In the tumultuous political climate following Brexit, a new energy has been given to the idea of establishing transnational lists for the European elections. With the ever-increasing need for democratic legitimacy on the EU stage, the system of transnational lists is viewed by many as a salvation to the problem with democratic deficit within the European Union. The idea of transnational lists was voted in the European Parliament during the plenary session in Strasbourg on February 2018 but rejected after a debate on a clearly divided issue. By analysing the debate from 2018, this study aims to investigate what are the conditions, found in the debate, that could make transnational lists in the European Parliament possible.  When analysing the debate from 2018, five significant conditions for transnational lists were identified. These conditions were democracy, question of federal states, the aspect of spitzenkandidaten, solidarity and the size of Member States. Interestingly, the conditions were observed to be both obstacles and possibilities for transnational lists. Taken together, these results suggest that there is an association between the above-named conditions and the failure of the proposition for transnational lists, alternatively, to a future breakthrough.

Diese Anfang 2006 fertiggestellte, nunmehr postum veröffentlichte Publikation untersucht und bewertet detailliert die Positionen zum Vertrag über eine Verfassung für Europa jener Parteien, die im Europäischen Parlament der "Konföderalen Fraktion der Vereinten Europäischen Linken/Nordische Grüne Linke" (GUE/NGL) angehören. Die Debatte zum europäischen Verfassungsvertrag zwang alle linken Parteien in einer erstmalig geführten transnationalen Debatte, ihre Haltung zur EU-Mitgliedschaft des eigenen Landes, ihre Position zum Verfassungsvertrag als solchem sowie ihre generelle Bereitschaft zu verdeutlichen, einem „anderen“ oder „besseren“ Vertrag zuzustimmen. Die Arbeit zeigt eine sehr hohe Fragmentierung der Haltung der linken Parteien zum Verfassungsvertrag und zur Mitgliedschaft ihrer Länder in der EU. / This at the beginning of 2006 finished, now posthumously published publication examines and evaluates in detail the positions of the parties that belong to the European Parliament of the "Confederal Group of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left" (GUE / NGL) about the European constitutional treaty. The respective debate forced them in a transnational debate to define their positions on the EU membership of their country, their position on the Constitutional treaty as such, as well as their overall readiness for agreeing with an "other" or "better" treaty. The work shows a very high level of fragmentation of the attitude of the left parties on the constitutional treaty and the EU membership of their countries.

This study evaluates the fitness of political parties for the democratisation of the European Union. At the national level political parties have successfully functioned as transmission belts between voter’s preferences and political outcomes in representative democracies. Some scholars have therefore argued that an increase in party competition at the European level could make the European Union more democratic; other scholars claim that European political parties are too weak to fend off public pressure, which would arise from an increase in political competition. Since cohesive voting behaviour of political parties is the basic prerequisite for a functioning representative democracy, this study analyses how the transnational party groups of the European Parliament are able to generate voting cohesion. Drawing on rational institutionalist theories of political parties and theories of collective action, the study outlines two competitive scenarios for explaining party group voting cohesion in the European Parliament. In the party group disciplinary scenario, the party group leadership is able to enforce voting cohesion through its disciplinary powers. The national party discipline scenario predicts that party group voting cohesion is dependent on the voluntary cooperation of the national party delegations. The empirical analysis of party disciplinary effects in the European Parliament corroborates the party group disciplinary scenario. The party group leadership of the two largest party groups is able to discipline it is members for disloyal voting behaviour. The findings do, however, also show that the party group leadership is not able to sanction national party delegations if they fail to toe the party group line. The study concludes that it will be difficult for the party groups to maintain voting cohesion, if public pressure on Members of the European Parliament increases through a more open form of political contestation at the European level. The responsibility for a successful democratisation of the European Union through party competition, therefore, lies in the hands of national political parties.

Bátora alleges that political accountability has been “almost entirely overlooked” (2010, 2) in studies of the European External Action Service. An examination of the subject that extends previous studies on agency design, the co-decision procedure, the “democratic deficit,” and European Union foreign policy would resolve the neglect. As a result, the study derives a hypothesis from an established theory of bureaucratic structure. Findings suggest that during the design of EU agencies co-decision power improves the ability of the European Parliament to institutionalize methods of accountability to it.

The main purpose of this study is to examine if variations in voter turnout for the European Parliament elections in each member state is affected by the rate of national party polarization on the EU-dimension of party politics. The theoretical background assumes that a high level of polarization generates higher voter turnout since more alternatives are presented to the electorate. This makes it easier for the electorate to find a party that represents their preferences. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood that they will participate in the election.This study uses a research design based on a quantitative analysis with data from each member state, except those with compulsory voting, in the European Parliament elections of 2004 and 2009. The results of the analysis indicate a relationship between high levels of party polarization and lower turnout in the European Parliament election. There seem to be a tendency that in systems where there is greater polarization, the voters tend to participate less in the European Parliament elections.

