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We investigate the dimensionality of political conflict in the European Parliament by applying scaling method techniques to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using scaling methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the EU’s only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which is explained by conflicts between the parties in ‘government’ in the EU Council and Commission and the parties in ‘opposition’ in the Parliament.

We investigate the dimensionality of political conflict in the European Parliament by applying scaling method techniques to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using scaling methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the EU’s only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which is explained by conflicts between the parties in ‘government’ in the EU Council and Commission and the parties in ‘opposition’ in the Parliament.

From a rational choice institutionalist perspective, Euroscepticism is little more than a set of preferences by citizens, parties and interest groups about institutional design in Europe. If actors’ expect policy outcomes to move closer to their ideal positions as a result of European integration, they will be Euro-enthusiastic (as many centrists are). But, if they feel that policies will move further away from their ideal positions, they will be Eurosceptic (as many extremists are). This simple idea has broad historical and geographical relevance, relating to how actors view the design of multilevel polities, and how these institutional preferences change in response to policy outcomes of the central institutions.

This article uses the Domestic Structures and European Integration (DOSEI) data set of actors’ preferences on 65 issues in the 2003-4 Intergovernmental Conference to extract the underlying preferences of the governments, the Commission and the European Parliament on the main dimensions of conflict in the European Union’s constitutional negotiations. The analysis starts by comparing the ideal point estimates produced by three ‘inductive’ techniques: exploratory factor analysis, NOMINATE and Optimal Classification. The results are a series of ideal point estimates that do not correlate well with some simple a priori assumptions about key actors’ positions on the reform of the EU. The analysis then proceeds with a ‘mixed’ deductive/inductive method, in which responses to the survey questions relating to the two exogenous dimensions of constitutional design in a multi-level polity (the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ allocation of power) are used to generate ideal point estimates on these two dimensions. The result is a more intuitive set of ideal point estimates for the 28 main actors in the negotiations.

