Parliamentary Behavior with Two Principals: Preferences, Parties, and Voting in the European
Parliament
Author(s): Simon Hix
Source: American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 688-698
Published by: Midwest Political Science Association
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ParliamentaryBehavior
Preferences, Parties,
European
and
with
Voting
Principals:
Two
in
the
Parliament
Simon Hix LondonSchool of Economics and PoliticalScience
The EuropeanParliamenthas become one of the most powerfulinstitutionsin the EuropeanUnion.Members of the EuropeanParliament
(MEPs)can now enact legislation,
amend the EuropeanUnionbudget,
veto the nominee for the European
UnionCommissionPresident,and
censure the Commission.But,we
knowlittleabout what determines
MEPs'voting behavior.Do they vote
according to theirpersonal policy
preferences? Do the EP partiesforce
MEPsto toe the partyline?And,
when nationalpartyand EP party
preferences conflict,which way do
MEPsrespond-to the principalswho
controltheirelection (the national
parties)or the principalswho control
theirinfluencein the EP (the EP parties)? The results reportedhere show
that nationalpartypolicies are the
strongest predictorsof voting behaviorin the EP.
THTow
Members of the European Parliament vote is increasingly
important. As a result of several reforms of the European Union
Treaties,' MEPs can now enact legislation in a wide range of
policy areas,amend most lines in the budget, veto the governments' nominee for the Commission President, and censure the Commission. But, we
know little about what determines MEPs'voting behavior. Do they vote according to their personal policy preferences?Do the political groups in the
EP force them to vote along European party lines? Or are MEPs beholden
to their national parties?
Legislative behavior in the EP is also interesting from a more general
perspective. The EP is a relativelynew chamber, with a high number of political parties, a variety of decision rules, and multiple influences operating
upon its members such as diverse policy preferences,national interests, national party policies, and European party affiliations. For example, when
deciding how to vote, MEPs must respond to two different "principals":
national parties, who control the selection of candidates in EP elections,
and the political groups in the EP,who control a variety of private goods in
the EP, such as leadership positions, committee assignments, speaking
time, and the legislative agenda. These pressures are similar to those faced
by U.S. Representatives,between constituency and legislative caucus interests, and by legislators in parliamentarysystems, between local parties and
Simon Hix is Readerin EuropeanUnion Politicsand Policy,LondonSchoolof Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
([email protected]).
Earlierversionsof this articlewere presentedat a workshopat the Universityof Washington,in Seattle,and at the 2001 EuropeanCommunityStudiesAssociationconference
in Madison, Wisconsin. I would like to thank Alison Alter, James Caporaso, Fabio
Franchino,Simon Hug, Simon Jackman,JoeJupille,KeithKrehbiel,RogerScully,Kaare
Strom,GeraldSchneider,Diego Varelaand the three anonymous refereesfor their comments on the article.The researchfor this articlewas funded under the "One Europeor
Several?"programof the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil of the United Kingdom (Grant#: L21325 2019), and by the Nuffield Foundation(Grant# SGS/00387/G),
and the LeverhulmeTrust(Grant# RG/8/2000/0042).
'In 1987,the Single EuropeanAct gave the EP a right to two readingsof legislationrelating to the EU single market.In 1993,the MaastrichtTreatyestablishedthe so-called
"codecisionprocedure,"which gave the EP a veto on most socio-economic legislation.
Finally,in 1999, the AmsterdamTreatyreformedthe codecision procedure,giving the
EP equal legislativepower with the Council, and gave the EP a veto in the selection of
the Commission President.See, interalia, Hix 1999a(56-98).
AmericanJournalof PoliticalScience,Vol.46, No. 3, July2002, Pp. 688-698
688
?2002 by the MidwestPoliticalScienceAssociation
ISSN0092-5853
PARLIAMENTARY BEHAVIOR WITH TWO PRINCIPALS
689
parliamentary factions. Hence, understanding how the
battle between the two principals is resolved in the EP
sheds light on the general issue of legislative behavior
with multiple principals.
To tackle these issues, I outline three explanations of
MEP voting behavior: personal ideological beliefs, European party discipline, or national party discipline. These
explanations are then tested by comparing MEPs' policy
preferences with their legislative behavior. I use a survey
of MEPs to measure their "posited" policy preferences
and then apply NOMINATE to over 1,000 roll-call votes
to measure their "revealed"policy locations.
division of labor with like-minded legislators, MEPs
can secure access to the legislative agenda, resources,and
committee assignments. In return, MEPs follow their EP
party leaders' instructions on how to vote. The main evidence for these claims is the growing level of intra-party
voting likeness, or "party cohesion" (e.g., Attina 1990;
Brzinski 1995; Raunio 1997, 79-124), as Table 1 shows.
