ECPR Joint Sessions 2010

Münster, 22-27 March 2010

By Ben Crum, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 

Ben Crum (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and John Erik Fossum (ARENA, University of Oslo) convened a workshop on Inter-parliamentary relations in Europe at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 38th Joint Sessions of Workshops in Münster in March 2010.
 

Inter-parliamentary relations seem to be of increasing relevance in a world in which ever more political processes take place across traditional jurisdictions. While parliaments have generally lagged behind executives and experts in developing cross-jurisdictional links, there would seem to be clear benefits for them to do so. These benefits relate first of all to increasing the efficacy with which parliaments can fulfil their roles in a transnational world, in particular vis-à-vis their traditional counterparts, executives. Furthermore, given the distinctive political role traditionally attributed to parliaments, representative democracy emerges as an additional perspective to evaluate the benefits (or, more generally, the effects) of inter-parliamentary relations. The latter perspective highlights that the effects of inter-parliamentary relations should not only be assessed at the level of individual parliaments in isolation but also in the aggregate, at the level of the system of (international, transnational, multilevel) decision-making of which they are part.

The ten papers in this workshop shared a focus on the actual engagement of parliamentary actors in inter-parliamentary relations, rather than on the formal institutions that are meant to facilitate such relations. With the benefit of hindsight, they can be grouped in the five classes that are discussed in turn below, after which a short conclusion follows.

Theoretical underpinnings

The paper by Chris Lord (ARENA – University of Oslo) was built around the claim that one distinctive ‘value added’ of parliamentary representation is the opportunity it offers to test justifications during the act of legislation. It developed two arguments for the importance of that role. The first follows from a need to give priority to intrinsic over consequential justifications for democracy. The second follows from a need to find some non-arbitrary means of combining elements of contestation and consensus needed for politics itself.

Engaging national parliaments in EU affairs

Three papers focussed on recent developments in engaging national parliaments in EU affairs. Ian Cooper (ARENA, University of Oslo) discussed the Early Warning Mechanism (EWM) established in the recent Treaty of Lisbon which allows national parliaments to intervene collectively at the EU-level to object to – and even help to block – new EU legislative proposals. Cooper argued that the EWM may allow national parliaments to constitute a virtual third chamber of the EU: while they would not meet together in the same physical space, they could nonetheless collectively form a body that fulfils legislative functions.

Viera Knutelská (Charles University, Prague) reviewed the actual engagement of national parliaments in a series of COSAC pilots of the EWM and on other contested EU decision on the basis of their use of the IPEX database that has been set up for this purpose. While she found the use of IPEX hampered by a considerable number of practical problems and negative incentives (considerable costs, low benefits), she also signalled a slow but steady rise in the use of the database.The paper of Aron Buzogány (FÖV, Speyer) analysed the parliamentary scrutiny systems of EU policy-making adopted by the ‘new’ states that have entered the EU in 2004. He found that existing theories fail to account for the variation among the scrutiny systems and proposed an explanation based on inter-parliamentary policy-learning instead.

Actor perspectives

Johannes Pollak (Webster University Vienna) analysed the activities of the Austrian parliament in scrutinizing EU policy. His paper (co-authored with Peter Slominski) underlined that while the parliament’s powers may look strong on paper, in practice it has been of little effect. Interestingly enough legislative-executive relations on EU affairs have become more constructive again in recent years but this is only achieved under the understanding that parliament, and the opposition in particular, do not seek to impose any formal constraints on the government.

The paper of Yoav Shemer Kunz (University of Strasbourg) turned the attention from parliaments to parties and their engagement in the multilevel political sphere that is provided by EU politics. His paper focused on the case of the French Greens and highlighted how, contrary to the second-order image that is generally attached to the European elections, the EP elections have become of primary importance for this party. As for various reasons the French Greens do much better in the European elections then in national ones, this has also clear effects for the internal structuring and organization of the party.

Sami Mahbouli (University of Montpellier 1) adopted yet another actor perspective as his paper looked at the roles played by officials attached to parliaments. His paper showed how the engagement in inter-parliamentary relations by administrators attached to the French Senate is very much framed by the distinctive perceptions they have of themselves and of the role of parliaments.

Policy perspectives

The paper of Ben Crum (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, co-authored with Eric Miklin) involved a case study of parliamentary behaviour with regard to the making of the EU Services Directive. This paper sought to establish whether parliamentary engagement in EU affairs serves to reinforce or rather undermine each other. In the case of the Services directive the paper established that the EU decision-making process can be distinctively deliberative and inclusive in character and that parliaments can operate as a rather coherent whole within it, accommodating a broad range of concerns.

The paper by Dirk Peters, Wolfgang Wagner and Cosima Glahn (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt/Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) provided a contrasting perspective as it focused on parliamentary oversight over the European Security and Defence Policy. They argued that while the Europeanisation of military missions eludes any single parliament, inter-parliamentary cooperation may serve to crucially bolster parliamentary control of ESDP. The paper sketched the potential and the limitations of these forms of inter-parliamentary interaction; and outlined the basic building blocks for a future research project that can more thoroughly investigate the contribution that inter-parliamentary interaction can make to the democratic control of European security policy.

Beyond the EU-context

The paper by Hilmar Rommetvedt (International Research Institute of Stavanger) looked beyond the European context at the evolution of parliamentary involvement in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This paper tracked how since 1996 a parliamentary dimension has been developed within the WTO. Even if this parliamentary dimension has not yet been fully integrated into the WTO decision-making, it offers parliaments an alternative, direct, route to engage with the WTO than through their government.

Conclusion

One recurring issue in the lively discussions to which the papers gave rise concerned the question whether parliamentary engagement in international affairs was most realistically analysed as the interplay of individual actors following their own incentive structures or whether these interactions also give rise (and should be assessed against) some more structural collective properties. In other words, can we in some respects analyse parliaments in international affairs as collective actors even if they retain their distinct identities within their own (national) jurisdictions? One way to capture any more structural properties is the concept of a Multilevel Parliamentary Field as it has recently been put forward by the workshop organisers (Crum and Fossum 2009).In the concluding session, the participants agreed to work towards a joint edited volume. An outline of this volume will be drawn up by the workshop directors in autumn 2010.

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