We examined how voting behavior in the European Parliament changed after the European Union added ten new member-states in 2004. Using roll-call votes, we compared voting behavior in the first half of the Sixth European Parliament (July 2004 - December 2006) with voting behavior in the previous Parliament (1999-2004). We looked at party cohesion, coalition formation, and the spatial map of voting by members of the European Parliament. We found stable levels of party cohesion and interparty coalitions that formed mainly around the left-right dimension. Ideological distance between parties was the strongest predictor of coalition preferences. Overall, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 did not change the way politics works inside the European Parliament. We also looked at the specific case of the controversial Services Directive and found that ideology remained the main predictor of voting behavior, although nationality also played a role., SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have voluntarily formed transnational political groups and invariably follow the voting instructions of these groups. This is intriguing as there are few obvious incentives for doing so. Unlike national parties, for example, the political groups in the European Parliament are not punished by the electorate if they are divided on key issues, as citizens know very little about what goes on inside the European Parliament. This paper pieces together an explanation of why the European political groups exist and why they have become so powerful by looking at the determinants of group cohesion and by undertaking a spatial analysis of voting in the European Parliament. MEPs who share preferences on a range of issues on the European Union policy agenda have an incentive to establish a division-of-labour contract and to share the costs of collecting information. Once internal party policy specialization and agenda setting has been established, MEPs have incentives to follow the voting instructions of their group owing to the advantages of cohesion in a context of repeated voting. © 2008 The Royal Society., SCOPUS: re.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have voluntarily formed transnational political groups and invariably follow the voting instructions of these groups. This is intriguing as there are few obvious incentives for doing so. Unlike national parties, for example, the political groups in the European Parliament are not punished by the electorate if they are divided on key issues, as citizens know very little about what goes on inside the European Parliament. This paper pieces together an explanation of why the European political groups exist and why they have become so powerful by looking at the determinants of group cohesion and by undertaking a spatial analysis of voting in the European Parliament. MEPs who share preferences on a range of issues on the European Union policy agenda have an incentive to establish a division-of-labour contract and to share the costs of collecting information. Once internal party policy specialization and agenda setting has been established, MEPs have incentives to follow the voting instructions of their group owing to the advantages of cohesion in a context of repeated voting. © 2008 The Royal Society., SCOPUS: re.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We examined how voting behavior in the European Parliament changed after the European Union added ten new member-states in 2004. Using roll-call votes, we compared voting behavior in the first half of the Sixth European Parliament (July 2004 - December 2006) with voting behavior in the previous Parliament (1999-2004). We looked at party cohesion, coalition formation, and the spatial map of voting by members of the European Parliament. We found stable levels of party cohesion and interparty coalitions that formed mainly around the left-right dimension. Ideological distance between parties was the strongest predictor of coalition preferences. Overall, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 did not change the way politics works inside the European Parliament. We also looked at the specific case of the controversial Services Directive and found that ideology remained the main predictor of voting behavior, although nationality also played a role., SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In this article we examine the determinants of European Union (EU) migration policies. We look at the passage of six pieces of migration and immigrant integration legislation in the fifth European Parliament (1999-2004). Based on the sixty-one roll-call votes on these bills we create a "migration score" for each Member of the European Parliament. We then use regression analysis to investigate the determinants of these scores. We find that the strongest determinants of policy outcomes on migration issues in this arena are the left-right preferences of EU legislators. These are stronger predictors than the economic preferences of national parties' constituents or the economic interests or political preferences of the member states. © 2007 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York., SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We investigate the dimensionality of politics in the European Parliament by applying a scaling method to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using these methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the European Union's only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which captures government-opposition conflicts as well as national and European party positions on European integration. ©2006, Midwest Political Science Association., SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We investigate the dimensionality of politics in the European Parliament by applying a scaling method to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using these methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the European Union's only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which captures government-opposition conflicts as well as national and European party positions on European integration. ©2006, Midwest Political Science Association., SCOPUS: ar.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This article looks at the development of the two main features of the party system in the European Parliament (EP): the organization of the party groups, and the nature of competition between these groups. On the organizational side, we examine the foundation of the party groups in the Common Assembly and the evolution of party organization from the appointed to the elected Parliament. On the competition side, we focus on the main axis of competition: the relationship between the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the European People's Party (EPP). We develop a set of competition propositions about PES-EPP collusion, and test these arguments in a statistical analysis of PES and EPP roll-call voting since 1979. We conclude that, contrary to what might be expected, the party system in the EP has become more consolidated and more competitive as the powers of the EP have increased., SCOPUS: re.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This article looks at the development of the two main features of the party system in the European Parliament (EP): the organization of the party groups, and the nature of competition between these groups. On the organizational side, we examine the foundation of the party groups in the Common Assembly and the evolution of party organization from the appointed to the elected Parliament. On the competition side, we focus on the main axis of competition: the relationship between the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the European People's Party (EPP). We develop a set of competition propositions about PES-EPP collusion, and test these arguments in a statistical analysis of PES and EPP roll-call voting since 1979. We conclude that, contrary to what might be expected, the party system in the EP has become more consolidated and more competitive as the powers of the EP have increased., SCOPUS: re.j, FLWIN, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

A growing literature looks at how the design of the electoral system shapes the voting behavior of politicians in parliaments. Existing research tends to confirm that in mixed-member systems the politicians elected in the single-member districts are more likely to vote against their parties than the politicians elected on the party lists. However, we find that in South Korea, the members of the Korean National Assembly who were elected on PR lists are more likely to vote against their party leadership than the members elected in single-member districts (SMDs). This counterintuitive behavior stems from the particular structure of candidate selection and politicians' career paths. This suggests that any theory of how electoral systems shape individual parliamentary behavior needs to look beyond the opportunities provided by the electoral rules for voters to reward or punish individual politicians (as opposed to parties), to the structure of candidate selection inside parties and the related career paths of politicians.