But, it may be premature to conclude from these
crude measures that the EP parties are the main determining forces of MEP voting. In the U.S. context, for example, several scholars claim that legislative parties are
the main forces behind voting behavior in the House and
Senate (e.g., Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; McCarty,Poole,
and Rosenthal 2001). Krehbiel has recently questioned
the logic behind these claims: "Acommon form of inference pertaining to the significance of parties in politics
goes as follows. A phenomenon is important. Party is
correlated with it. Therefore, party is important-moreover, by implication, in a causal way" (1993, 237). Consider roll-call voting. If a high percentage of legislators in
the same party vote the same way in a series of votes,
then the party organization is assumed to have produced
"Where's
the Party?"
TheQuestion:
inthe European
Parliament
A central claim in researchon the EP is that the political
groups have a significant impact on MEP voting behavior. These legislative parties enable MEPs to overcome
a variety of collective action problems. By organizing a
Parliament
I 'Cohesion'
of the PartyGroupsinthe European
TABLE
Percentof MEPs
PartyGroups,fromLeftto Right
(groupabbreviationsin brackets)
Communists (LU)
RadicalLeft(EUL,EUL/NGL)
Greens (G)
Regionalists/ Greens&Regionalists
(ERA,G/EFA)
Socialists&SocialDemocrats(PES)
Liberals(ELDR)
ChristianDemocrats&Conservatives
(EPP)
Nationalist-Conservatives
(EDA,FE,UPE,UEN)
BritishConservatives (EDG)
EP2
(1984)
-
EP3
(1989)
2.7
9.4
5.4
EP5
(1999)
-
-
EP2
EP4
EP5
EP3
(1984-89) (1989-94) (1994-99) (1999-04)
-93.8
6.7
4.9
4.1
-5.8
-
71.2
92.3
-87.5
83.8
61.4
85.2
4.6
2.4
3.4
7.7
67.8
69.5
98.0
75.4
30.0
7.1
34.7
34.9
28.8
62.2
78.6
89.0
84.8
7.6
27.7
8.1
69.5
85.7
80.1
25.3
9.5
23.4
37.2
84.1
88.2
90.2
87.8
81.1
6.7
3.9
9.4
4.8
75.7
64.5
93.2
58.3
11.5
6.6
70.7
40.5
Anti-Europeans(EN, EDD)
European Right(ER)
Non-attached MEPs
EP4
(1994)
VotingCohesion('Indexof Agreement')
3.7
3.3
1.6
2.3
-82.9
3.4
2.6
4.8
4.2
92.2
96.1
99.9
Source: Calculated fromdata in Attina(1990), Raunio (1996), Hix and Lord(1997) and Hix (2000). The scores are froma sample of roll-callvotes in
each parliament.Collated roll-calldata is not currentlyavailable fromthe firstdirectly-elected EP-the 1979-1984 parliament.
Note: An Index of Agreement is a measure of the relationshipbetween the three modalities of votes cast by the members of a party group ('yes', 'no',
and 'abstain'), in relationto the total number of votes cast by the members of the group. Formally:
IA=
highest modality- sum of the other two modalities
x 100
total number of votes cast by the party group
In other words, the index is equal to 100 if all the members of the group vote the same way (in every vote), and is equal to 0 if exactly half the members of a group vote one way and the rest vote another way (in every vote).
SIMON HIX
690
this cohesion. But, what if these legislators would have
voted the same way anyway because they share the same
preferences on the subjects of these votes? The effect of
party organization on legislative behavior, independent
of legislators'preferences,cannot be determined.
This issue is further complicated in EP because of
the existence of two principals: EP parties and national
parties. So, when an EP party shows a high level of cohesion, we do not know whether this is because the EP
party leaders have forced their MEPs to vote together,
whether the national member parties in the EP party
have policy positions that correlate with those of the EP
party (and so have instructed their MEPsto vote with the
EP party), or whether the individual MEPs in the EP
group share the same policy positions, independently of
their national party affiliations.
ThreeExplanations
of
MEPVotingBehavior
Consider three explanations of voting in the EP.