Univ., Diss.--Köln, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. XXV - LIV.

Zugl.: Köln, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007. / Literaturverz.

The European Union (EU) is the most far-reaching attempt yet undertaken to institutionalize democratic policy-making beyond the nation-state. To what extent, and in what ways, do various channels of representation contribute towards the realization of this aim? This dissertation takes stock of current research on the EU’s system of representation, and seeks to expand its agenda so that this central question can be properly addressed. In contrast to prior empirical work in the field, the dissertation employs research designs that incorporate several forms of representation into a unified evaluative framework. This multi-channel approach to political representation paves the way for a systematic comparison of how different forms of representation (electoral, territorial and corporate) perform in the EU context. It also makes possible an empirical assessment of a key proposition in current representation theory: that elections, in large and heterogeneous political systems, are outperformed by other forms of representation. The three articles in the dissertation draw on existing cross-country data, interviews with policy-makers and a new dataset collected by the author. They scrutinize representation in three principal channels: electoral representation in the European Parliament, government representation in the preparatory bodies of the Council of Ministers, and representation through organized interests that seek to influence EU policy. The first article examines the balance of power that has emerged between these three channels of representation in the EU’s legislative process, and how the current balance is likely to affect the Union’s legitimacy. The second article investigates how different channels of representation perform in terms of providing linkage between Brussels-based representatives and their domestic principals. The third article examines the extent to which different channels of representation contribute to the coordination of EU policy-making domestically, at the European level, and across the two levels of government. Finally, this dissertation makes a methodological contribution by applying social network analysis (SNA) to classic problems of representation within and across different channels of representation. This approach is novel to the field. Researchers should be able to exploit SNA and relational data fruitfully in the future, in the study of representational relationships in the EU and numerous other contexts.

This thesis studies the positions of the political groups in the European Parliament by examining the debates, focusing on the question of migration and more specifically on the policy of relocation of migrants. With the increasing number of people migrating into Europe, migration is an important question to study in the context of the European Union. The European Parliament consists of 200 different national parties composed in eight different political groups trying to agree upon common policies for legislation, which makes the political battle taken place in the Parliament even more interesting.    This thesis seeks to describe the positions of the groups within the Parliament by using dimensions and categories of state security vs. human security and EU-integration vs. state sovereignty. The study finds that a majority of the party groups in the Parliament emphasises further integration, however there is a more evident difference between seeing the issue of migration as a state security or a human security matter between the political groups. These findings are interesting, demonstrating that even in a sensitive issue as migration, related to states’ sovereignty, a majority seems to emphasise cooperation between states, indicating that further cooperation may be taken in other policy areas as well.    Key words: European Union, European Parliament, European integration, Migration, Security, Securitization, Human security, Human rights, State sovereignty, Dimension analysis.

Orientador: Rachel Meneguello / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T05:44:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FortiNeto_Octavio_M.pdf: 2173532 bytes, checksum: 963976fc6f40603ae3158ade312723cd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo demonstrar os posicionamentos partidários das duas maiores agremiações e grupos transnacionais do Parlamento Europeu em relação à crise europeia, que se refletiu na área econômica, financeira, social e de emprego, no período entre 2009 e 2011. Para isto, esta dissertação analisou os programas partidários do S&D e do PPE-DC e seus documentos produzidos em quatro comissões do Parlamento Europeu. A principal conclusão dessa dissertação é que a ideologia foi importante para definir posicionamentos observados no âmbito das agremiações transnacionais. A partir desta descoberta, identificou-se também que a agremiação transnacional de esquerda e seu respectivo grupo no Parlamento Europeu produziram respostas políticas relacionadas a elementos da Terceira Via. Com referência à direita, descobriu-se que ainda persiste a defesa de políticas neoliberais. Outro achado importante foi que embora ambos os grupos apresentassem respostas e soluções diferenciadas para a crise, votaram em conjunto em muitos relatórios finais, mostrando que em âmbito transnacional os grupos tendem a cooperar mais do que competir / Abstract: This research aims to demonstrate the party positions of the two major parties and transnational groups in the European Parliament in relation to the European crisis, which was reflected in the economic, financial, social and employment areas in the period between 2009 and 2011. To this end, this dissertation analyzed the party programs of the S&D and EPP-CD and their documents produced in four Parliamentary Committees of the European Parliament. The main conclusion is that the ideology was important to define positions observed in the context of transnational parties. From this finding, we also identified that the transnational leftist party and its respective group party in the EP produced political responses related to elements of the Third Way. In regards the right wing, it still defends neoliberal responses to the crisis. Another important finding was that although both groups presented different answers and solutions to the crisis, they voted together on many final reports, showing that at transnational dimension they tend to cooperate more than compete / Mestrado / Ciencia Politica / Mestre em Ciência Política