Jonathan B. Slapin

Position Taking in European Parliament Speeches

This article examines how national parties and their members position themselves in European Parliament (EP) debates, estimating the principal latent dimension of spoken conflict using word counts from legislative speeches. We then examine whether the estimated ideal points reflect partisan conflict on a left–right, European integration or national politics dimension. Using independent measures of national party positions on these three dimensions, we find that the corpus of EP speeches reflects partisan divisions over EU integration and national divisions rather than left–right politics. These results are robust to both the choice of language used to scale the speeches and to a range of statistical models that account for measurement error of the independent variables and the hierarchical structure of the data.

How to Avoid Pitfalls in Statistical Analysis of Political Texts: The Case of Germany

The statistical analysis of political texts has received a prominent place in the study of party politics, coalition formation and legislative decision making in Germany. Yet we still lack a thorough understanding of the conditions under which such analysis produces valid estimates of policy positions. This article examines the properties of the word scaling method ‘Wordfish’ and uses the technique to estimate party positions in Germany. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the effects of the choice of texts on party position estimates, including the number of documents included in the analysis and their length. Moreover, we present guidelines on how to process linguistic information for political scientists interested in using the technique, focusing specifically on German texts. Finally, we present an analysis of the German party system from 1969–2005 using the Wordfish algorithm. We demonstrate the robustness of the algorithm to extract left-right positions for various subsets of words, but show that agenda effects dominate when estimating a long-time series if the entire manifesto corpus is analysed.

Bargaining Power at Europe's Intergovernmental Conferences: Testing Institutional and Intergovernmental Theories

This article examines how European Union member states make choices about political institutions at intergovernmental conferences, the grand negotiations where many key institutional changes are made. Using data on member-state preferences from the intergovernmental conference leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam, I test competing bargaining theories, institutionalism, and intergovernmentalism, and present strong evidence that institutionalism better captures negotiations compared to intergovernmentalism. I present a formal model to discern between these competing theories of bargaining power, derive a statistical model directly from this formal model, and then use data from the European Unions Treaty of Amsterdam to test these theories and corresponding power sources. Veto power associated with institutional models better explains intergovernmental conference outcomes compared to power from size and economic might, often associated with intergovernmental analyses.I would like to thank Kathy Bawn, Julia Gray, Tim Groseclose, James Honaker, Joe Jupille, Thomas KA¶nig, Jeff Lewis, Sven-Oliver Proksch, George Tsebelis, and the participants in UCLAs graduate student formal theory and statistical methods workshops for their insightful comments on various drafts of this article. I am also grateful for the comments from several anonymous reviewers and the editors at International Organization. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2006. Data and replication material are available at a€ˆhttp://faculty.unlv.edu/jslapina€‰.

Look who’s talking: Parliamentary debate in the European Union:

Legislative speeches are an important part of parliamentary activity in the European Parliament (EP). Using a new dataset on EP speeches, this paper offers an explanation for participation in legislative debates. We argue that floor speeches partially serve as a communication tool between members of parliament, their national parties, and their European political groups. EP group dissidents often go on record by taking the floor when there is a conflict between their national party and their European political group. In this instance, members give speeches for two reasons: to explain their national party’s position to other members of their EP political group, and to create a positive record for themselves in the eyes of the national party to serve their own reelection purposes.

Who Is Powerful

Previous studies have proposed competing theories to explain European intergovernmental conference (IGC) outcomes, but they fail to test these theories against one another. I examine the literature on IGC bargaining and derive several testable hypotheses. Using data on member state preferences at the IGC leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam, I first examine which member states favor integration and which are most skeptical of integration. I also determine which member states face the highest domestic ratification constraints. I then test the competing hypotheses found in the literature by calculating the bargaining strength of member states. I find that large member states have no more bargaining strength than the average member state; instead, domestic ratification constraints seem to confer power. States preferring less integration appear to outperform states desiring more integration. Supranational actors, as expected, have little power.