Personal
PolicyPreferences
If MEPs vote purely on the basis of their personal ideological beliefs, the distance between an MEP'sideal policy
position and the averagepolicy position of the MEP's EP
party should be a stronger predictor of the number of
times the MEP votes for/against the EP party. If an MEP
has an ideal policy position close to the mean position of
the EP party,the MEP is unlikely to be torn between voting with his/her personal beliefs and following the voting
instructions of the EP party leadership. Conversely,if an
MEP has an ideal policy position far from the mean position of the EP party, he/she is more likely to be on the
opposite side of a cutting-point (the point that divides
the "yes"camp from the "no"camp in a vote) to the majority of the EP party.
Whether an MEP is to the left or the right of the
mean member of the party should not make a difference. Intuitively, one might expect MEPs on the right of
the main center-left party (the Party of European Socialists) and on the left of the main center-right party (the
European People's Party) to be more likely to defect
from their parties than MEPs on the opposite wings of
both parties. If most status quo points are centrally located, in comparisons between the status quo and an alternative proposed by one of the two main parties, the
MEPs located between the two parties are more likely to
be caught on the "wrong side" in a vote.
This is not the case in the EP.First, there are several
other parties in the EP,in addition to the two main party
groups. There are two parties to the left of the Party of
European Socialists (the Greens/European Free Alliance
and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left), one
party between the Partyof EuropeanSocialists and European People's Party (the European Liberal, Democrat
and Reform Party), and two parties to the right of the
European People's Party (the Union for a Europe of Nations and the Group for a Europe of Democracies and
Diversities). Hence, unless an MEP is located on the far
right of the most right-wing party in the EP or the far left
of the most left-wing party in the EP, the MEP will be
situated between the ideal points of two parties.
Second, formal models of European Union bargaining often assume that the status quo is at one extreme of
the decision space (e.g., Garrett 1992; Tsebelis 1994).
However, since "no European Union legislation" means
maintaining a patchwork of national regulations, the
status-quo could be located anywhere in the European
Union decision-space. Because of this randomness of
the location of the status quo, votes in the EP are rarely
simple left-versus-right splits. As Figure 1 shows, the
vote-splits between July 1999 and June 2000 were evenly
distributed between 95 percent on the left versus 5 percent on the right and 5 percent on the left versus 95 percent on the right (apart from a large number of near
unanimous votes). In other words, regardless of their
position on the left-right spectrum, MEPs are equally
likely to find themselves on the other side of a cut-point
from their EP parties.
European
PartyDiscipline
If the EP parties are powerful legislative organizations,
they should be able to impose sanctions on MEPs who
defect from the "party line." Thus, regardless of an individual's ideological location, MEPs should follow the
voting instructions of the leadership of that EP party.
Hence, the "revealed"policy location of an MEP-where
they are located in their voting behavior-should be
close to the ideal policy position of their EP party.
Furthermore, some EP parties are more likely to be
able to enforce their wishes on their member than others.
The two main parties in the EP-the European People's
Party and the Party of European Socialists-effectively
run the EP.With more than 65 percent of the MEPs between them, when working together these two parties
control who wins the key offices in the EP,who gets what
committee chair, and how the legislative agenda in committees and on the floor of the EP is organized (especially
Raunio 1997 and Kreppel2001). Hence, these two parties
PARLIAMENTARY BEHAVIOR WITH TWO PRINCIPALS
1
FIGURE
691
Distribution
of Vote-Splitsin the EuropeanParliament
140
120 o
o
o
C
100 -
(c
CO
0)
80-
60a)
(D)
0
0
0
40-
O,
z
20-
0
0-9.9
15-19.9
10-14.9
25-29.9
20-24.9
35-39.9
30-34.9
45-49.9
40-44.9
55-59.9
50-54.9
65-69.9
60-64.9
75-79.9
70-74.9
85-89.9
80-84.9
95-100
90-94.9
Percent of MEPs voting with the left
have a lot to offer MEPs who behave, and by controlling
the levers of power in the EP,these two parties have more
sanctions than the other EP parties.
NationalPartyDiscipline
Because of the way EP elections are organized, national
parties have a strong influence on the reelection prospects of MEPs. In all European Union states, national
party leaderships have some control over candidate selection in EP elections-either via the national party executive determining the list of candidates (as in France, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Austria), or via the
national party executive approving candidates selected
by regional organs (as in Britain, Germany, Italy, or Ireland).
