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The European Parliament is one of most prominent substantive applications of NOMINATE to the study of roll call voting outside the U.S., yielding tremendous insights into the voting patterns of the world’s most important transnational parliament. However, this body of research cannot facilitate comparisons of ideological shifts over time, because it exclusively employs scaling models that are static. In this paper, I produce dynamic ideal point estimates for the first six European Parliaments from 1980 to 2009 that can be compared over time. These estimates show a significant amount of ideological shifting for some Members of the European Parliament. I explain the measurement strategy, and compare cross-sectional estimates to existing measures as a validity check. I also offer three applications highlighting the types projects that scholars of the European Parliament might wish to use these dynamic measures to study further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the progress made in the European Public Choice Society. Paradigm used in public choice research; Emphasis on normal science in public choice; Frequency distribution of work done in public choice.

Customs classification is an important element in a country's trade policy. How a good is classified can affect the rate of duty that applies, the coverage of non-tariff barriers, and the formulation and application of rules of origin. Reclassifications can occur because of the introduction of a new product, but also because of protectionist motives. This paper is the first attempt at explaining these reclassifications. Focusing on the European Union, I examine whether the number of tariff lines in an industry result from the introduction of new products or from protectionist lobbying. The analysis focuses on 90 manufacturing industries over 12 years. Results suggest that protectionist lobbying does play a role in explaining changes in the EU's customs classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that major terrorist events have the potential to exert significant influence on citizens' risk-perceptions, (in) security sentiments, values and behavioral attitudes towards state institutions and their fellow citizens. Within this growing strand of literature, this paper, allowing for a cohort of demographic and socioeconomic traits, examines the extent to which major terrorist events in four European countries affected two key aspects of social capital, namely institutional and social trust. The data used are drawn from European Social Surveys for the years 2004, 2012 and 2014. Results reported indicate that terrorist incidents can trigger social dynamics that affect trust attitudes; however, these effects are short-lived and dissipate rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the current work in public choice by European scholars. Presentation in the Atlantic Economic Association Conference in Vienna; Publication of the works of Werner Guth and Hannelore Weck-Hannemann; Reasons for choosing the work.

This paper analyses the voting power of individual members of the ECB Governing Council and, in particular, that of the Executive Board in the light of recent information published by the ECB. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension of games, we modify the standard analysis in three ways. First, we include heterogeneous preferences of the Governing Council members. Second, we address the agenda-setting power of the ECB president. Third, we take into account the dynamic decision setting. We show that the rotation model is able to stabilize the position of the core countries of the euro area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compensation schemes in which lawyer's fees are contingent on winning the suit are becoming increasingly popular throughout Europe. At the same time, the British rule of legal cost allocation is applicable in many European countries. As a result, it is of policy relevance how their coexistence may be harmonized. This paper uses the litigation-contest framework to analyze the consequences of three different cost-allocation regimes if a plaintiff's attorney is compensated on a contingent fee basis. We compare the equilibrium contest effort, justice, and payoffs for affected parties in the different regimes and find arguments in favor of not reimbursing contingent fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first considers what recurrent education is and what economic case might be made out for the Stale finance of adult education. The traditional arguments on grounds of efficiency and equity are difficult to sustain but a case can be made out that the imperfections in the present Stale finance and provision of higher education in Britain discourages a free choice amongst individuals between work, education, leisure and retirement. The second part of the article reviews European development in the finance of recurrent education. The third section draws some policy conclusions for Britain and the United states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enforcement of European fiscal rules, to a large extent, hinges on fiscal forecasts prepared by the European Commission (EC). The reliability of these forecasts has received little attention in the literature, despite the fact that (i) the forecasts have potentially far-reaching consequences for national governments, especially in the euro area while (ii) the EC depends on information supplied by national officials in preparing its forecasts. We hypothesize that the EC's forecasts are biased upwards when national governments expect European fiscal rules to bind. Reconstructing this expectation using real-time information, we show that for euro area countries the EC's fiscal forecasts are indeed biased upwards when the budget deficit threatens to exceed the critical value of 3 % of GDP. For non-euro area countries, which do not face the risk of fines, this bias cannot be established. Our results are robust to various ways of controlling for crisis-induced budgetary problems and the exclusion of various country groups. We offer suggestive evidence that the presence of independent fiscal councils at the national level helps to attenuate the bias induced by the 3 % threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data from the European Social Survey to analyze the impact of same-sex relationship recognition policies on the political trust of sexual minorities. We exploit temporal and geographical variation in the passage of same-sex relationship recognition policies to test the effect of these policies on the political trust of sexual minorities. Findings suggest that same-sex relationship recognition policies increase the trust that sexual minorities have in the actors and institutions that were integral to the policy change. The findings further suggest the existence of an incentive mechanism for politicians and political parties to follow public policies that reduce structural stigma of minority groups and improve their political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political and economic determinants of the relative duration of fiscal consolidations in Europe. The study focuses on the fifteen Member States that formed the EU between 1960 and 2004, and applies survival analysis techniques to their fiscal data. We find evidence that the probability of ending a period of fiscal consolidation depends on the debt level, the magnitude of the adjustment, the relative contribution of spending cuts, and the degree of cabinet fragmentation. Most importantly we also find that under a stricter definition of fiscal consolidation, political variables, such as coalition size and election year, gain importance with respect to economic variables as predictors of the probability of ending an episode of fiscal consolidation. This relative importance of political variables weakened in the run-up to EMU, probably because countries had to consolidate irrespective of their political constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a social contract approach to the formation of national borders by exploring an economic model that elucidates the formation of national borders. Going by the social contract approach, risk averse agents try to get out of the "state of nature" and get together to form societies to reduce consumption uncertainty, but heterogeneity averse agents will not allow nations to become too large. In this regard, economists have begun to understand the formation of jurisdictions, particularly in light of the continual secessions and unifications of nations in Europe.

