Cookies?
Library Header Image
LSE Research Online LSE Library Services

Voting patterns and alliance formation in the European Parliament

Hix, Simon, Noury, Abdul and Roland, Gerard (2009) Voting patterns and alliance formation in the European Parliament. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364 (1518). p. 821. ISSN 0962-8436

Full text not available from this repository.

Identification Number: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0263

Abstract

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have voluntarily formed transnational political groups and invariably follow the voting instructions of these groups. This is intriguing as there are few obvious incentives for doing so. Unlike national parties, for example, the political groups in the European Parliament are not punished by the electorate if they are divided on key issues, as citizens know very little about what goes on inside the European Parliament. This paper pieces together an explanation of why the European political groups exist and why they have become so powerful by looking at the determinants of group cohesion and by undertaking a spatial analysis of voting in the European Parliament. MEPs who share preferences on a range of issues on the European Union policy agenda have an incentive to establish a division-of-labour contract and to share the costs of collecting information. Once internal party policy specialization and agenda setting has been established, MEPs have incentives to follow the voting instructions of their group owing to the advantages of cohesion in a context of repeated voting.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/
Additional Information: © 2010 The Royal Society
Divisions: Government
Subjects: J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Date Deposited: 10 Dec 2010 12:31
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2024 22:41
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/30634

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item