Moreover,once elected to the EP,most national parties hold meetings of the "national party delegations" of
their MEPs. These meetings elect the officers of the national party delegation and determine the national party's
positions in the EP.The leader of a national delegation often sits on the party's executive committee at home, and
so influences national party policy on EuropeanUnion issues. National party positions, as articulatedby these national delegations, often conflict with the position of the
parent EP party. Some national delegations, particularly
the larger ones, issue voting instructions to their MEPs
when the national party position is different from the EP
group position. Because the national party, rather than
the EP party, controls whether an MEP can stand in the
next election, when there is such a conflict, the MEPscan
be expected to vote with their national party against their
EP party.
So, the further the ideal policy position of a national
party is from the ideal position of the EP party,the more
likely the MEPs from that national party will find themselves facing a choice between their national party and
their EP party. And, as discussed before, whether a national party is to the right or the left of the EP party
should not have a systematic effect. Hence, the distance
between a national party and the EP party should be a
strong predictor of MEP defection from the EP parties.
However, the policy positions of the EP parties and
the national parties are not completely independent. The
leadership of each EP party is composed of the leaders of
SIMON HIX
692
the larger national delegations in that EP party. Thus,
some national parties are more influential than others
when setting the policy positions of the EP parties.Hence,
there is likely to be less policy conflict for the MEPs from
these national parties. For example, in the European
People's Party in the 1999-2004 parliament, the German
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is the largest national delegation in the European People'sPartyand provides the Presidency and Secretary-Generalof the European People's Party. Similarly, in the Party of European
Socialistsin the 1999-2004 parliament,the German Social
Democratic Party (SPD) is the largest national delegation
and the Spanish Socialist WorkersParty (PSOE) provides
the President.
KernelDensity Plot of Ideological
Self-Placement of PES and EPP
Survey Respondents
FIGURE 2
2a. Left-Right
.3 -
PES
a>
c)
Q)
C
o
-
10
1
Left-Rightself-placement(1 = left, 10 = right)
Measurement
To test these explanations we need measures of the posited and revealed positions of the MEPs.
2b. European Integration
.3-
PES
andPro/Anti-Europe
Self-Placement
Left-Right
There are two main ideological dimensions in European
Union politics-the traditional left-right dimension and
the pro/anti-Europe dimension (concerning the speed of
European integration and how the European Union institutions should be designed; Hix 1999b). Where an
MEP is located on these two dimensions should give a
good indication of their underlying ideological preferences on issues on the EP agenda.
To measure these basic policy locations of the MEPs,
I use the results of a survey of MEPs, which was conducted by the European Parliament Research Group in
September 1999 via a written questionnaire. The questionnaire was completed by 195 MEPs (31 percent of
the 626 members), and these returns constitute a good
sample of the total population of MEPs (see the appendix). The questionnaires were numbered so that we know
the identity of the individual MEPs who responded to
the survey.
The questionnaire included a set of questions asking
the MEPs to locate themselves on several policy scales.
One such question was the standard "left-right selfplacement" question: "Where would you place yourself
on the Left-Right spectrum?,"and the respondents were
given a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 was labeled "Left"and
10 was labeled "Right."Another question asked about attitudes towards Europeanintegration:"Wherewould you
place yourself on the question of European integration?,"
and the respondents were given a scale from 1 to 10,
where 1 was labeled "European integration has gone to
a
a)
EPP
01
10
EuropeanIntegrationself-placement(1 = anti, 10 = pro)
far"and 10 was labeled "The EU should become a federal
state immediately."
Figure 2 shows the kernel density plots of the responses of the sixty-one Party of European Socialist and
seventy-two European People's Party MEPs who answered these questions.2 There is considerable overlap in
the ideal policy preferencesof the MEPs in the two main
EP parties. This suggests that if MEP's vote in the EP
purely on the basis of their underlying preferences,many
members of these parties will find themselves closer to
the ideal position of the other EP party than their own.
'Thesekerneldensityplotsweregeneratedusingthe "kdensity"
command in Stata 7.0. A kernel density plot is in effect a
"smoothed"
whereinsteadof plottinga seriesof bars,
histogram,
thefiguresplotprobability
of beinglocatedat a pardistributions
the likelihoodthat
ticularpointon a policyscale-by calculating
an MEPwillfallat eachpointon the scaleby averaging
the likelihoodthata memberwillfallin theintervalssurrounding
thescale.