Une révision des règles électorales pourrait-elle rendre les élections européennes plus attractives ?Les élections européennes n’ont pas réussi à établir une connexion électorale entre les citoyens européens et la vie politique au niveau européen. La modification du système électoral pourrait-elle résoudre ce problème ? Nous pensons que cela est possible, en tout cas partiellement. La modification des règles électorales ne résoudrait pas l’ensemble des problèmes auxquels est confronté le Parlement européen. Cependant, l’analyse des élections passées conduit à suggérer que des circonscriptions relativement petites et des listes électorales ouvertes (qui autoriseraient les citoyens à voter pour des candidats spécifiques) renforcent la connexion entre les citoyens et leurs eurodéputés ainsi que le taux de participation aux élections européennes., European Parliament elections have failed to produce an ‘electoral connection’ between European citizens and politics at the European level. Could changing the electoral system fix this problem ? We believe that it could, at least partially. Changing the electoral rules would not resolve all the challenges facing the European Parliament. However, evidence from previous elections suggests that if relatively smaller electoral districts and open-ballots (which allow citizens to vote for individual candidates) were used throughout the EU there would be a much stronger connection between citizens and their MEPs and there would also be higher voter turnout in European elections.

Une révision des règles électorales pourrait-elle rendre les élections européennes plus attractives ?Les élections européennes n’ont pas réussi à établir une connexion électorale entre les citoyens européens et la vie politique au niveau européen. La modification du système électoral pourrait-elle résoudre ce problème ? Nous pensons que cela est possible, en tout cas partiellement. La modification des règles électorales ne résoudrait pas l’ensemble des problèmes auxquels est confronté le Parlement européen. Cependant, l’analyse des élections passées conduit à suggérer que des circonscriptions relativement petites et des listes électorales ouvertes (qui autoriseraient les citoyens à voter pour des candidats spécifiques) renforcent la connexion entre les citoyens et leurs eurodéputés ainsi que le taux de participation aux élections européennes., European Parliament elections have failed to produce an ‘electoral connection’ between European citizens and politics at the European level. Could changing the electoral system fix this problem ? We believe that it could, at least partially. Changing the electoral rules would not resolve all the challenges facing the European Parliament. However, evidence from previous elections suggests that if relatively smaller electoral districts and open-ballots (which allow citizens to vote for individual candidates) were used throughout the EU there would be a much stronger connection between citizens and their MEPs and there would also be higher voter turnout in European elections.

What will the ‘new normal’ be? Despite the blow COVID-19 has inflicted, we now have a unique opportunity to re-evaluate many aspects of modern economy, society, and government. Simon Hix (Pro-Director for Research, LSE) explains how the LSE’s new initiative can help shape the post-COVID world.

With the battle over Brexit returning to the House of Commons with the Internal Market Bill, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: what the British public wants in terms of a longer-term relationship with the European Union. To try to find out, Simon Hix (LSE), Clifton van der Linden (McMaster University) and Mark Pickup (Simon Fraser University) conducted a survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where they asked them to choose between hypothetical “package deals”. This forced voters to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British voters overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for quota-free and tariff-free access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of regulatory sovereignty but restrictions on UK exports. Reconciling this difference will continue to plague British politics.

Immigration is highly salient for voters in Europe and the United States and has generated considerable academic debate about the causes of preferences over immigration. This debate centers around the relative influences of sociotropic or personal economic considerations, as well as non-economic threats. We provide a test of the competing egocentric, sociotropic, and non-economic paradigms using a novel constrained preference experiment in which respondents are asked to trade-off preferred reductions in immigration levels with realistic estimates of the personal or societal costs associated with those reductions. This survey experiment, per- formed on a national sample of British YouGov panelists, allows us to measure the price-elasticity of the public’s preferences with regard to levels of European and non-European immigration. Respondents were willing to admit more immigrants when restriction carries economic costs, with egocentric considerations as important as sociotropic ones. People who voted for the UK to Leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum are less price-elastic than those voting Remain, indicating that non-economic concerns are also important.

Ireland has experienced many of the (‘demand side') economic and cultural factors that have led to the rise of populism in democracies across the world: a major economic downturn, growing income inequality, and mass immigration. Also, at the individual level, the same socio-demographic characteristics seem to predict populist values in Ireland as in many other countries; with lower income and older Irish voters opposed to immigration, for example. Yet, trust in Irish democracy remains high, and Ireland does not have a radical right populist party. The explanation of Irelands apparent immunity to populism, I suggest, can be found in the way the Irish system of ‘supplemented democracy' (through STV, referendums, and deliberative mini-publics) has allowed for a highly responsive and representative polity. This raises a challenge for the standard views of populism in political science, as it suggests that more attention needs to be paid to political (‘supply-side’) factors that explain populism: of how and why democracy fails or succeeds to respond to potential populist challenges.

