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Voting Unity Between Ministers and Members of the European Parliament

Within European nation states, parties are the main actors in determining decision-making. Legislators almost always vote along partisan lines. Party-internal voting unity is essential for signaling a clear position to voters and effectively shaping decision-making (Carey 2007). This does not only apply within individual legislative chambers: in bicameral political systems, parties also establish voting unity across chambers. In so doing, parties provide an important linkage mechanism between different institutions in national bicameral legislatures (Tsebelis and Money 1997). However, it still needs to be confirmed whether this holds true for the EU. To what extent do representatives of the same national party vote the same way in the Council and the EP? Do party control mechanisms and institutional constraints (described in the last two chapters) influence whether ministers and MEPs vote united or not? These questions shall be addressed within this chapter. First, using descriptive statistics, the dependent variable “Voting Unity” will be analyzed in detail. Building on these descriptive findings, the effects of the different party-related and institutional factors on the probability of voting unity will be tested with logistic regression models.

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The Frequency of Voting Unity Between Ministers and MEPs
After studying which factors in general influence voting behavior in the Council and the EP, we turned to the analysis of voting unity between ministers and MEPs. For the overwhelming majority of all observations, we find that MEPs voted the same way as the minister of their country in the Council. This...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Coordination of Voting Behavior Between Ministers and MEPs
For all member states, coordination between ministers and MEPs mostly takes the form of “top-down” communication, where ministers communicate their position (either directly or, more commonly, indirectly via the Perm Rep). Prior instructions or “voting recommendations” are thus only issued from...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Theorizing Voting Unity
In the previous chapters, we have identified party-related and institutional factors that affect voting behavior in the Council and the EP. However, we still need to conceptualize whether and how these factors lead to party © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 117 M. Muhlbock, Voting...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Factors that Might Influence Voting Unity
According to the considerations formulated above as well as in Chaps. 3 and 4, voting unity between members of the same party across chambers depends on the following factors: first, the incentive for the national party to display cohesion, for example, because the issue that is voted on is salient for...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Voting Unity
The dependent variable “Voting Unity” indicates whether the majority of a national party’s MEPs voted the same way as the minister of this party in the Council on the same proposal. The majority of a national party’s MEPs is thereby defined as “more than 50 %” of the MEPs who belong to this...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Explaining Voting Unity
To test the hypotheses, we employ a binary logistic regression model with “Voting Unity” as the dependent variable (see Model 1 in Table 5.4). Binary logistic regression enables us to simultaneously model the relationship between “Voting Unity” and several independent variables (i.e. the indicators...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Can Parties Enhance Voting Unity in These Cases?
Control and Media Attention The descriptive statistics have provided a general picture, indicating that most of the time the influence of national parties over the voting behavior of MEPs appears limited in comparison to the influence of the transnational groups. However, do national parties really...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making
We approached the topic of voting unity of ministers and MEPs from the same national party by posing several research questions: First, we asked how voting behavior of EU representatives might be influenced in general— on the one hand, by their national parties (How do national parties try to influence...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
The “Institutional Constraints” That Shape the Voting Behavior of Ministers and MEPs
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the decision-making processes within Council and EP, we reassessed existing research on different constraints influencing voting behavior within these institutions based on the qualitative and quantitative data sources. In the EP, the transnational groups are...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)