Mannheim - Research Project
7. Speaking with One Voice? Voting unity of national political parties in bicameral EU decision-making
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Berthold Rittberger (Email: Berthold.Rittberger@gsi.uni-muenchen.de), University of Mannheim and University of Munich
PhD: vacant position, see advertisement
Short description: The impact of European integration and policy-making on domestic governance structures (‘Europeanization’) has been widely documented. Yet, rather little attention has been paid to the impact of European integration on political parties and their reaction to the increased importance of the EU level in policy-making. With regard to the domestic sphere, it is often argued that national parliamentarians have few incentives to adjust their behavior with regard to seeking greater influence on EU policy-making, and others claim that political parties deliberately keep EU issues of the domestic political agenda in fear of intra-party splits. Recently, some scholars have argued that informal transnational party cooperation has been a central and enduring feature of EU policy-making preceding EU summits, leaving a decisive imprint on the outcome of the EU’s grand bargains. On the European level, the potential for the formation of transnational parties is considered weak given the second order character of European elections and the lack of a clear majority in the legislative arena that could push a partisan political agenda. The central task at this research node is to critically examine the existing conjectures on the role of domestic and transnational parties in EU policy-making and to identify formal or informal mechanisms of coordination and cooperation between national and supranational party representatives in the EU’s system of multi-level governance and explore the effectiveness of these forms of coordination and cooperation.