Electoral reform creates new strategic coordination incentives for voters and elites, but endogeneity problems make such effects hard to identify. This article addresses this issue by investigating an extraordinary dataset, from the introduction of proportional representation (PR) in Norway in 1919, which permits the measurement of parties' vote shares in pre-reform single-member districts and in the same geographic units in the post-reform multi-member districts. The electoral reform had an immediate effect on the fragmentation of the party system, due in part to strategic party entry. The authors find, though, that another main effect of the reform was that many voters switched between existing parties, particularly between the Liberals and Conservatives, as the incentives for these voters to coordinate against Labor were removed by the introduction of PR.

We describe the electoral history of one of Europe’s most successful party families over the past 100 years in 31 countries. With a unique and newly collected dataset of national election results, and a large number of economic and social variables mea- sured for each country-election observation, we find that two main factors drive the electoral performance of social democratic parties: public sector spending, and the size of the manufacturing sector. Our findings suggest that most of the fall in support for social democratic parties in recent years is correlated with a decline in the number of industrial workers as well as a reduction in the propensity of social democratic parties’ core supporters (industrial workers and public sector employees) to vote for them.

Two years after the vote, there is little certainty regarding the UK's political and economic future. Brexiters themselves are split between wanting a Singapore-on-Thames or a Belarus-on-Trent. Simon Hix (LSE) assesses where the UK-EU relationship is heading. He argues that despite persisting uncertainty, a No Deal is the least-preferred option of both the UK or the EU27, and hence the least likely. He suggests that some sort of agreement will be reached before March 2019.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism has a particular set of assumptions about the relationship between voters and governments. Either voters are content to trust their governments, because issues have low salience, or governments react to voters’ preferences. How far is this ‘supply side’ of the theory still valid in the newly politicized world of EU politics? This article discusses the assumptions about representation in the theory, and looks at the conditions under which the assumptions might still hold and what this means for EU politics today. If the representational assumptions still hold in this highly politicized EU world, then the theory would predict policy gridlock. On the other hand, if there is a growing gap between publics and elites, then the assumptions, and the related propositions about the democratic deficit, no‐longer hold. Either way, the inherent optimism of the theory is undermined.

The JCMS Annual Review Lecture 2018.

What are the chances of another country following the UK out of the EU? Eurosceptics in other states may be emboldened by the deal the UK manages to secure, especially if it includes access to the Single Market. Moves to further EU integration could have a similar effect. Simon Hix (LSE) and Nick Sitter (Central European University) look at the cases of Hungary and Sweden.

Professor Simon Hix, Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the LSE Department of Government, explains potential ways in which Brexit will affect the EU.

Why do legislators switch party? We seek to identify whether “party switching” is mainly determined by power (to join a more influential party) or ideology (to join a party with closer policy goals). We focus on the 557 cases of political group switching in the European Parliament between 1979 and 2014. We find that most of these cases were from smaller, more marginal, and oppositional groups, to larger, more pivotal, and governing groups. Nevertheless, we also find that ideological congruence (between an MEP and his or her prospective group) was an important determinant of political group switching.

We examine the magnitude and significance of selection bias in roll call votes. Prior to 2009, all recorded (roll call) votes in the European Parliament had to be requested explicitly by European Political Groups. Since 2009, a roll call vote has been mandatory on all final legislative votes. We exploit that change in the rules and compare differences between final legislative votes, amendment votes and non-legislative votes before and after 2009, using a difference-in-differences approach with extensive controls. Using data from the Sixth (2004–2009) to Seventh (2009–2014) European Parliaments, we fail to find any large differences in voting cohesion for the main political groups. We find even less significance when we control for changes in parliamentary membership between those two periods. The results suggest that selection biases in the European Parliament associated with strategic choices are negligible.

What are the lessons of the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the European Union (EU) regarding the effects of message framing? This article reports findings from an innovative online survey experiment based on a two-wave panel design. The findings show that, despite the expectation that campaign effects are generally small for high-salience issues-such as Brexit-the potential for campaign effects was high for the pro-EU frames. This suggests that within an asymmetrical information environment-in which the arguments for one side of an issue (anti-EU) are 'priced in', while arguments for the other side (pro-EU) have been understated-the potential for campaign effects in a single direction are substantial. To the extent that this environment is reflected in other referendum campaigns, the potential effect of pro-EU frames may be substantial.

