E L P R G
European Legislative Politics Research Group
Projects
Projects
Our first joint research project concerns the role of parties in EU decision-making. Parties play an important role in representative democracies. They help to aggregate preferences and link decision-making between different legislative bodies. In the European Union, however, the electoral connection is weak, casting doubts on the impact of partisan politics. So far, the role of parties has mainly been scrutinized for the European Parliament. Recent research by members of our group has demonstrated the importance of national parties in the Council (Hagemann, 2006), the Commission (Wonka, forthcoming), and in the inter-institutional decision-making process (Hoyland and Hagemann, 2006). Building on this work, we intend to derive at a comprehensive understanding of the role of national parties in EU legislative decision-making, covering all institutions and all stages of the process. In particular, we will study how national party interests affect different aspects of EU legislative politics such as coalition formation in the institutions, the role of committees in the European Parliament, and when conclusion takes place in the legislative process.
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