Jacques J.A. Thomassen

Political representation and legitimacy in the European Union

How severe a problem is what many call the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU? Despite a voluminous theoretical literature dealing with this question, there is hardly any systematic empirical investigation of the effectiveness of the system of political representation in the EU, and of the legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens that spring from it. This book elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit. Four dimensions of legitimacy beliefs are identified and analysed: the European political community; the scope of EU government; the institutions and processes of EU government; and EU policies. Based upon large-scale representative surveys (the ‘European Representation Study’) among the mass publics, and different strata of the political elite of the EU and its member-states, the book examines the conditions of political representation in the EU. The results demonstrate, by and large, that legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens are the more positive the less specific the object of identification and evaluations is, and that the process of political representation works pretty well as long as issues other than EU issues are concerned. These findings are finally discussed in view of familiar strategies for institutional reform of the EU. The book is arranged in two main parts: I. Legitimacy (4 Chs) and II. Representation ( 6Chs); it also has an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix giving details of the European Representation Study. The book is one of two companion volumes that report on the results of this study. The other is The European Parliament, the National Parliaments, and European Integration (edited by Richard S. Katz and Bernhard Wessels), and is also published by OUP.

Continuities in political action : a longitudinal study of political orientations in three western democracies

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The European Voter

1. The European Voter 2. Political Parties and Party Systems 3. Electoral Turnout 4. Social Structure and Party Choice 5. Party Identification and Party Choice 6. Value Orientations and Party Choice 7. Left-Right Orientation and Party Choice 8. Issue Voting 9. Retrospective Voting 10. Leadership and Voting Decision 11. Modernization or Polities? Appendix1: Parties, Elections, and Parliaments Appendix 2:The European Voter Database

Dynamic representation : the case of European integration

This article asks two questions: first, why are party voters less favourable towards specific EU policies than party elites?; second, how does political representation of EU preferences actually work, is it an elite- or a mass-driven process? The data-sets of the European Election Studies 1979 and 1994 are analysed which involve both an elite and a mass survey component. In contrast to earlier research, it appears that political representation of EU preferences works rather well regarding the grand directions of policy making, and that party elites behave responsively in view of changing EU preferences among their voters.

Modes of Political Representation: Toward a New Typology

The mandate-independence controversy still features prominently in studies of political representation even though the problems with its theoretical foundation and empirical operationalization have long been recognized. This article proposes an alternative typology of modes of representation. By combining type of control (ex ante or ex post) with direction of the interactions (bottom-up or top-down), our study captures the most important aspects of the relationship between voters and representatives. We demonstrate how the typology can be used in a survey instrument by comparing the attitudes toward representation of Dutch members of Parliament with the attitudes held by voters, and by relating the views of the members to their behavior.

Political Representation and Government in the European Union

This paper addresses two particular aspects of the much debated democratic deficit in European Union (EU) governance – the absence of a system of party government at the European level, whereby parties in the Parliament lack the capacity to effectively control the governing bodies of the EU, and the apparent failings in the capacity of parties at the European level to represent the will of the citizens of Europe. We question the self-evidence of the recommendation that the Union adapt to conventional party government models at the national level and argue that since many of the conditions facilitating the effective fusion of the functions of representation and of control of the government no longer pertain, it may actually prove unwise to seek to replicate this process at the European level. We go on to take issue with the traditional view that the European process of political representation fails mainly because political parties do not compete on so-called European issues. Despite a poor process of political representation at the European level, European elections and political parties appear to serve quite effectively as instruments of political representation. We conclude by suggesting that the effectiveness of political representation at the European level owes much to the absence of party government, such that, paradoxically, one of the most commonly cited aspects of the democratic deficit thereby appears to alleviate the other.

Pathways to party unity: Sanctions, loyalty, homogeneity and division of labour in the Dutch parliament

The study of party unity and its determinants is conceptually confusing, with terms such as ‘party discipline’ and ‘party cohesion’ used to denote both dependent and independent variables. Moreover, while the literature recognizes both anticipated sanctions and homogeneity of preferences as pathways to party unity, it ignores possibilities such as party loyalty and the division of labour within parliamentary parties. The article examines these different pathways to party unity on the basis of five waves of interviews with nearly all members of the Lower House of the Dutch parliament. The article finds least evidence for sanctions as a major determinant of party unity, with the possible exception of parties in the governing coalition. Homogeneity, loyalty and division of labour all seem to play an important role. Party unity might seem over determined, but the more likely explanation offered is that it is a case of ‘different horses for different courses’.

Beyond Collective Representation: Individual Members of Parliament and Interest Representation in the Netherlands

In political representation research it is now generally recognised that in parliamentary systems political parties rather than individual members of parliament are the key actors in the process of political representation. However, this focus on political parties might have led to an underestimation of the role of individual members of parliament in this process, even in purely parliamentary systems. It tends to neglect the efforts of representatives to secure particular benefits for individuals or groups in their constituencies. In this paper we will address the question to what extent these forms of representation are part of the repertoire of activities of members of the Dutch parliament as compared to other European parliaments. This article was written when both authors were fellows at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS). The parliamentary study on which it is based was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

THE BLIND CORNER OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Much of the literature on political representation provides empirical evidence that elections successfully link the policy preferences of citizens to the policy preferences of their representatives in parliament and to public policy. However, most of these studies are based on the congruence on the left–right dimension rather than on specific issues. Using empirical data from the Netherlands we show that on specific issues elections seem to fail as an instrument to connect the policy preferences of a large part of the electorate to the policy positions of their representatives because these issues are poorly related to the left–right dimension.

Party competition in the European Parliament : Evidence from Roll Call and Survey Analysis

Ever since Schumpeter (1942) defined democracy in terms of a competition of political leaders for the votes of the people, public contestation or political competition has been generally recognized as one of the most essential characteristics of modern democracy (Dahl 1971). As modern democracy is hardly conceivable without political parties, political competition implies a major function for mass political parties. As Bingham Powell (1982: 3) puts it: “The competitive electoral context, with several political parties organizing the alternatives that face the voters, is the identifying property of the contemporary democratic process.” It is in this respect that the European Union is often said to be failing. There is no competitive electoral context at the European level. European elections are basically fought by national political parties on national rather than European issues. Because national party systems are based on national cleavages, they fail to organize the alternatives that are relevant to the voters in European elections, i.e., alternatives with respect to the development of the European Union as such. Even worse, any debate on these issues is suppressed by the leadership of the major political parties because they are internally divided on these issues and would risk being split apart when these issues were politicized. In order to remedy this aspect of the democratic deficit, it has been argued that in order to face the European electorate with a relevant choice, the party system should be reshuffled in such a way that parties organize themselves along the continuum pro-vs. Anti-European Integration.