposal was then adopted. But this mechanism granted the Council a predominant role in the legislative procedure, since it was highly unlikely that a proposal would obtain an absolute majority in the EP. The Treaty of Amsterdam removed the possibility of a third reading in the Council, thus shortening the procedure. If the two institutions fail to reach a compromise, the proposal is now rejected. This, however, entails an improvement of the role of the EP in the legislative process, such that it now stands on an equal footing with the Council.

According to Hix, the EP’s ‘victory’ in the Amsterdam negotiations represents, first and foremost, the formalization by the members of the EP of an existing favourable ‘rule interpretation’ of the Maastricht provisions of the co-decision procedure. Indeed, it was less costly for governments to recognize this informally established practice than to reject it. Furthermore—and here was the crux of the matter—the EP successfully managed to argue that, by institutionalizing the de facto operation of the procedure, there would be a collective efficiency gain, as the procedure would be simplified and more transparent. And most governments accepted this argument (Hix 2002).

In general, the literature has already identified the limits of efficiency-based explanations. Both Schulz and Konig (2000) and Rittberger (2005), while acknowledging that, under certain conditions, the empowerment of the EP may have efficiency-enhancing effects, demonstrate that on several occasions the empowerment of the EP has actually produced decision-making, efficiency-reducing effects. Similarly, Rocabert and colleagues claim that, in general, the empowerment of an IPI ‘is bound to reduce the autonomy or power of governments; complicate or slow down decision-making; and contribute little to or even undermine the credibility of international commitments’ (Rocabert, Schimmelfennig and Winzen 2014: p. 2).

The policy-seeking hypothesis

By contrast, the policy-seeking hypothesis argues that political élites tend to favour institutions and rules that are less likely to provide efficiency gains, but rather will provide the set of policies they prefer. A corollary of this basic underlying assumption is that institutional changes (hence including the empowerment of IPIs) can only occur when all the main relevant actors expect to be better off vis-à-vis the maintenance of the status quo. These hypotheses have been largely tested in the European context: Bräuninger and colleagues (2001), for instance, explore the changes occurring in the voting rules of the Council, as well as those occurring in the EP’s participation in the legislative process, both of which resulted from the adoption of the Treaty of Amsterdam. Their findings confirm that EU member states took into account their individual expected gains from future policy-making when deciding on the Council’s voting quota, while the policy-seeking view seems not to hold as far as the EP’s participation in the legislative process is concerned. This led Bräuninger and colleagues to conclude that ‘the results on the EP’s participation indicate different reasons for its choice. Commitments of a certain number of member states do not sufficiently explain the participation of the EP. We suspect that policy-seeking delegations may be guided by different ‘central ideas’ when deciding on both voting rules, (Bräuninger et al. 2001: p. 64). These results are echoed to some extent by Pollack (2003), who applies the ‘principal-agent’ theory to the analysis of the delegation of powers from member states to the European Commission, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the EP. According to this model, principals may delegate four key functions or powers to their agents: monitoring the compliance with agreements among principals; solving problems of ‘incomplete contracts’; adopting credible expert regulation and information; and setting the parliamentary agenda to avoid endless ‘cycling’ of policy alternatives (Pollack 2003: pp. 20–34). However, while the cases of the Commission and the ECJ strongly support the principal-agent view of delegation in the EU, Pollack himself admits that this theory is generally a poor fit in terms of explaining the empowerment of the EP. It is in this sense that he considers the EP as an outlier, and recognizes that ‘delegations to the parliament seems to be motivated not by functional demands but primarily by an ideological concern on the part of member governments, and their constituents, to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the European Union’ (Pollack 2003: p. 204).

In conclusion, rational choice institutionalism—either in its efficiency-enhancing or policy-seeking approaches— appears unsuitable to fully explain the empowerment of the EP (as well as of other IPIs), since it does not sufficiently take into account the role of ideas and norms in shaping political élites’ preferences, decisions and actions.

The legitimacy-seeking hypothesis

The legitimacy-seeking hypothesis draws on sociological institutionalism, which puts ‘cultural practices’ at the heart of its concern. In particular, sociological institutionalists believe that international organizations embrace specific institutional forms or practices not necessarily to enhance means-ends efficiency, but mainly because they are widely valued and socially legitimated within a broader cultural environment ¹ (Hall and Taylor 1996: pp. 946–950). Consequently, when dealing with the empowerment of the EP, authors like Moravcsik (1998), Moravcsik and Nicolaidis (1999) and Wagner (2002) share the same underlying hypothesis, that Rittberger formulates as follows: ‘States will create or empower the EP as a response to a perceived lack of resonance between domestically internalized norms of democratic governance and progressive European integration which generates a mismatch between collectively held norms of democratic governance and governance at the EU level’ (Rittberger 2005: p. 19). Rittberger and Schimmelfennig acknowledge that sociological institutionalism—by ascribing an important role to polity ideas and norms in shaping actors’ decisions—improves our understanding about the source and content of political élites’ preferences as to the role of the EP in the EU polity. Nevertheless, according to the authors, this approach still offers an unsatisfactory explanation of the EP empowerment, since it does not identify the specific causal mechanisms leading to this outcome (Rittberger and Schimmelfennig 2006: p. 1157).