There is a growing body of research on the impact of the electoral system ‘ballot structure’ on the behaviour of politicians. We offer a clear, ordinal and rules-based three-way coding (closed, flexible, open) of the electoral systems used in European Parliament elections, taking into account both the ballot type and the intra-party seat-allocation rules. For the notoriously difficult group of flexible list-systems, we show how these operated in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections, and introduce an additional behavioural distinction between ‘weakly flexible’ and ‘strongly flexible’ subtypes at the party-list-level. We then illustrate how the type of ballot used in an election can influence individual policy representation by looking at the vote-splits between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the European People’s Party in a vote on tackling homophobia.

This article presents a new survey of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) conducted during 2015, which adds to a time series of MEP surveys carried out by the European Parliament Research Group. The data allow for comparison of MEPs’ views with those of the EU public, European Parliament candidates, and members of national and regional parliaments in Europe. The survey includes questions on topical issues, such as intra-EU migration and the UK–EU relationship. The dataset can be used to address a range of research questions concerning MEPs’ preferences and representation. This article presents details of the 2015 MEP survey and uses the data to assess what explains MEPs’ attitudes to the question of whether all EP plenary sessions should be held in Brussels.

Despite the argument that Brexit was about sovereignty and only secondarily about immigration, new data suggest otherwise. Simon Hix, Eric Kaufmann, and Thomas J. Leeper show the importance of reducing immigration levels – especially from outside the EU – to British voters.

Are UK civil servants at the centre of EU bargaining – at the “top table” – or are they on the periphery? Simon Hix is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the LSE and Senior Fellow on the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe programme.

In recent blogs I have looked at policy outcomes, voting records and policy-makers’ connections to analyse whether the UK is ‘marginalised’ in the EU Council. But the Council is only half of the EU’s bicameral legislature. The other half is the European Parliament, which now has the power to amend and block EU laws in almost all policy areas. So, are UK Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) marginalised?

German economic policy advisor Jeromin Zettelmeyer (far left) joined the LSE’s Simon Hix (near left) and former UK business secretary Vince Cable on 7 September to discuss how Germany plans to negotiate Brexit. How much will Angela Merkel – herself under domestic pressure – be prepared to concede to keep the UK in the Single Market (assuming Britain wants to do so)? What does Germany want out of the final agreement? Robert van Geffen reports on the discussion.

Amid the rows about EU migrants and the economic impact of a Brexit, let’s not overlook the incredible achievements of the EU, writes Simon Hix. The single market is not just a matter of ‘free trade’ – it enables the free movement of people, goods and capital between 28 countries, something we now take for granted. The EU is still too technocratic and unaccountable, though it has taken great strides to improve that over the past decade. But now is the opportunity for the UK – with the help of Scandinavian and Visegrad allies – to further liberalise the single market and re-energise the EU project.

The further fragmentation of the UK’s party system in 2015 is likely to lead to the most disproportionate outcome of any election in the post-war era. In this post, Jack Blumenau and Simon Hix, along with the team from electionforecast.co.uk, ask what the House of Commons might look like if the election were held under a more proportionate voting system. If members were elected from small multi-member constituencies, the main beneficiaries would be the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, while the main losers would be Labour, the Conservatives and the SNP.

Hopes are high in the Department for International Trade that Britain can quickly negotiate its own free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries like South Korea. The EU already has a very comprehensive FTA with the East Asian state, so is the UK in a position to negotiate a better one? Simon Hix and Hae-Won Jun examine the factors at play. They conclude that it will not be in South Korea’s interests to negotiate a deal more favourable to the UK – not least because it probably cannot give Britain more access to the market in services without offering the same deal to the EU.

Like it or not, Britain is leaving the single market. But there is still plenty to play for, argues Simon Hix. With a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, we could limit the economic damage. This probably means accepting some EU regulatory standards and devising a scheme to allow EU citizens to work in the UK (and vice versa) if they had certain qualifications or a job offer in a sector with skills shortages. The immediate priority, however, is to resolve the question of how much the UK should pay to the EU, both now and in the future.