Here, I introduce a novel approach towards data collection for comparative research and present a new data infrastructure on parties, elections and governments, the Parliament and Government Composition Database (ParlGov). This data infrastructure combines a database, data presentation in...

Analyses of strategic agenda-setting in the European Union treat the European Commission as a unitary actor with perfect information. Yet, the constraints for correctly anticipating acceptable policies vary heavily across its individual Directorates-General. Do these internal rifts affect the...

What impact do leaders in the European Parliament's (EP) committees have on the EP's opinions? This study formulates and tests expectations about the conditions under which rapporteurs influence the EP's opinions and also about what factors motivate that influence. In line with the informational...

Legislative speeches are an important part of parliamentary activity in the European Parliament (EP). Using a new dataset on EP speeches, this paper offers an explanation for participation in legislative debates. We argue that floor speeches partially serve as a communication tool between...

This paper explains how institutional conditions in the European Parliament's committees shape lobbyists' strategic behaviour. Committees' informal organization and formal procedures structure both the distribution of legislative influence and the opportunity to obtain advocacy. It is...

I extend the standard spatial model of legislative voting to account for vote-specific party inducements and procedural differences. Focusing on voting in the 1999-2004 European Parliament, I find evidence of vote-specific party inducements in a large share of the roll call votes. Furthermore,...

When the chambers of a bicameral legislature must negotiate to reach a decision outcome, the bargaining strength of each side is affected by the composition of its negotiating delegations. We examine some of the implications of this proposition for legislative negotiations between the European...

The conciliation committee is the ultimate bicameral dispute settlement mechanism of the ordinary legislative procedure of the European Union. Who gets what, and why, in this committee? We argue that its institutional setup is biased in favour of the Council of Ministers. Employing the Wordfish...

This article analyses party-voter congruence on European integration matters in the EU member states. Drawing on existing research, we put forward eight hypotheses which are tested with data from the EES2004 survey. We show that parties are closer to their voters on the left/right dimension than...

Most current debate about the democratic deficit equates democracy with party government and popular direction of policy (popular sovereignty). Alternative conceptions of democracy, pluralist or veto-group liberalism, are more consistent with European political and social circumstances and with...