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How do individual legislators in the European Parliament (EP) make decisions on the wide variety of policy proposals they routinely confront? Despite a flourishing literature on the European Union's only directly elected institution, we know surprisingly little about the micro-foundations of EP politics. Who Decides, and How? seeks to address this shortcoming by examining how individual legislators make policy choices, how these choices are aggregated, and what role parties and committees play in this process. It argues that members of the EP lack adequate resources to make equally informed decisions across policy areas. Therefore, when faced with policy choices in policy areas outside their realms of expertise, members make decisions on the basis of perceived preference coherence: they adopt the positions of their expert colleagues in the responsible EP committee whose preferences over policy outcomes they believe to most closely match their own. These preferences are difficult to determine, however, which is why legislators rely on a shared party label as a stand-in for common preferences. This results in cohesive parties, despite the inability of EP parties to discipline their members. Who Decides, and How? relies on the respective strengths of quantitative and qualitative data to shed new light on the inner workings of the EP. It illustrates how legislators make broadly representative decisions under conditions of resource scarcity, informational uncertainty, and problematic policy preferences, and how structurally weak EP parties can act in an internally cohesive and externally competitive manner when carrying out their policy commitments to Europe's citizens. |
Nils Ringe (with Jennifer N. Victor). 2009. "The Social Utility of Informal Institutions: Caucuses as Networks in the 110th U.S. House of Representatives." American Politics Research 37, 5 (2009): 742-66.
This article challenges the existing state-of-knowledge about legislative caucuses by arguing that the caucus system reflects and reinforces formal organizing institutions, such as parties and committees, rather than counterbalancing them. We argue that legislators engage in the caucus system to maximize the social utility of their relationships. Using a social network framework, we develop and test hypotheses that seek to ascertain the types of legislators that assume elevated positions in the caucus network. We collect data on the complete population of caucuses and their members from the first session of the 110th U.S. House of Representatives and conduct social network analy- ses to find evidence that the caucus system supports the hierarchical structure of existing formal institutions. |
Nils Ringe (with Jason R. Koepke): "The Second-Order Election Model in an Enlarged Europe." European Union Politics, Volume 7, Issue 3, (2006): 321-346.
On 1 May 2004, the European Union (EU) welcomed its new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. This paper considers to what extent one of the most widely tested and supported theories of voting behavior in Western Europe, the second-order election model, applies in the enlarged EU. We test the model using election data from the new member states and find that voters do not cast protest votes against their incumbent national governments in second-order elections, that is, elections where voters believe little to be at stake. This finding contradicts one of the model’s basic propositions and runs counter to the empirical reality in the old member states, with potentially significant implications for inter- and intra-institutional politics in the EU. |
Nils Ringe: "Policy Preference Formation in Legislative Politics: Structures, Actors, and Focal Points." American Journal of Political Science Vol. 49, No. 4, October 2005, 731-745.
This article introduces a model of policy preference formation in legislative politics. Emphasizing a dynamic relationship between structure, agent, and decision-making process, it ties the question of policy choice to the dimensionality of the normative and cognitive political space and the strategic actions of parliamentary agenda setters. The model proposes that structural factors, such as ideology, shape policy preferences to the extent that legislative actors successfully link them to specific policy proposals through the strategic provision of focal points. These ideas or images shift attention toward particular aspects of a legislative proposal, thus shaping the dominant interpretation of its content and consequences. This interpretation affects both individual-level policy preferences and policy outcomes. The propositions of the focal-point model are tested empirically in a detailed examination of European Union legislation on cross-border takeover bids, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. |
Nils Ringe: "Government-Opposition Dynamics in the European Union: The Santer Commission Resignation Crisis." European Journal of Political Research, Volume 44, Issue 5, August 2005, 671-696.
This article seeks to shed light on the sources of government-opposition dynamics in the European Union (EU). It considers the ideological left-right divide and the sovereignty-integration dimension as potential sources of a government-opposition cleav- age in the EU, as well as a ‘representation dimension’. The empirical evaluation of these propositions is based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the political crisis leading to the collective resignation of the Santer Commission. The article finds that government- opposition dynamics in the EU are related to the sovereignty-integration dimension of EU politics and to representation in EU executive institutions, rather than a left-right divide. Both political beliefs and opportunistic motivations determine government-support and opposition in the EU. |
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