BRINGING PARLIAMENTS BACK IN The Sources of Power in the European Treaty Negotiations

Most literature on European constitution-building models member-states as unitary actors which monopolize bargaining power. However, recent advances in the literature on intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) demonstrate that both supranational actors and parliamentary domestic actors may influence treaty outcomes (Hix, 2002; Hug and Konig, 2002). We examine different potential sources of power available to parliamentary actors at IGCs through the use of spatial bargaining models. Using both open rule and closed rule models, we explore the power of the European Parliament (EP) and member-state parliaments at the Amsterdam IGC leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam. We empirically determine which actors have agenda-setting rights and if and when domestic constraints matter. Furthermore, we examine whether this influence differs across the different types of issues discussed at the IGC. Our findings demonstrate that supranational actors such as the EP may have some agenda-setting power over some types of issues. Because the EP often has very similar preferences to the European Council President, however, it is difficult to determine which actor actually has first-over advantage. In general, the EP is weak: hawkish domestic parliaments, on the other hand, can be a source of power for member-state negotiating teams. We find evidence that domestic constraints may even be a more important source of power than first-mover rights. Member-states that have both a hawkish parliament and are moderately divided tend to perform the best. Highly divided governments, however, perform poorly.

Balancing Competing Demands: Position-Taking and Election Proximity in the European Parliament

Parties value unity, yet members of parliament have incentives to deviate from the party line. This article examines how members of the European Parliament (EP) respond to competing demands from national parties and European party groups. We examine ideological shifts within a single parliamentary term to assess how election proximity affects party group cohesion. Our formal model of legislative behavior suggests that when EP elections are proximate, national party delegations shift toward national party positions, thus weakening EP party group cohesion. Our Bayesian item-response analysis of roll calls in the 5th EP supports our theoretical predictions.

Institutions and Coalition Formation: The German Election of 2005

The German election of 2005 creates three puzzles for the literature on coalition formation. First, the election led to a rare event in German politics and in parliamentary systems more generally, a ‘grand coalition’ between the two largest parties. Second, a minority government, something which has never occurred in postwar Germany (except briefly as the result of the breakdown of a government coalition), was in fact one of the two most likely governments to form. Third, the parties of the left retained a comfortable majority in the Bundestag; however they did not form a coalition. The election of 2005 appears unique in German politics, but we argue that its outcome is easily understood using existing institutional theories of coalition formation. We examine party positions in two dimensions (economic and social) using computer-based word scoring of party manifestos. We demonstrate that the conditions for a SPD minority government were present in Germany due to its central location in the policy space. While the configuration of policy positions would thus have allowed the SPD to form a minority government, the role of the Federal President as a veto player could have prevented it from forming, and the presence of an opposition-controlled upper house would have decreased its effectiveness. The mere possibility of forming a minority government gave the SPD a bargaining advantage in the coalition negotiations with the CDU/CSU. We show that in the final portfolio allocation, the SPD received ministries which control approximately two-thirds of the federal budget.

Exit, Voice, and Cooperation: Bargaining Power in International Organizations and Federal Systems

Literature on international organizations points to several potential sources of bargaining power: voice, exit, and exclusion. In some circumstances, a member state may be able to effectively voice objections to a change to an organizations institutions. In others, it may threaten to leave the organization if its demands are not met. Finally, member states may be able to force a laggard member state to accept unwanted change by threatening to exclude the laggard from the organization. Under what circumstances do these strategies provide bargaining leverage? Are these options available simultaneously or if one is available does that mean that the others are not? What implications does this have for international cooperation, and more broadly, the possible creation of a federal state? This article seeks to answer these questions using a formal model to examine the interaction between voice, specifically veto rights, exit, and exclusion in international organizations and federal states. The model has implications for European integration and can also help explain the conditions under which independent states give up sovereignty to form a stable federal union. Implications of the model are tested through a case study of EU integration in the 1970s and 1980s.

From Unanimity to Consensus: An Analysis of the Negotiations at the EU's Constitutional Convention

Disputes filed at the World Trade Organization (wto) are attracting a growing number of third parties. Most observers argue that their participation influences the institutions rulings. The authors argue that third parties undermine pretrial negotiations; their influence on rulings is conditioned by this selection effect. They test their hypotheses, along with the conventional wisdom, using a data set of wto disputes initiated through 2002. Consistent with the authors argument, they find that third-party participation lowers the prospects for early settlement. Controlling for this selection effect, the evidence also suggests that third-party support increases the chances of a legal victory at the wto.