The Role of Political Parties in the European Union

Bjorn Lindberg, Anne Rasmussen, Andreas Warntjen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415499286
• eBook ISBN: 9781317989332
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

At the national level, political parties play an important role in making representative democracy work. They help to aggregate and communicate policy preferences, link decision-making between different legislative bodies and hold politicians accountable. In the European Union, however, the electoral connection is weak. This casts doubt on the impact of partisan politics at the European level. Are political parties able to fulfil their role as 'transmission belts' ensuring political accountability and consistent decision-making in the European Union? To answer this question we look at the micro foundations of partisan politics in the European Union.

The contributions in this volume all depart from a common theoretical framework but use a wide range of empirical data and research designs, covering qualitative process-tracing, elite interview and large-N quantitative analysis. Moreover, they examine party effects in the electoral and legislative arena. Finally, the volume covers all European institutions: the Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council and the European Parliament. The findings enhance our understanding of the workings of decision-making in Brussels, add to the debate on the EU democratic deficit, and highlight the usefulness of drawing upon insights from the literature on Comparative Politics when studying the European Union.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Party politics as usual? The role of political parties in EU legislative decision-making

Björn Lindberg, Anne Rasmussen and Andreas Warntjen

1. INTRODUCTION

At the national level, political parties play an important role in making representative democracy work. ‘Modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties’ (Schattschneider 1942: 1). They help to aggregate and communicate policy preferences, link decision-making between different legislative bodies and hold politicians accountable.

The essential role of political parties in a representative democracy is their competition in repeated electoral contests, which allows voters to choose between different policy packages and to reward or punish governing parties for their legislative performance (Powell 2000). Through their party platforms, political parties aggregate wide sets of preferences held by citizens into competing policy packages. They also facilitate the selection of citizens' representatives by informing the electorate about the policies to be enacted by their candidates (Snyder and Ting 2002).

Besides their role as ‘transmission belts’ between voters and policy outcomes in the electoral arena, parties are commonly held to be fundamental in structuring the legislative process, ensuring voting cohesion and distributing positions in the legislature and executive (Strøm et al. 2003: 665). The maintenance of cohesive voting behaviour of parties within the legislature is crucial for the stability of the legislative decision-making process and for voters to hold their representatives accountable (Bowler et al. 1999; Sartori 1994). Only if the majority party or the majority coalition in the legislature is able to display cohesive voting behaviour can legislation be passed and voters identify the actors responsible for policy innovations. Consequently, there is a large body of work investigating the role of political parties in national political systems. In contrast, legislative politics in the European Union (EU) was initially largely studied in the context of international relations, focusing on the national rather than partisan background of the main actors (Hörl et al. 2005). For more than a decade now this has been complemented by an increasing number of studies building upon the comparative politics tradition (cf. Hix 1994). One prominent topic in these studies is inevitably the role of political parties. In the EU, however, the electoral connection is weak. Elections to the European Parliament (EP) are second-order national elections because they focus on national and not European issues. Moreover, it is the national and not the EU-level parties that nominate the candidates to these elections. Hence, the transnational party groups in the EP are generally considered to be weak in comparison to national parties (Judge and Earnshaw 2003; Faas 2003; Hix 2002; Hix and Lord 1997). The lack of electoral connection in the EU is widely seen as an important cause of its legitimacy problems (Hix 2008: chs 5 and 6). As an example, Andersen and Eliassen (1996: 255) argue that in the EU, direct influence replaces in many ways the parliamentary channel as the most important channel for influence, thereby leading to problems of democracy.' And according to Peter Mair, the EU fosters a version of democratic engagement that may indirectly undermine the conventional partisan agenda' (2006: 165).

This raises the question of whether political parties in the EU are able to fulfil their traditional role as ‘transmission belts’, ensuring political accountability and consistent decision-making. In the parliamentary systems of the EU member states, the governmental party or coalition can enforce (party) voting cohesion among legislators by threatening to attach a confidence vote to a legislative proposal (Huber 1996). Furthermore, the cabinet, with its prerogatives in the legislative process, is formed along partisan lines and the portfolios are distributed by party leaders (Laver 2006: 125–6). In this way, in an ideal-type parliamentary system political parties are part of a single and simple chain of delegation. Voters elect parliamentarians, parliamentarians elect the cabinet, and the cabinet proposes and implements legislation (Strøm 2000: 267–70). Political parties are involved in all the steps in this chain in the EU member states (Müller 2000: 312, 317–19) and voters can thus hold political parties to account if they feel that their preferences have been distorted or misrepresented in the democratic chain of delegation. The constitutional structure of the EU does not, however, resemble the structure of a parliamentary system. The EP as the directly elected European legislature does have the power to vote the European executive, the Commission, out of office through a vote of no confidence but the necessary majority is so difficult to reach that this comes closer to an impeachment procedure (Hix et al. 2007: 21). Nor is the Commission recruited from a majority coalition within the EP (cf. Hix 2008: 77–8, 125–35). Furthermore, the Commission cannot dissolve the Parliament or the Council. Owing to the relative political independence of the legislative bodies, the EU is closer to a separation of powers system like the presidential system of the US. Much of the current research on political parties in the EU is therefore inspired and guided by theories of political parties which have been developed to study partisan politics in the US Congress.

Despite doubts about partisan politics as usual in the EU, recent literature on legislative decision-making in the EU has pointed to several instances of the influence of political parties. It has, for example, been demonstrated that political parties play a role in the legislative organization and voting behaviour of the EP (e.g. Hix et al. 2007; Kreppel 2002). Some studies have also identified a partisan alignment in the voting behaviour of governments in the Council (Mattila 2004; Aspinwall 2007: 105; Hagemann 2007: 290; Hagemann and Hoyland 2008) and pointed to the selection of Commissioners on party political grounds (Wonka 2007; Döring 2007). Finally, scholars have also noted the impact of political parties on the composition and formation of coalitions within and across legislative bodies (Rasmussen 2008c; Hoyland 2006a).