PARLIAMENTARY BEHAVIOR WITH TWO PRINCIPALS
NOMINATE
Scores
To establish the revealed behavior of the MEPs, I collected all of the roll-call votes in the first year of the fifth
directly elected EP (N=1,031). These votes covered a
range of issues on the European Union agenda: regulatory policies, such as environmental, consumer, and social standards (N=384); inter-institutional relations, such
the reform of the European Union Treaties(N=232); expenditure policies, such as the agricultural and regional
funds (N=139); external relations, including security and
trade issues (N=1 17); justice and interior affairs issues
(N=106); and general economic issues, such as labor
market reform, Economic and Monetary Union and tax
harmonization (N=53).3
One must be cautious when using roll-call votes to
generalize about voting behavior in the EP. Under the
EP's rules of procedure, only certain votes must be taken
by roll-call. All other votes are either by a show of hands
or by "electronic vote,"and in either case, how each individual MEP votes is not recorded. Rule 134 of the EP's
rules of procedure specifies that any EP party or thirtytwo MEPs can request a roll-call. In practice, roll-call
votes tend to be called by EP parties or a large national
delegation, either to show their position to the public on
an issue, to embarrass another party, or to keep a check
on their own members' behavior (Corbett, Jacobs, and
Shackleton 2000, 149-150). In the period under investigation, roll-call votes constituted approximately onethird of all votes. Consequently, roll-call votes do not tell
the complete story of EP voting, and the outcome of
these votes may be systematically biased (Carrubba and
Gabel 1999).
Nevertheless, roll-call votes are the only votes that we
can study in detail. Roll-call votes, at least in this period,
covered a broad range of issues on the European Union
agenda. And, roll-call votes do not appear to be called
disproportionately by one EP party or another. Hence,
without empirical evidence to prove that roll-call voting
is systematically biased towards a particular EP party or
set of issues, it is reasonable to assume that these votes
should produce a fairly accurate picture of voting behavior in the EP.
I analyzed the roll calls using the NOMINATE scaling method (Poole and Rosenthal 1997, 233-251). Despite some of its limitations (see Clinton et al. 2001), the
NOMINATE algorithm has rapidly become the standard
method for generating ideal point estimates from rollcall voting behavior. The underlying assumption of
NOMINATEis that legislative behavior can be simplified
3Previous analysis of EP roll-call voting reveals little systematic difference in how MEPs vote in these different policy areas (Hix 2001;
Noury 2002).
693
into a small number of dimensions and that each legislator can be representedby an ideal point in this space. The
output of NOMINATE is a set of Cartesian coordinates
in the unit space for each legislator. Applying NOMINATEto the 1,031 votes cast between July 1999 and June
2000 produces a predominantly one-dimensional space:
a single dimension effectively explains about 85 percent
of all vote decisions (Hix 2001; cf. Noury 2002).4
There is a large, significant, and positive correlation
between the positions of the MEPs on the left-right selfplacement scale in the survey and the location of these
same MEPs on the dimension produced by NOMINATE
(.749). There is also a significant relationship, although
smaller and negative, between the positions of the MEPs
on the European integration self-placement scale in the
survey and the dimension produced by NOMINATE
(-.211). In other words, the dimension produced by
NOMINATE from the voting records is most similar to
the traditional left-right dimension, but also captures
some positions on the other main policy dimension in
European Union politics, relating to the speed of European integration.
TheVariables
andHypotheses
The dependent variable, the propensity of an MEP
to vote against their EP party, is the absolute distance
between an MEP's NOMINATE score and the mean
NOMINATE score of all the MEPs in their EP party.
This is a continuous variable, ranging from 0 to 2.
The independent variables are specified as follows.
First, the ideological distance between an MEP and the
MEP's EP party is defined in two ways: (1) the distance
between an MEP's "posited" left-right location and the
mean "posited"left-right location of all the members of
the MEP's EP party (using the left-right self-placement
question in the survey), which is a continuous variable
with ranging from 0 to 9; and (2) the distance between an
MEP's"posited" European integration location and the
mean "posited" European integration location of all the
members of the MEP's EP party (using the European integration self-placement question in the survey), which is
a continuous variable with ranging from 0 to 9.
4NOMINATE requiresvotes to be set-up in a binomial fashion-
with only "yes"and "no"positions. In the EP,however,there are
three voting alternatives-"yes,""no,"and "abstain."Wherevoting
is by a simple majority,abstainingis the equivalentof not participatingin the vote. But,wherevoting is by an absolutemajority,abstaining is the same as voting "no,"as any vote that is not a "yes"
underminesthe abilityof securingthe required314 "yes"votes for
the act to be passed. Hence, were a simple majority was required
(886 votes in the analysis) abstentions were excluded, and where
an absolute majority was required (145 votes) abstentions were
coded as "no" votes.
