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Abstract
This article analyses the differences in institutional design in national parliamentary control over European Union affairs among EU member states. It proceeds from a preference-based perspective, drawing on the principal–agent framework, and a time-based perspective, inspired by the historical institutionalist approach. The article involves a qualitative comparative analysis of strong control and a quantitative, correlation analysis of variation in the degree of control. It argues that time-based factors provide a more persuasive overall explanation for the differences in control than preference-based factors.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their useful comments. The research for this article was supported by the research project MSM0021620841 ‘Development of the Czech Society in the EU: Challenges and Risks’ held by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague.
Notes
1. Conférence des organes specialisés dans les affaires communautaires et européennes, available at http://www.cosac.eu
2. Our operationalisation omits access to information and timing. The access of national parliaments to documents related to EU affairs is probably the dimension where the gap between formal capacities and practice is the biggest. Given this, it is better not to involve access to information in a valid classification of control systems. Moreover, due to recent innovations connected with the Lisbon Treaty, parliaments should now receive the relevant documents directly from the European Commission and cross-national variation on this dimension should thus decrease. As far as timing is concerned, this dimension is usually not regulated by formal rules.
3. The mandating authority implies that the government has to obtain the parliament’s consent for its negotiating position before it votes in the EU Council. The use of the scrutiny reserve implies that the government cannot vote in the EU Council before parliament has finished scrutinising the proposal.
4. We regard any of the indicators (except for mandating authority) as having a positive value when the respective rule is either formally defined or exists in practice (i.e. it must exist on at least one of these two levels). Concerning mandating authority, we evaluate it separately at the formal and behavioural level. The score is positive only when parliament has a general mandating authority, which is not limited to particular issues.
5. Cyprus – Armingeon et al. (2010), the years 1990–2006; Malta – Woldendorp et al. (Citation2000), the years 1945–1998.
6. Due to limited data on Cyprus, the figure for this country is based on the period from the 2001 to the present.
7. The first data set does not involve Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Romania, and the second data set does not include Cyprus and Malta. I therefore exclude Cyprus from the following analysis of committee strength and analyse the three remaining countries only on the basis of one set.
8. Due to the missing value on committee strength in Cyprus, analysis of this variable as a necessary condition and an independent variable, as well as analysis of the sufficient combinations of conditions, encompasses only 26 EU member states.
9. With regard to the individual necessary conditions, our analysis shows that only one of the seven variables is necessary for strong control: frequent coalition governments (consistency – 0.83). Strong committees (0.79) approximate a usually necessary condition (the consistency of the other five variables is below 0.75). For the fuzzy-set values of all the condition variables and the calculation of consistency and coverage, see ‘Fuzzy-Set Analysis’ in Appendix.
10. logical AND, the intersection of condition variables (equal to the lowest fuzzy-set membership of a case in all the involved variables); ∼ absence (weak value) of a variable. The information in brackets mentions (1) cases that have a strong membership in the combination, and (2) the consistency of the combination.
11. The second figure in each bracket refers to the coverage of the combinations.
12. In the Romanian case, the legislative act regulating control only has the status of a proposal. Nevertheless, we consider the rules contained in this proposal the basis of the nascent Romanian system.