In order to overcome these shortcomings, Rittberger (2005), referring to the EP as his case study, proposes a three-stage theory of delegation to parliamentary institutions in international polities, mainly based on the notion of ‘legitimacy deficit’ ² . Rittberger’s argument can be summarized as follows: in the first stage, transfers of sovereignty from the domestic to the European level through acts of pooling and delegation ³ , while improving the problem-solving capacity of the EU, pose challenges to domestic channels of interest representation and accountability, producing what political élites perceive as the legitimacy deficit. As a consequence, during constitutional ‘founding moments’ or comprehensive constitutional reformulation or change, political élites contemplate institutional solutions to alleviate this perceived legitimacy deficit, including demands for the empowerment of parliamentary institutions at supranational level, i.e. at the level where sovereignty is transferred.

However, the empowerment of the EP may not represent the only solution: political élites, for instance, may opt for enhancing the powers of domestic parliaments to influence and scrutinize EU policymaking. In the second stage of his theory, then, Rittberger focuses on member states’ different legitimating beliefs about how concerns for procedural legitimacy should be translated into institutional reform solutions ⁴ . These beliefs allow us to anticipate political élites’ institutional preferences, and actually guide their behaviour during institutional reform negotiations. The choice to empower the EP is the result of the member states’ interaction during treaty-amending intergovernmental conferences (which arise in the third stage of the theory).

Rittberger’s argument is entirely based on the assumption that when political élites decide to transfer portions of national sovereignty to international polities, they act in accordance with the logic of normative action. Schimmelfennig defines normative action as a mode of action where the goals of the actors, while remaining rule-based, are the ‘result of the actors’ normative reasoning, and thus a matter of reflective and purposive choice, not of habit’ (Schimmelfennig 2003: p. 158). In other words, actors make conscious choices, but these choices remain ‘within the parameters established by the dominant institutional values’ (Peters 1999: p. 29). Referring to the EU, Rittberger argues that the prevailing parameter which guides political élites’ responses to the perceived legitimacy deficit is represented first and foremost by the liberal-democratic identity of member states: ‘since all member states are liberal democracies, their political élites share the view that the decision-making process at the new level of governance must conform to standards of democratic governance that respect procedures for interest representation and accountability’ (Rittberger 2005: p. 57). Schimmelfennig supports a similar view by referring to the principle of domestic analogy: ‘polities prefer to have an international environment that resembles, or is at least compatible with, their domestic principles and procedures’ (Schimmelfennig 2012: p. 10). The implications of this principle for the European context become clear: the EU being a regionally integrated system of liberal democracies and market economies, European governance is in essence defined by the principles of regionalism, regulated transnational markets and democratic constitutionalism (Schimmelfennig 2012: p. 10) ⁵ .

The theoretical argument developed by Rittberger improves considerably our understanding of the process of empowerment of supranational parliamentary institutions, because, unlike the previous literature, it not only deals with the question of why (i.e. a response by political élites to a perceived legitimacy deficit brought about by delegation and pooling of sovereignty from the domestic to the international level), but also with the underlying causal mechanisms generating this kind of response. In fact, it tackles the questions of when (i.e. during constitutional founding moments or comprehensive constitutional change) and how (by analysing the impact of different legitimating beliefs on the interaction among member states).

As far as the objectives of this research are concerned, three main hypotheses can be derived from Rittberger’s analysis on the conditions under which IPIs may develop their powers: a) the empowerment of parliamentary institutions does not occur in a vacuum, but it is a necessary corollary of broader international institutional design decisions; b) delegation and pooling of sovereignty to supranational institutions represent a sort of ‘prime mover’, i.e. a necessary condition for the empowerment of international parliamentary institutions; c) however, the transfer of sovereignty is not a sufficient condition: it is also required that the liberal-democratic identity represents the prevailing template which guides political élites’ responses to the perceived legitimacy deficit. Indeed, only in this case, the normative pressure will be ‘successfully exercised to compel political actors to comply with the principle of representative democracy and its corollary, the empowerment of a parliamentary institution at the supranational level’ (Rittberger 2012: p. 34).

Scholars supporting the legitimacy-seeking hypothesis assume, de facto, an intergovernmentalist framework. In fact, they seek to identify the necessary structural conditions conducive to IPIs’ empowerment, as they emerge from ‘grand bargains’ between member states during treaty-adoption/-amending intergovernmental conferences.

The inter-institutional bargaining hypothesis

A partial variant of the legitimacy-seeking hypothesis is represented by the inter-institutional bargaining hypothesis. Indeed, scholars supporting this latter hypothesis, while not disregarding the centrality of intergovernmental conferences as ‘constitutional founding moments’ ⁶ , maintain a more institutionalist approach, by looking at the tools and strategies adopted by IPIs either to induce favourable concessions from member states, or to directly sway intergovernmental negotiations in their favour.

Indeed, while it can be reasonably assumed that IPIs have a direct interest in defending and expanding their powers, thereby improving their institutional position, what is puzzling is the way in which they sometimes manage to bring intergovernmental institutions to accep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction
• 1      What are the conditions? A review of the literature on parliamentary empowerment
• 2      Institutional features: appointment, representation and internal organization
• 3      Parliamentary functions and powers
• 4      Explaining the empowerment of international parliamentary institutions
• 5      Conclusion
• Primary sources
• Index