In this paper I examine what determines cosponsorship in the EP. In order to answer this question, I briefly discuss the relevant literature and theoretical considerations before I present my hypothesis. Then I first present the results of a social network analysis of members of the European Parliament (MEPs), specifically members of the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) based on amendment cosponsorship. To conclude, I discuss those findings and express thoughts about future improvements of the dataset.
A large part of the work of representatives in legislative bodies consists of crafting bills and amendments to them. Often, representatives cooperate in this task. There are many reasons for this: Getting more support from colleagues or acceptance from constituents, the sharing of workload or to signal policy positions. Tam Cho and Fowler even found that the interconnectedness of representatives can influence the productivity of their institution, leading to influential bills.
Fowler used cosponsorship to determine connectedness or social distance in order to explain roll call votes while controlling for ideology and party. Cosponsorship has been found to have position taking and policy significance. But research about these effects is largely focused on the US with its presidential two-party system.
The European Parliament (EP) plays an increasingly important role not only for research but also in the polity of the European Union (EU). As a body consisting of publicly elected representatives from national parties organizing in political rather than in national groups, it constitutes a peculiar case to study.
Table of Contents
1. Cosponsorship in the European Parliament
2. Determinants of Cosponsorship
3. A Network of Amendments
4. Only Limited Evidence
5. References
Research Objectives and Themes
This paper investigates the determinants of cosponsorship behavior within the European Parliament, specifically focusing on the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI). By applying social network analysis, the research aims to test whether theories of homophily and social identity—commonly observed in the U.S. political context—are applicable to the unique, supranational structure of the European Parliament.
- Social network analysis of legislative cooperation
- Determinants of amendment cosponsorship in the JURI committee
- Application of homophily and social identity theory in the EU context
- Comparison of political group integration and centrality (S&D and EPP)
- Methodological challenges in mapping supranational legislative networks
Excerpt from the Book
3. A Network of Amendments
As cosponsoring is a social act based on and building social networks among legislators (Tam Cho & Fowler, 2010), I apply social network analysis to examine the question at hand. The sample consists of 839 amendments of JURI members from a time frame between July 2017 and January 2019. I hand-coded an edgelist with weights of the members of JURI indicating the number of amendments they sponsored together. The network includes the JURI members who sponsored one or several amendments in the sampled cases. This reduced the sample size from the 72 members of JURI to 48 and defined the network boundary. Sometimes the name of a cosponsor in the amendment did not appear in the EP’s list of the JURI members. I tried different methods to alleviate that, e.g. change the time frame of the sample, but I could not find out why or how that happened. Maybe they were MEPS from outside of the committee, but single MEPs cosponsoring JURI amendments was no theoretical strong argument for me to expand the population from the members of JURI to all 751 MEPs. It would have created so many isolates in such a large network that it would have been difficult to distinguish the isolated JURI members. I only selected proposals where at least one amendment was cosponsored. This, the rather small sample size and the time frame may have biased the sample. The initial idea was to automatically scrape the information from ParlTrack, but neither this nor collecting the same information from ParlTrack per hand worked as I would have needed to visit every MEPs profile (which takes a considerable amount of time to load on ParlTrack) and search for JURI amendments before I could code them. Sampling the whole EP per hand was not an option because of its size.
Summary of Chapters
1. Cosponsorship in the European Parliament: Provides an introduction to the role of cosponsorship in legislative bodies and frames the European Parliament as a unique, under-researched case study.
2. Determinants of Cosponsorship: Reviews existing literature on legislative cooperation, focusing on homophily and social identity theory, and develops hypotheses for the EP context.
3. A Network of Amendments: Details the methodology of the social network analysis, including data collection, sample selection of JURI committee members, and visualization of the resulting network.
4. Only Limited Evidence: Concludes the paper by summarizing the findings regarding political group centrality and discussing limitations and potential avenues for future research.
5. References: Lists the academic sources and legislative documents used throughout the research.
Keywords
European Parliament, Social Network Analysis, Cosponsorship, JURI Committee, Legislative Behavior, Homophily, Social Identity Theory, Political Groups, S&D, EPP, Amendments, Centrality, Network Density, Policy Signaling, Supranational Polity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research paper?
The paper investigates the factors that determine why Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) choose to cosponsor amendments, focusing on the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) as a specific case study.
What are the primary thematic areas explored?
The themes include the application of social network analysis to legislative processes, the impact of political group affiliation on cooperation, and the validity of U.S.-centric political theories within the European Union's supranational system.
What is the main research question or goal?
The goal is to determine what drives cosponsorship in the EP and whether theories of homophily and social identity, which explain cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress, hold true for the European Parliament.
Which scientific methods were utilized?
The author utilized social network analysis (SNA) based on a manually coded edgelist of 839 amendments, examining metrics like degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, and network density.
What topics are covered in the main body of the paper?
The main body covers a literature review on legislative cooperation, the theoretical grounding for the study, the construction of the JURI amendment network, and an evaluation of the centrality of specific political groups.
What are the key terms characterizing this work?
Key terms include European Parliament, social network analysis, cosponsorship, JURI, homophily, social identity, and legislative behavior.
Why did the author limit the study to the JURI committee?
Expanding the study to the entire European Parliament (751 members) would have resulted in too many isolated nodes, making it difficult to analyze the network effectively given the available time and resources.
What was the main finding regarding the political groups?
The hypothesis that members of the same political group are more central in cosponsorship networks was supported, particularly for members of the S&D group.
What were the main limitations identified in the study?
The author identifies a small sample size, a narrow time frame, difficulties in data scraping, and challenges in accurately visualizing tie weights as significant limitations.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Christin Rudolph (Autor:in), 2019, Cosponsorship in the European Parliament Via Social Networks, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/501249
