Whom to represent? National parliamentary representation during the eurozone crisis

ABSTRACT

The eurozone crisis is commonly associated with a politicization of public debate along national lines. With money being redistributed between member states, national parliamentarians (MPs) seem likely to pit national interests against each other. There is, however, an overlooked second force. Interdependence between eurozone states may lead national MPs and their voters to take into account other European Union citizens. Looking at MPs’ parliamentary speeches, this article fills a gap by investigating if and under which conditions individual MPs claim to represent Europeanized constituencies during the crisis. The analysis based on original data from a representative claims analysis of plenary debates on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in Austria, Germany and Ireland reveals such Europeanized representation. Interestingly, being pro-European does not lead to Europeanized representation. Instead, we witness a ‘Eurosceptic Europeanization’ in that (left-wing) Eurosceptic MPs voice opposition to the crisis measures, but in the name of European citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Eurosceptic Europeanization
• eurozone crisis
• national parliaments
• representative claims analysis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all colleagues who kindly offered feedback on earlier versions of this article, and the two anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lucy Kinski was a Ph.D. researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria until September 2016. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Düsseldorf.

Notes

1 Schimmelfennig et al. (2015) propose a similar argument on politicization and interdependence leading to differentiated EU integration.

2 Overview of party positions on left–right and EU integration, number of MPs and claims per party and country in the sample see Online Appendix 2.

3 Non-elected government members (one in Germany) excluded.

4 Results remain robust, when they are dropped and when they are assigned the more ‘conservative’ Labour party scores (see Online Appendix 6a).

5 There is no such increase in national claims for Austria and Germany from 2010 to 2011.

6 Regression table with odds ratios, for log odds, see Online Appendix 6b.

7 The relationships remain robust, when the dependent variable includes only fully European claims (see Online Appendix 6d). For regression diagnostics including multicollinearity tests see Online Appendix 7.