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...

The European Parliament’s increased legislative role in recent years means that its actions are now more likely to have an impact on national parties’ policy choices and, indirectly, on their electoral fortunes. This article examines the extent to which national party delegations...

The role of the European Parliament (EP) under the consultation procedure has been widely neglected by rational choice models of legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). This paper offers a new understanding of the procedure by means of a computational model in which lobbyists...

This article assesses the effects of deliberation and increased political knowledge on vote choice. The observed knowledge gains result from participation in a deliberative experiment in the context of second-order elections, which facilitates realistic estimates of information gains that can be...

This study addresses a central aspect of the micromanagement of the European Parliament, the determinants of rapporteurship allocation. Focusing on the period from 1995 to 1999, I match rapporteurship assignments in the committee on environment with occupational, group membership, ideological...

Research on elections to the European Parliament (EP) has consistently found that European elections are distinguished by a lack of European content. Such elections, in spite of the growing powers exercised by the EP, remain ‘second-order’. Clearly, however, EU-related issues have...

Congruence in the European Parliament has been analyzed in terms of agreement between voters and national candidates/parties. The question whether voters and Europarties are congruent on major dimensions of contestation (left-right and European Union) remains unanswered. Acknowledging the...

Parliamentary institutions and partisan norms are complex and new members of parliament are unlikely to possess an innate awareness of optimal behaviour. This paper examines how new legislators adopt the behavioural patterns of incumbent members in the Sixth European Parliament. The latter...