SIMON HIX
694
Second, EP party membership (for the European
People's Party, Party of European Socialists, Greens/European FreeAlliance and Union for a Europe of Nations)
is a dummy variable, coded 1 if the MEP is a member of
the EP party in question and 0 otherwise.
Third, the distance between national party preferences and EP party preferences is defined in two ways:
(1) the distance between the mean posited left-right location of the members of an MEP's national party and the
mean posited left-right location of all members of the
MEP's EP party (on the left-right self-placement question in the survey), which is a continuous variable ranging from 0 to 9; and (2) the distance between the mean
posited Europeanintegration location of the members of
an MEP'snational party and the mean posited European
integration location of the members of the MEP's EP
party (on the European integration self-placement question in the survey), which is a continuous variable ranging from 0 to 9.
Fourth, national party membership, for the nine
largest national party delegations in the EP,are dummy
variables,coded 1 if the MEP is a member of the national
party in question and 0 otherwise.
The correlations between the independent variables
are shown in Table2. The three explanations of EPvoting
have different predictions about the size, significance,
and sign of the effects (beta-coefficients) of these independent variables on the dependent variable:
Hypothesis 1 (MEP ideology): the coefficients relating to the measuresof individual MEP preferencesshould
be significant and positive (in other words, the MEP
should be morelikely to defect from the EP party than the
baseline group of MEPs), and the coefficients relating to
national party preferencesshould not be significant.
Hypothesis 2 (EP party organization): coefficients
relating to the measures of individual MEP preferences
should be significant but not large;the coefficients relating to national party preferences should not be significant; the coefficients relating to the two main EP parties
should be significant and negative (in other words, the
MEP should be less likely to defect from the EP party
than the baseline group of MEPs); and the coefficients
relating to the two smaller EP parties should be significant and positive.
Hypothesis 3 (National party policy and power): the
coefficients relating to the measures of individual MEP
preferences should not be significant; the coefficients relating to national party preferencesshould be significant
and positive; the coefficients relating to the CDU, SPD,
and PSOE should be significant and negative;and the coefficients relating to the other large national parties
should be significant, but could be either negative or
positive (in other words, the national party either in-
structs their MEPs to vote more with the EP group than
the baseline group of MEPs, or less with the EP group
than the baseline group of MEPs).
Results
Table 3 shows the results of the regression model. With
the thirteen dummy variables, the baseline are the fortyfour MEPs (who responded to the survey) who are not
members of either the four EP parties or the nine national parties analyzed.5
The results confirm the view that voting in the EP is
driven by national party preferences and membership.
First, national parties' policy locations are more influential than individual MEP locations for explaining MEP
defection from the EP parties. Both measures of the ideological position of national parties vis-a-vis the EP parties are significant-although ideological variance from
the EP party on left-right issues is a stronger predictor of
MEP defection than ideological variance on European
integration issues. The combined effect of the two measures of national party policy preferences is also more
significant than the combined effects of individual MEP
preferencesor EP group membership.
Second, which national party an MEP belongs to
also makes a difference. MEPs from the three national
parties who control the European People's Party and
Party of European Socialists (the CDU, SPD, and PSOE)
are less likely to defect than the baseline group of MEPs
(although this effect is only significant for SPD MEPs).
And, where the other large national parties are concerned, membership of the British Conservative Party
dramatically increases the likelihood that an MEP will
vote against the EP party, even when the policy variance
of the British Conservative members from the European
People's Party is taken into account. Some British Conservatives have personal preferences close to the European People's Party mean. But, the average British Conservative is considerably less pro-European and more to
the right of the averageEuropeanPeople'sPartymember.
As a result, regardless of a British Conservative MEP's
personal preferences,the fact that their national party is a
preference-outlier in the European People's Party means
that all Conservative MEPs have a high propensity to
vote against the European People's Party.
The results clearly refute the argument that individual MEP preferencesdrives voting behavior in the EP.
The individual ideological position of MEPscompared to
5The members of the nine national parties in the model are all
membersof either the EPPor PESpartygroups.
TABLE2
Variables
Betweenthe Independent
Correlations
0.8.
c
c:o
co8
w
cw X
GesE.S
1 bewe ME
Dsac
X
?e
L.."
Aln
&uE
=oc.9
.
Distance
e-
a, ;=
0._
o
C
mLC
=.
