“Locating the European Parliament”

Judge, David and Earnshaw, David. (1999) “Locating the European Parliament”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, PA. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (2471Kb) | Preview

Abstract

This paper seeks to ‘locate’ the EP within the comparative study of legislatures and within the wider analyses of the EU as a political system. The first perspective-on legislatures-prompts an examination of what the European Parliament (EP) ‘does,’ or is expected to do; and the second perspective-on the EU itself-prompts an analysis of how and why it does what it does or is expected to do within the context of the European Union. In trying to locate the European Parliament in terms of these perspectives there is the immediate problem, which emerges in any study of the institutions of the European Union, and this is that there is no exact institutional counterpart in national political systems. This is the sui generis issue of whether the European Union is unique in its institutional form and in its trajectory of development. The starting point of this paper, therefore, is to identify the characteristic features of legislatures and to decide whether the EP conforms to those characteristics, or whether it is indeed truly sui generis. Surprisingly, few attempts have been made to locate the EP in the wider analytical frame provided by comparative studies of legislatures (one early, and partial, attempt was provided by Herman and Lodge 1978; and one very recent exception is provided by Scully 1999). Equally surprisingly, few attempts have been made to locate the EP within the context of the wider discussions of the institutional complex of the EU (a notable exception is provided by Wessels and Diedrichs 1999). This paper seeks to redress this relative neglect first by locating the EP comparatively within the categorisation of parliaments across time, and then second by locating the EP of the late-1990s within models of the institutional complex of the EU.

Actions (login required)