Parliament staff: unpacking the behaviour of officials in the European Parliament

Abstract

Officials within parliaments have received marginal scholarly attention. This also holds for the European Parliament (EP) which contains a considerable administration. This study, based on an online survey (N = 118), shows that political group staff are primarily committed to the concerns of their respective political groups, but also to the arguments of those external actors which have similar party affiliation. Since most group officials are, in addition, affiliated to a particular committee, they also emphasize sectoral interests, including the concerns of affected interest groups. EP secretariat officials, on the other hand, give priority to sectoral and expert concerns. Both groups of staff rank European concerns above national ones, and pay more attention to the arguments of the European Commission than to the arguments of any other institution. This study thus suggests that officials in the EP contribute to the spanning of ideological and sectoral cleavages across European Union institutions. These observations may be seen as deviating from a basically intergovernmental portrayal of the Union.

Keywords:

• Administration
• behaviour
• European Parliament secretariat
• organizational approach
• political group secretariat

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors greatly acknowledge the financial support from EUROTRANS (‘Transformation and Sustainability of European Political Order’, The Norwegian Research Council). We would like to thank Christopher Lord and Michael Shackleton for comments on draft questionnaires, Knut A. Christophersen for advice on method, the respondents for using of their scarce time on this project, and three anonymous referees for most helpful comments. Previous versions of this article have been presented at the workshop ‘Public Administration in the Multilevel System’, Humboldt University, 23–24 June 2011, and at ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, 6 September 2011. Thanks to participants on these occasions for their valuable comments, and particularly so to Christian Rauh, Cathrine Holst, Johan P. Olsen and Guri Rosén who provided additional feedback.