O LLU
LU
O
-.
.o
Pt
betwen
:pary0E-inegrtiU.
Lua.a
m 'cL
X
ED. X
,
o
.
.
oL
.
.4
ro
-
..
-a
e
l
-=cL
0
C
LU)J
a.
L
LU
L
i
co
LU
=
o
.
0
"
DistancebetweenMEP&EP
Partyof EuropeanSocialists
FreeAlliance
Greens/European
Unionfora Europeof Nations
Distancebetweennat.party
location
&EPpartyleft-right
Distancebetweennat.party
&EPpartyEUintegr.location
DemocraticUnion
Christian
-.179* -.230** -.516** -.077 -.136 -.204** -.180* .125 -.124 -.109 -.043
.062
.217** -.350** -.160*
.553** .070
.027
-.009
.607** .193** -.345** -.071
.131
.152*
.151*
.169*
.335** -.173* -.068
-.042
-.134
.009
(CDU)- Germany
SocialDemocraticParty
-.046
-.037
-.158*
.307** -.055
-.034
-.126
-.242** -.053
.002
-.058
-.136
.264** -.048
-.029
-.099
-.090
-.046
-.037
-.041
-.103
-.050
-.030
-.054
-.136
.045
-.097
.252** -.130
-.052
-.187** .362** -.065
.212** -.109
-.043
-.158*
.307** -.055
-.031
-.040
-.026
-.034
-.111
-.086
-.112
-.049
-.063
-.042
-.053
-.040
-.051
-.034
-.043
-.034
-.044
-.029
-.037
-.047
-.031
-.040
-.040
-.051
-.0
.348** .366** -.209** -.083
-.050
.443** -.079
-.064
-.055
-.060
-.076
-.0
.264** -.048
-.029
-.046
-.037
-.032
-.034
-.044
-.0
(SPD) - Germany
SocialistWorkersParty
(PSOE)- Spain
PopularParty(PP) - Spain
Socialist Party(PS)- France
Go Italy(Fl)- Italy
Democratsof the Left
-.076
-.164*
-.016
-.168*
-.164*
-
(DS)- Italy
Conservative
PartyUnitedKingdom
.097
LabourParty- United Kingdom
.023
-.042
-.136
atthe0.05level(2-tailed).
is significant
Notes:*Correlation
**Correlation
atthe0.01level(2-tailed).
is significant
.180*
-.099
-.107
SIMON HIX
696
TABLE
3
Regression Models of MEPVotingBehavior
Dependentvariable= absolutedistancebetween
an MEP'sNOMINATE
score andthe mean
score of the MEP'sEPgroup
NOMINATE
Unstandardized
Coefficients
Beta
Std.error
Variables
Independent
Constant
MEPPolicyPreferences
Individual
DistancebetweenMEP&EPpartyleft-right
location
DistancebetweenMEP&EPpartyEU-integration
location
EPPartyOrganization
EuropeanPeople'sParty
Partyof EuropeanSocialists
FreeAlliance
Greens/European
Unionfora Europeof Nations
NationalPartyPolicyPreferences
Distancebetweennationalparty&EPpartyleft-right
location
Distancebetweennationalparty&EPpartyEU-integration
location
NationalPartyOrganization
Christian
DemocraticUnion(CDU)- Germany
SocialDemocraticParty(SPD)- Germany
SocialistWorkersParty(PSOE)- Spain
PopularParty(PP)- Spain
SocialistParty(PS)- France
Go Italy(Fl)- Italy
Democratsof the Left(DS)- Italy
ConservativeParty- UnitedKingdom
LabourParty- UnitedKingdom
.012
.016
.008
-.008
.008
.005
.063
-.103
.024
.041*
-.006
-.019
.015
.017
.021
.031
.116
.192
-.014
-.030
.037'*
.014*
.011
.007
.218
.139
-.040
-.056*
-.056
-.003
-.047*
.009
-.046
.209**
-.027
.023
.028
.030
.028
.024
.032
.027
.021
.030
-.098
-.112
-.097
-.006
-.110
.015
-.091
.592
-.046
.586
17.13
195
AdjustedR-squared
F-statistic
N
Jointsignificancetests forthe clustersof independentvariables:
MEPpolicypreferences(F(2,177))
Individual
EPpartyorganization
(F(4,177))
Nationalpartypolicypreferences(F(2,177))
Nationalpartyorganization
(F(9,177))
Standardized
betacoefficient
F
1.62
2.29
7.79
14.18
p>F
.2013
.0615
.0006
.0000
Notes:OLSestimates,
test).
test),*p< .05(two-tailed
**p<.01(two-tailed
their party is not a strong predictor of MEPs'voting behavior, either for policy preferenceson left-right or European integration issues.