Discusses monetary policy and national fiscal policy conducted within a European Monetary Union (EMU). Factors affecting the increase of EMU; Need for convergence in fiscal and structural policies; Surveillance of national structural and fiscal policies.

Focuses on the conditional influence of the European Parliament in the cooperation procedure. Overview of the cooperation procedure; Cooperation procedure statistics; Impact of the European Parliament.

Describes the role played by the journal "Public Choice" in carrying innovative public choice research across the whole of Europe as of September 1991. Overview of the genesis of "Public Choice" in Europe; History of the European Public Choice Society; Future developments in "Public Choice."

We argue that the growth rate, but not the level of aggregate income, affects the support for extreme political parties. In our model, extreme parties offer short-run benefits to part of the population at the expense of a minority. Growth effects on the support for such parties arise when uncertainty exists over whether the same subset of individuals will receive the same benefits in the future. More people are willing to take political risks if economic growth is slow. Based on a panel of 16 European countries, our empirical analysis shows that slower growth rates are associated with a significant increase in right-wing extremism. We find no significant effect of economic growth on the support for extreme left-wing parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do political parties divide coalition payoffs in multiparty governments? Perhaps the most striking answer to this question is Gamson's Law, which suggests a strong fairness norm in the allocation of office payoffs among coalition partners. Building upon recent advancements in portfolio allocation research, we extend this approach in three important ways. First, we study fairness with regard to the allocation of policy (rather than office) payoffs. Second, we introduce measures to assess the fairness of the division of policy payoffs following two norms: envy-freeness and equitability. Third, we explore why some allocations of ministerial portfolios deviate from fairness norms. Based on an original data set of party preferences for individual portfolios in Western and Central Eastern Europe, we find substantial variation in the fairness of policy payoffs across cabinets. Moreover, coalitions are more likely to arrive at envy-free and equitable bargaining outcomes if (1) these fair allocations are based on an allocation of cabinet positions that is proportional to party size and if (2) the bargaining power is distributed evenly among government parties. The results suggest that fairness is not a universal norm for portfolio allocation in multiparty governments, but in fact depends on the cabinet parties' bargaining positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between parties and their supporters is central to democracy and ideological representation is among the most important of these linkages. We conduct an investigation of party-supporter congruence in Europe with emphasis on the measurement of ideology and focusing on the role of party system polarization, both as a direct factor in explaining congruence and in modifying the effects of voter sophistication. Understanding this relationship depends in part on how the ideology of parties and supporters is measured. We use Poole’s Blackbox scaling to derive a measure of latent ideology from voter and expert responses to issue scale questions and compare this to a measure based on left-right perceptions. We then examine how variation in the proximity between parties ideological positions and those of their supporters is affected by the polarization of the party system and how this relationship interacts with political sophistication. With the latent ideology measure, we find that polarization decreases party-supporter congruence but increases the effects of respondent education level on congruence. However, we do not find these relationships using the left-right perceptual measure. Our findings underscore important differences between perceptions of left-right labels and the ideological constraint underlying issue positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious participation is much more widespread in the United States than in Europe, while Europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than Americans. We propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals. We study a religious market where both demand and supply of spiritual services are endogenous. Such markets may have multiple equilibria. Further, equilibria with more sects result in higher welfare and lower membership costs, as secular societies tend to host on average more demanding sects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been pointed out in the literature that a symbiotic relationship exists between terrorist groups and the media. As yet, however, no formal model has been built based on this issue and only very little empirical research has been done in this field. The present contribution builds a simple game theoretic model, focussing on the strategic interactions between terrorists and the media. The model has features of a common-interest-game and results in multiple equilibria. After a discussion of the policy implications of the model, an empirical analysis is performed. Using newspaper coverage, terror incidents and terror fatalities data, it is shown that media attention and terrorism do mutually Granger cause each other, as predicted by the model. Moreover, it is explained why terror attacks tend to be “bloodier” in developing countries than in Europe and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the fiscal restraint and the political economy of the European Monetary Union. International commitment of the Maastricht Treaty; Impact of the Fiscal policies on Europe; Implementation of austerity measures.

Explores the European constitutional perspective on the subsidiarity and ecologically based taxation. Reaffirmation of the subsidiarity principle in the Treaty of Maastricht; Definition on the principle of subsidiarity; Advancement of establishing ecological tax units.

Asserts the need to establish the constitution through a contractarian process in Europe. Study on the perspective of the concept of common knowledge; Emphasis on political philosophy and the game theory dimensions; Relation of common knowledge to communication and induction problems.

Proposes to collect evidence on whether the presuppositions regarding the state and prospect of Public Choice and Public Choice scholars, as of 1985. Relationship between U.S. citizens and Europeans in the Public Choice movement; Importance of Public Choice within economics and political science; Role European scholars have played in the development of Public Choice over time.

Comments on a research which assessed the role of state governments in financing recurrent education in Europe in 1981. Importance of trade unions to the establishment of recurrent education in the region; Impact of taxation on funding for recurrent education; Criticisms against the efforts of state governments to improve the status of recurrent education in the region.