The Voting Behavior of the European Parliament Members on Turkish Accession: A Quantitative Analysis of a Special Status Amendment Vote on Turkey

Abstract

By quantitatively analyzing how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted on an amendment that proposed a special status for Turkey, this article aims to shed some light on the voting patterns of MEPs on the question of Turkish accession to the European Union. The article finds that although member-state and European party group affiliations were related to MEPs' voting behavior on Turkey, MEPs' national party preferences were the strongest predictor of the vote. In addition, the study shows that the GDP per capita and public opinion were also highly correlated with MEPs' voting attitudes toward Turkish accession.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. All errors are, of course, mine.

Notes

1. Schauble and Phillips, “Talking Turkey.”

2. Soler i Lecha, “Debating on Turkey's accession.”

3. See: Hix, “Legislative Behaviour and Party Competition,” 670.

4. See: Lindberg, “Are political parties controlling legislative decision-making in the European Parliament?” 1184–204.

5. Archick and Mix, “The European Parliament,” 237–53.

6. The European Parliament, “Parliament gives green light to Romania and Bulgaria.”

7. Soler i Lecha “Debating on Turkey's accession.”

8. See: Bardi, “Transnational Trends in European Parties,” 99–114.

9. Mühlböck, “National versus European,” 616.

10. Hix, “Legislative Behaviour,” 684; Rasmussen, “Another Side of the Story,” 11–18; Hix and Noury, “After Enlargement,” 159–74.

11. Redmond, “Turkey and the European Union,” 308–9; İçener et al. “Continuity and change in the European Union's approach to enlargement,” 207–23; Chatzistavrou, “Early preferences of national political parties,” 385–409.

12. Hix et al. “Dimensions of Politics in the European Parliament,” 496.

13. See: Day, “Developing a Conceptual Understanding of Europe's Transnational Political Parties,” 59–77; Almeida, “Europeanized Eurosceptics?” 237–53.

14. See: Ladrech, “Europeanisation and political parties,” 389–403; Murray, “Factors for Integration?” 102–15; Bardi, “European political parties,” 17–30.

15. See for example: Hix et al., “Dimensions of Politics in the European Parliament,” 494–511; Lindberg, Lindberg, “Are political parties controlling legislative decision-making in the European Parliament?” 1184–204; Hix and Noury, “After Enlargement,” 159–74.

16. Viola, European Foreign Policy and the European Parliament in the 1990s.

17. Gische, Modeling Voting Behavior in the European Parliament on Foreign Policy Issues.

18. Yılmaz, “Turkish Identity on the Road to the EU,” 293–305; Yılmaz et al., “European Perceptions of Turkey as a Future Member State”; Gerhards and Hans, “Why not Turkey?” 741–66.

19. See Table 1 in this article. See also: Siitonen, “The European Parliament's Debates on Turkey Reflecting Cultural Protectionism in Europe”; Yuvacı, “A Comparison of the 2006 and 2010 Members of the European Parliament Survey Results,” 119–32; Aydın, “Views of the European Parliament on Turkish Accession,” 29–35.

20. Lindberg “Are political parties controlling legislative decision-making in the European Parliament?” 1200.

21. Rasmussen, “Party soldiers in a non-partisan community?” 1166.

22. Bressanelli, “National parties and group membership in the European Parliament,” 737–54; Duncan and Hecke, “Immigration and the transnational European centre-right,” 432–52.

23. Mühlböck, “National versus European.”

24. Rasmussen, “Another Side of the Story,” 15; Hix, “Legislative Behaviour”; Hix, “Parliamentary Behavior with Two Principals,” 688–98; Hix et al., “Voting Patterns and Alliance Formation in the European Parliament,” 821–31; Mühlböck “National versus European”; Hix, “Towards a partisan theory of EU politics,” 1260–1.

25. For an exception, see: Rasmussen, “Another Side of the Story.”

26. See: Aydın, “Views of the European Parliament on Turkish Accession,” 29–35; Yuvacı, “A Comparison of the 2006 and 2010 Members of the European Parliament Survey Results,” 119–32; Soler i Lecha, “Debating on Turkey's accession.”; Braghiroli, “Je t'aime… moi non plus!” 1–24; Krauss, “The European Parliament in EU External Relations,” 215–37.

27. Soler i Lecha, “Debating on Turkey's accession.”

28. The Rice Index is used to calculate voting cohesions. The formula to calculate the Rice Index cohesion score is: R_i=|Y_i−N_i|/|Y_i+N_i|, where each EPG/state is indexed by i, and Y_i is the number of yes votes cast by a group i and N_i is the number of no votes by the same group. Cohesion scores vary between 0 and 1. The score is 1 when all members of the group vote together (perfect cohesion), and 0 when yes and no votes are evenly divided. See: Rice, Quantitative Methods in Politics.

29. Soler i Lecha, “Debating on Turkey's accession.”

30. For the term “Big Five,” see: Krauss, “The European Parliament in EU External Relations,” 234.

31. Redmond, “Turkey and the European Union,” 308–9; İçener et al., “Continuity and change in the European Union's approach to enlargement,” 207–23; Chatzistavrou, “Early preferences of national political parties,” 308–409.

32. Austria, whose officials tend to support a privileged partnership for Turkey, could also be assigned a dummy, but Austria is included in the reference category in this study largely because of the concern to keep the number of variables at minimum and also the fact that there were only 17 MEPs representing Austria. Nevertheless, when a new regression model that includes an Austria dummy was run, it showed that the inclusion/exclusion of Austria to/from the state dummies list did not lead to any significant changes in the model presented in this study. Thus, the inclusion of Austria in the reference category does not influence the constructed model reported in the paper. However, it should be reported here that this additional regression analysis showed that, as expected, the Austrian MEPs voted “yes” more frequently than did the reference category, even after controlling for the EPGs and national party.

33. Yuvacı, “A Comparison of the 2006 and 2010 Members of the European Parliament Survey Results,” 119–32.

34. Redmond, “Turkey and the European Union,” 309.

35. These countries are Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, and Portugal.

36. Marks and Steenbergen, “Marks/Steenbergen party dataset.”

37. Steenbergen and Marks, “Evaluating Expert Judgments,” 347–366. Moreover, to the best knowledge of the author of this paper, theirs' is the only available data on political parties' position on Turkish accession for the 6th EP term.

38. The public opinion data for Turkey in 2006 were obtained from: Gerhards and Hans, “Why not Turkey.” Gerhards and Hans drew the relevant data from the Erobarometer 66.1 survey.

39. The gross domestic product per capita in purchasing power parity in Euros in 2003 is drawn from http://www.elections2004.eu.int (accessed October 18, 2007).

40. For a similar model construction, see: de Vreese et al., “Hard and Soft,” 511–30.

41. Hix, “Parliamentary Behavior with Two Principals,” 691.

42. The VIF is employed to detect multicollinearity. A high-level multicollinearity exists if the VIF value exceeds 10. No multicollinearity problem is detected since none of the VIF values in the model exceeds 10. See: Gujarati, Basic Econometrics, 339.

Additional information

Notes on Contributor

Abdullah Yuvacı received his PhD from the Department of Political Science at Miami University, Ohio, USA. He currently works as assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Melikşah University, Kayseri, Turkey.