However, in order to draw general conclusions about the extent to which parties can act as transmission belts' between citizens and the EU level, we need to know more about their effect on EU legislative decision-making. One difficulty lies in distinguishing between the effect of national and transnational parties. In this article, we examine whether or not there is a partisan effect, and how national and transnational parties influence legislative decision-making in the EU. The contributions cover the different stages of political representation and all legislative bodies. The results are mixed. On the one hand, they confirm the findings of recent studies showing how parties affect the daily decision-making of the EU. On the other hand, they also show that parties are not always the dominant players, and that their effect varies both across and within the institutions.

This introduction starts with a review of US theories of partisan influence and discusses how the different institutional environment of the EU affects the assumptions and predictions of these models. We point out that when studying EU party politics it is important to distinguish between different types of parties, because national and transnational parties cannot be expected to have the same effects on the legislators. In the third section, we scrutinize the empirical evidence on the role of these different types of partisan actors in the electoral and legislative arena based on the key findings of the existing studies on party politics in the EU and the following contributions.

2. THE US PARTY LITERATURE AND ITS ADAPTATION TO THE EU CONTEXT

The dominant theories of partisan influence in the US are built upon the rational choice assumption of utility-maximizing actors. They show which benefits individual legislators derive from establishing political parties. The explanation is divided into two parts: one explains the utility of parties in the electoral arena, while the other emphasizes the purpose of political parties in the legislative field. Although legislators are generally assumed to care about their re-election (vote), the implementation of good public policy (policy) and prominent office positions (office), the re-election goal figures most prominently in most US party theories, following Fenno (1973: 1). All of these goals of legislators are, however, intertwined. Getting re-elected is the prerequisite for holding public office positions and implementing good public policy. To paraphrase a West Wing character: ‘If my first priority isn't re-election then it doesn't really matter what my second priority is.’ Legislative behaviour is thus shaped by the electoral contest.

The party in the electoral arena

In the electoral arena political parties perform a function similar to the brand name of an established company in the marketplace (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991: 39–40; Aldrich 1995: 49; Cox and McCubbins 2007: 100–3). Voters are ultimately interested in which policies their representatives will enact once elected. The party label offers a simple and cheap way for voters to find out what policies a candidate would pursue in office, and which constituencies he or she would seek to benefit (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991: 40; Cox and McCubbins 1993: 134).

In order to maintain a clearly recognizable brand name, political parties not only need to advocate clear positions in the electoral contest, but they also need to pursue these policy goals within the legislature. Only if parties vote cohesively can they maximize their influence in the legislative decision-making process and foster their brand names. Once elected, however, legislators face incentives to defect from the party line in plenary voting. First, they might simply disagree with the advocated party position; second, it might not benefit their constituency; and/or third, they may be swayed by the influence of interest groups. Although the party collectively strives to present a unified front, individual legislators are tempted to pursue divergent interests, hurting the party label. The reputation of the party is essentially a public good whose consumption cannot be effectively limited to those who contribute to maintaining it, i.e. to those who support the party line in plenary voting, and a failure to produce legislation as promised jeopardizes the reputation of the party in the electoral arena (Cox and McCubbins 1993: 125). To solve their collective action problem (Olson 1965; Laver 1997) party members establish the party leadership as a central agent and put it in charge of maintaining support for the party line. The party group leadership can maintain party voting cohesion both through its disciplinary and agenda-setting powers. Using its disciplinary powers, the party leadership monitors the voting behaviour of legislators and sanctions them if they deviate from the party position (on the motivation of the party leadership, see Cox and McCubbins 2007: 115–23). The party leadership has different selective incentives at its disposal with which it can discipline its members; for example, it can deny its members access to positions on more prominent committees or other offices in the legislature (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991: 45; Cox 2006: 147–9). Ultimately, the leadership can bar a legislator from running again using the party label. Through keeping divisive bills off the floor, the leadership of the majority party is able to maintain voting cohesion without recourse to disciplinary actions (Cox and McCubbins 2005: 210–15). Thus, party members establish the party leadership as its central agent to solve external collective action problems and maintain voting cohesion, either through disciplinary actions or through agenda control.

The party in the legislative arena

Political parties not only increase the chances of politicians being (re)-elected but they also increase the utility of politicians once they are inside the legislature. Aldrich argues that political parties are institutional solutions created by rational utility-maximizing legislators to reduce the transaction costs of collective decision-making and solve the internal collective action problems they face in the legislature (Aldrich 1995: 19). To influence policy, legislators have to form a majority coalition to pass legislation. Building a coalition requires effort and time. In other words, it involves transaction costs: the costs of putting together a proposal, identifying potential coalition partners and forging a compromise acceptable to a sufficient majority (Furubotn and Richter 1998:42–9). The existence of polit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Abstracts
• 1 Party politics as usual? The role of political parties in EU legislative decision-making
• 2 Who leads, who follows? Re-examining the party-electorate linkages on European integration
• 3 Decision-making dynamics in the European Commission: partisan, national or sectoral?
• 4 Party soldiers in a non-partisan community? Party linkage in the European Parliament
• 5 Are political parties controlling legislative decision-making in the European Parliament? The case of the services directive
• 6 Parties in the Council?
• 7 Party politics in the European Council
• 8 The party political make-up of EU legislative bodies
• 9 Towards a partisan theory of EU politics
• Index