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.

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

Les relations internationales sont aujourd’hui confrontées à un mouvement en faveur dela démocratisation de leurs espaces décisionnels. Les parlementaires deviennentprogressivement des acteurs clés dans ce scénario, organisant des forums transnationauxde délibération qui prétendent influencer l’action gouvernementale dans diversdomaines. Ce phénomène touche aussi les intégrations régionales, dont l’Unioneuropéenne et son parlement co-législateur constituent le cas le plus remarquable. Àl’inverse, en Amérique latine, la tradition présidentialiste et le caractèreintergouvernemental des initiatives régionales ont toujours confiné les parlementaires àun rôle secondaire. Pourtant, contre toute attente, un parlement a été créé au sein duMercosur en 2006. Comment expliquer un tel choix institutionnel ? Cette thèse sepropose d’analyser les raisons de la création du Parlement du Mercosur (Parlasur) audelàdes discours officiels. Pour ce faire, on mobilise l’ensemble théorique des « troisi », selon lequel des déterminants découlant des institutions, des intérêts et des idéesjouent un rôle conjoint dans l’action politique. Ces facteurs sont mis en perspective àl’aide des théories de l’action publique, qui soulignent le rôle de la temporalité, descoalitions de cause et de l’inspiration des modèles déjà existants dans le changementinstitutionnel. Ce cadre théorique est ensuite appliqué à l’examen des quatre périodesfondamentales de la construction du Parlasur : le développement institutionnel del’ancienne Commission parlementaire conjointe ; la montée en puissance des relationsentre le Mercosur et l’Union européenne et le transfert de mécanismes d’intégration ; lemoment critique correspondant à la confrontation de la Zone de libre-échange desAmériques aux nouvelles idéologies gouvernantes ; enfin, la difficileinstitutionnalisation du nouveau parlement. Cette analyse chrono-thématique estorientée empiriquement par l’objectif de tracer le parcours des variables explicativesdans le processus institutionnel, sur la base d’entretiens semi-directifs et d’observationsconduites au Mercosur et en Europe. / Recently, some movements have been calling for the democratization of decisionmakingspaces in international relations. Members of parliament have progressivelybecome key actors in this scenario, organizing transnational deliberative forumsintended to influence several domains of governmental action. This is also occurring atthe regional integration level, with the European Union and its co-legislative parliamentas the most prominent examples. In Latin America, on the other hand, the presidentialtradition and intergovernmental character of regional initiatives have always relegatedmembers of parliament to a secondary position. However, against all expectations, aparliament was created in Mercosur in 2006. How can this institutional choice beexplained? This dissertation aims to analyze the reasons for the creation of the MercosurParliament (Parlasur) beyond the official discourse. In order to do so, it explores thecombination of institutions, interests and ideas in determining political action. Thesefactors are contextualized through policy process theories, which underline the role oftiming, advocacy coalitions and inspiration in existing models in institutional change.This theoretical framework is then applied to the study of the four fundamental stages ofthe Parlasur building: the institutional development of the former ParliamentaryCommission; the relations between the Mercosur and the European Union and thetransfer of integration mechanisms; the critical moment when the Free Trade Area ofthe Americas was confronted by the new governmental ideologies; and the difficultinstitutionalization process that is being faced by the new parliament. This chronothematicanalysis is intended to trace the path of explanatory variables in thisinstitutional result, based on semi-structured interviews and observations carried out inMercosur as well as in the European Union.

In 2014 the Czech republic celebrated 10th anniversary of accession to the European Union and the third elections to the European Parliament took place. It is these elections and especially the pre-election campaigns this diploma thesis focuses on. Its main goal is to analyze these pre-election campaigns, evaluate whether they were effective and whether media choices in them were influential to the election results.

The European Parliament elections have for decades been described as 'second-order national elections', meaning that parties tend to have a national focus rather than a European one. Furthermore, the parties are often described as a weak link between the European Union and its citizens. Studies on the parties' election promises have mainly been done on national elections and show that election promises become increasingly important over time. However, no previous studies have looked at election promises in European elections. The purpose of this comparative case study is to compare the election promises that Swedish parliamentary parties present in their election manifestos for the European Parliament elections of 2014 and 2019, in order to contribute to both the discourse on European Parliament elections and the discourse on election promises. Two established fields of research that have not previously met in this way. Based on previous research, this study tests eight hypotheses on the material. By mapping and analyzing 1374 election promises from 16 election manifestos, the result shows a predominant share of election promises with a European focus, rather than national. The election promises are surprisingly specific rather than vague and mainly critical of EU-policy rather than the European Union as a political system. The conclusion of this result is that the European Parliament elections as 'second-order national elections' do not emerge when election promises are studied. The results of this study has shown that there is reason to revise the prevailing picture of European Parliament elections in this field of research.

The European Union is suffering from a legitimacy crisis, which thus far has culminated with Great Britain’s decision to exit the union. According to the ‘opposition deficit thesis’, this is caused as there is no arena in which effective opposition can be voiced in the European Union, which forces EU citizens to organise their opposition outside the political system, and often against it. However, as no systemic analysis has been conducted on the opposition deficit in the EU’s democratic centre, no convincing conclusions has been made. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to systemically test the opposition deficit thesis, and to add to the current lack of research on the topic. The centre for any democratic legitimacy is the political system’s elected representatives in parliament, in which any opposition deficit would strongly indicate a democratic deficit. Therefore, I ask: is the European Parliament an arena for effective opposition? To test the opposition deficit systematically and empirically, data from 20 plenary debates between the years 2005-2007 in the European Parliament were gathered. Through simple statistical analysis, we conclude that most statements are oppositional (55 percent) and that there is no oppositional deficit. While most opposition is effective and thus has real effect in the policy-making process, the definition and operationalisation provided within the opposition deficit thesis must be refuted due to theoretical inconsistencies. Furthermore, oppositional behaviour at party- and individual level was also investigated, showing that Eurosceptic party groups are more oppositional than mainstream party groups and through their opposition minimise the European Union’s democratic deficit when voiced within the system. Also, we find that there is no significant relationship between gender and political opposition, contrary to past assumptions. Therefore, it is concluded that there is no oppositional deficit in the European Parliament, and possibly no such deficit in the European Union. So, while the European Union it is suffering a legitimacy crisis which may be caused by a democracy deficit, it is not correlated to political opposition as described by the opposition deficit thesis.