In Europe, there is increasing concern with how the operation of the Commission, Council of Ministers, and European Parliament is creating a democratic deficit. One institution that is generally considered central to the effective functioning of a democratic system, but tends to be neglected in...

What is the scope for autonomous action of the European Commission? Its independence is much more contentious than that of the European Court of Justice, which is generally considered quite autonomous. While the literature on the Commission focuses predominantly on its ability to use its...

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...

Party politics in the European Parliament (EP) consists of competition between transnational party groups, each consisting of multiple national member parties from the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). Identifying the policy space that these parties inhabit and their ideological...

Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that...

The legislative organization of the European Parliament (EP) has far-reaching implications for its ability to solve the democratic deficit problem of the European Union (EU). Recognizing that, this article reviews the literature on the EP organization with a view to consolidating existing...

In order to capitalize on its increasing legislative powers, the European Parliament (EP) has had to specialize internally. The scholarly literature has predominantly studied the structural manifestations of specialization, such as the allocation of committee seats among parliamentarians. This...

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...

This article examines the extent to which individual-, party- and system-level characteristics affect the attitude congruence of voters and candidates for elections to the European Parliament. It examines attitudes towards basic policy packages in the socioeconomic and libertarian/authoritarian...

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...