Protect This House? Transnational Party Group Influence on Candidate Selection to the European Parliament

Daniel, William T. (2015) Protect This House? Transnational Party Group Influence on Candidate Selection to the European Parliament. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Introduction: The benefits of legislator seniority are well established in the scholarly literature on legislative politics. Developed initially within the American congressional context (eg., Davis 1990; Holcombe 1989; Weingast and Marshall 1988), the worth of long- serving legislators—viz., their ability to function productively and provide tangible policy and office benefits to their political parties and constituents—has also been explored by scholars of comparative politics (Jones et al. 2002; McKelvey and Riezman 1992; Shomer 2009). Much of this literature has also been concerned with the increasing ‘personalization’ that comes with legislator seniority: legislators feel more independent, having developed an individual brand during their tenure, and begin to behave in ways that appear less beholden to their respective political parties and more directly linked to voters. While such scenarios typically model legislators as the agents of either political party or constituent principals, what happens when the agents are unable to identify who the most important principals are?

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