Legislative organisation of the European parliament : the role of committees

The European Parliament (EP) now acts as an equal c o-legislator with the Council of Ministers in adopting many policies that affect 500 million European citizens on a daily basis. However, the parliamentary legislative organisation is under-researched despite its profound consequences for EU policies and policy-making. Add ressing this gap, this thesis studies the internal setup and legislative impact of the EP com mittees. Drawing on congressional literature, I confront dis tributive, informational and partisan theoretical approaches to answer the research quest ions of this project, namely whether and why the EP committees and their legislative output are dominated by preference-outlying legislators with special interests, experts serving the informational needs of the plenary, or loyal members of the working majority party group ( coalition). Statistical analyses of committee assignments, allocation of legislative ta sks, and adoption of committee reports in plenary are conducted using data on the 6th Europea n Parliament (2004-2009). They are complemented with evidence from semi-structured int erviews. The results show that legislators’ special interest s and expertise account for the formally regulated assignment to committees depending on the predominant character of their legislative output (distributive or regulatory). In contrast, party group affiliation and loyalty shape the allocation of important legislative tasks in committees, owing to the informal allocation process. Furthermore, committee reports are more successful on the floor if drafted by rapporteurs from the working majority party grou p – perhaps a natural consequence of the EP open amendment rule. Thus, the parliamentary leg islative output is ultimately controlled by the working majority party group and not committ ees. The congressional rationales fail to account for committees’ legislative influence when an informal early agreement is reached with the Council of Ministers. This occurs increasi ngly often, rendering decision-making in committees largely obsolete. The observed regularities are used to advance the l iterature on legislative organisation by identifying conditions under which each of the main congressional rationales can explain committee setup and influence, namely: 1) the polic y areas a committee covers; 2) the parliamentary rules regulating committee-party and committee-plenary relationships; and 3) the balance of power and mode of negotiation betwee n th legislative chambers. More substantively, the EP committees are not condu cive for pursuing particularistic policies. Instead, they promote left-right party politics. Th is has important implications for EU legislative politics, interest representation, legi timacy, and more generally the EU democratic deficit. Jury: Brian Farrell (UCD) Peter Mair (EUI) Nikoleta Yordanova (candidate), Mark Franklin (EUI) , Adrienne Héritier (EUI/RSCAS) (Supervisor) Simon Hix (LSE) Nikoleta Yordanova holds an MRes degree in Politica Science from the European University Institute (2007), an MSc degree in Europ ean Politics and Government from the London School of Economics and Political S cience (2006) and a BA degree in Integrated Social Sciences from Jacobs Universit y (2005), Germany. In 2007, she won the Duncan Black Award for best graduate paper t the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research awar ded by the Standing Group on Analytical Politics. As part of the data collection process for her doctoral thesis, in 2008 she did an internship at the European Parliame nt. Since December 2008, she has been working as a Research Assistant to Professor A drienne Héritier at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) on the proj ct ‘Regulation in Europe’. She has published articles in peer-reviewe d journals, including European Union Politics and West European Politics. Her rese arch interests cover legislative politics, European politics, European Parliament, a d electoral behaviour. She has been offered a Research Fellowship at the Universit y of Mannheim and will commence her job there in July 2010.