The results also refute the view that voting in the EP
is driven by the EP party groups. Of the two larger party
groups, only membership of the Party of European Socialists is significant. But, this relationship is in the opposite direction than predicted:members of the Partyof European Socialists are more likely to defect from their EP
party than the baseline group of MEPs.
Conclusions
These results suggest that the main factors behind voting
in the EP are the policy positions of national parties. Despite the fact that the parliamentary principals in the EP
control important benefits-such as committee assignments and speaking time-it is the principals that control candidate selection (the national parties) who ultimately determine how MEPs behave. When the national
parties in the same parliamentary group decide to vote
together, the EP parties look highly cohesive. But when
these parties take opposing policy positions, the cohesion
of the EP parties break down.
This result consequently has implications for understanding the constraints on a genuinely "transnational"
party system in the European Union. The EP parties will
only be able to organize voting behavior in the EP if national parties no longer control "their"MEPs. To break
national party control, EP elections would have to be
held under a system which limited the power of national
parties to control candidate selection; for example, with
candidates chosen by regional rather than central party
PARLIAMENTARY BEHAVIOR WITH TWO PRINCIPALS
697
organs, and a percentage of MEPs chosen by the EP party
leaderships on European-wide "top-up"lists. This would
dramaticallyincrease the authority of the party leaders in
the EP, who would become key actors in the European
Union policy process. Whether this is a good thing for
European Union democracy depends on one's view of
the EP party leaders.
Finally,the results have relevance to the general issue
of how legislative agents behave when they have more
than one principal. Without centralized candidate selection, parliamentaryparties have no way of punishing legislative defection or rewardingallegiance. In most parliaments in Europe, party cohesion is ensured through the
centralization of candidate selection in the hands of the
parliamentaryleadership. But, where candidate selection
is decentralized, legislative cohesion breaks down. In
the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, where
candidates are chosen in district primaries, Members
of Congress are more beholden to the median voter in
their district than the leader of their party caucus in the
House. Similarly,in Italy,where broad electoral alliances
are formed between multiple parties, each party within
an alliance chooses their candidates in the constituencies
they are assigned. As a result, once the elections are over,
these alliances fragment into multiple parliamentary
parties.
of the MEPSurvey
AppendixRepresentativeness
Number
Actual
MEPs
EuropeanPartyGroup
EuropeanPeople'sParty
Partyof EuropeanSocialists
EuropeanLiberal,Democratand ReformParty
FreeAlliance
Greens/European
GreenLeft
EuropeanUnitedLeft/Nordic
Unionfora Europeof Nations
Europeof Democraciesand Diversities
Non-attached
Percent
Survey
Respondents
72
232
180
61
52
20
13
48
14
42
5
30
5
16
5
26
= .994, t = 2.798
Correlation
Actual
MEPs
Survey
Respondents
37.1
28.8
8.3
7.7
6.7
4.8
2.6
4.2
36.9
31.3
10.3
6.7
7.2
2.6
2.6
2.6
Correlation= .994, t = .000
EuropeanUnionMemberState
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
UnitedKingdom
21
25
16
16
87
99
25
15
87
6
31
25
64
22
87
2
6
7
7
22
27
8
4
23
5
15
11
17
10
31
Correlation= .940, t = 4.555
Gender
Men
Women
438
188
144
51
Correlation= 1.000, t = 2.745
Seniority
Firstelected in the 1999elections
Firstelected beforethe 1999elections
340
286
110
85
Correlation= 1.000, t = 14.86
Total
626
3.4
4.0
2.6
2.6
13.9
15.8
4.0
2.4
13.9
1.0
5.0
4.0
10.2
3.5
13.9
1.0
3.1
3.6
3.6
11.3
13.8
4.1
2.1
11.8
2.6
7.7
5.6
8.7
5.1
15.9
Correlation= .940, t = .000
70.0
73.8
30.0
26.2
= 1.000, t = .000
Correlation
54.3
56.4
45.7
43.6
= 1.000, t = .000
Correlation
195
Note:Thesurveywas conductedinSeptember-December
translatedintoalltheofficiallanguagesof the European
1999,by writtenquestionnaire,
Union.
SIMONHIX
698
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