IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v13y2012i1p150-167.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Policy positioning in the European Parliament

Author

Listed:
  • Gail McElroy
  • Kenneth Benoit

Abstract

Party politics in the European Parliament (EP) consists of competition between transnational party groups, each consisting of multiple national member parties from the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). Identifying the policy space that these parties inhabit and their ideological positions is both practically and conceptually challenging. In this article we characterize this policy competition by tracking EP political groups from three separate, original expert surveys taken in 2004, 2007 and 2010. We look at the relative positioning of the groups on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as changes in party group policy since 2004. Additionally, we characterize the policy cohesion of party groups by examining the relative positions of each group’s constituent parties, using independent national-level expert surveys. The results reinforce previous findings that EP party groups occupy the entire range of the left–right spectrum and, moreover, that their national party makeup consists of parties that are broadly cohesive in terms of their policy locations.

Suggested Citation

  • Gail McElroy & Kenneth Benoit, 2012. "Policy positioning in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(1), pages 150-167, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:13:y:2012:i:1:p:150-167
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116511416680
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116511416680
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116511416680?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdul Ghafar Noury & Simon Hix & Gérard Roland, 2007. "Democratic politics in the European Parliament," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7744, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. McElroy, Gail & Benoit, Kenneth, 2010. "Party Policy and Group Affiliation in the European Parliament," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 377-398, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ulrich Sedelmeier, 2014. "JCMS Special Issue 2014: Eastern Enlargement Ten Years On: Transcending the East-West Divide? Guest Editors: Rachel A. Epstein and Wade Jacoby," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 105-121, January.
    2. Muhlbock, Monika & Tosun, Jale, 2015. "Deciding over controversial issues: Voting behavior in the Council and the European Parliament on genetically modified organisms," GMCC-15: Seventh GMCC, November 17-20, 2015, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 211480, International Conference on Coexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM based Agricultural Supply Chains (GMCC).
    3. Kira Killermann, 2016. "Loose Ties or Strong Bonds? The Effect of a Commissioner's Nationality and Partisanship on Voting in the Council," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1367-1383, November.
    4. Nicola Maaser & Alexander Mayer, 2016. "Codecision in context: implications for the balance of power in the EU," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 213-237, January.
    5. Madeleine O. Hosli & Běla Plechanovová & Serguei Kaniovski, 2018. "Vote Probabilities, Thresholds and Actor Preferences: Decision Capacity and the Council of the European Union," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 31-52, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edoardo Bressanelli & Christel Koop & Christine Reh, 2016. "The impact of informalisation: Early agreements and voting cohesion in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(1), pages 91-113, March.
    2. Fabio Sozzi, 2013. "National Parties, Political Processes and the EU democratic deficit: The Problem of Europarties Institutionalization," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 4, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    3. David M Willumsen, 2018. "The Council’s REACH? National governments’ influence in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(4), pages 663-683, December.
    4. René Lindstädt & Jonathan B Slapin & Ryan J Vander Wielen, 2012. "Adaptive behaviour in the European Parliament: Learning to balance competing demands," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(4), pages 465-486, December.
    5. James Lo, 2018. "Dynamic ideal point estimation for the European Parliament, 1980–2009," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 229-246, July.
    6. Johanna Kantola & Cherry Miller, 2021. "Party Politics and Radical Right Populism in the European Parliament: Analysing Political Groups as Democratic Actors," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 782-801, July.
    7. Steffen Hurka, 2013. "Changing the output: The logic of amendment success in the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(2), pages 273-296, June.
    8. Lukas Obholzer & Steffen Hurka & Michael Kaeding, 2019. "Party group coordinators and rapporteurs: Discretion and agency loss along the European Parliament’s chains of delegation," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(2), pages 239-260, June.
    9. Miriam Sorace, 2018. "Legislative Participation in the EU: An analysis of questions, speeches, motions and declarations in the 7th European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 299-320, June.
    10. Thomas Jensen & Thomas Winzen, 2012. "Legislative negotiations in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(1), pages 118-149, March.
    11. Tim Veen, 2011. "Positions and salience in European Union politics: Estimation and validation of a new dataset," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(2), pages 267-288, June.
    12. Fraccaroli, Nicolò & Giovannini, Alessandro & Jamet, Jean-François & Persson, Eric, 2022. "Ideology and monetary policy. The role of political parties’ stances in the European Central Bank’s parliamentary hearings," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    13. Heike Klüver & Iñaki Sagarzazu, 2013. "Ideological congruency and decision-making speed: The effect of partisanship across European Union institutions," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 388-407, September.
    14. Christian Staat & Colin R. Kuehnhanss, 2017. "Outside Earnings, Electoral Systems and Legislative Effort in the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 368-386, March.
    15. Darko Cherepnalkoski & Andreas Karpf & Igor Mozetič & Miha Grčar, 2016. "Cohesion and Coalition Formation in the European Parliament: Roll-Call Votes and Twitter Activities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-27, November.
    16. Busby, Amy and Kheira, Belkacem, 2013. "Coping with the information overload': An exploration of assistants' backstage role in the everyday practice of European Parliament politics," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 17, July.
    17. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2013. "Quantifying parliamentary representation of constituents’ preferences with quasi-experimental data," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 170-180.
    18. Toke Aidt & Felix Grey & Alexandru Savu, 2021. "The Meaningful Votes: Voting on Brexit in the British House of Commons," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 186(3), pages 587-617, March.
    19. Christophe Crombez & Simon Hix, 2011. "Treaty reform and the Commission’s appointment and policy-making role in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 291-314, September.
    20. Manuele Citi, 2015. "European Union budget politics: Explaining stability and change in spending allocations," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(2), pages 260-280, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:13:y:2012:i:1:p:150-167. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.