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European Parliament: Debating in a Legislature with Competing Incentives

Sorace, Miriam (2021) European Parliament: Debating in a Legislature with Competing Incentives. In: Back, Hanna and Debus, Marc and Fernandes, Jorge M., eds. The Politics of Legislative Debates. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-884906-3. (doi:10.1093/oso/9780198849063.003.0016) (KAR id:88792)

Abstract

The European Parliament is an extraordinary legislature due to its multinational nature, and its mixed internal legislative organization. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are subject to mixed incentives: they have to heed both national and European Party Groups’ (EPGs) leaderships, but also have significant opportunities for individual floor access. The chapter uses speech counts from 1999 to 2019, scraped from the EP official website. The analysis finds that frontbench domination of speeches is not constant and has weakened over time. Changes in internal procedure appear to be an important explanatory factor, while member states’ electoral systems do not seem to play a role in explaining frontbench domination patterns. The study also finds that EU-level government–opposition dynamics do not play a role, while ideological extremism does explain speechmaking patterns. In terms of individual level determinants of legislative speech, senior MEPs are granted more floor time, while there is no difference between male and female MEPs in their debate participation rates.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1093/oso/9780198849063.003.0016
Uncontrolled keywords: separation-of-powers system, dual leadership, procedural incentives, mixed speechmaking model, electoral systems
Subjects: J Political Science > JN Political institutions and public administration (Europe)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Miriam Sorace
Date Deposited: 22 Jun 2021 10:24 UTC
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2022 23:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/88792 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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