The Political Economy of European Legislatures: Mega-Seats in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The internal organization of legislatures has always been a privileged strand of research in legislative studies. Particularly relevant contributions, such as Strom’s (1998), have placed great emphasis on committee systems as the internal body par excellent of any legislature, mainly because of its (potential) influence in shaping policy outputs. The interest on these bodies has been fueled by a recent account by Carroll et al. (2006), in which the authors show how the distribution of power within the legislature constitutes yet another step in the chain of delegation of power, ignited by the election of MPs by the electorate. The second chapter of electoral democracy is thus constituted by the election of mega-seats holders by MPs. This panel aims at further our understanding of European committee systems, by bringing together specialists working on state-of-the-art topics. The scope of the panel concentrates on three major strands: (1) the electoral connection: how MPs use mega-seats positions to provide pork to the electorate; (2) intra-coalition politics: empirical appraisals of the use of mega-seats as a mechanism to keep tabs on coalition partners; (3) distributional politics: explanations at the macro (party) and micro (MP) levels for the ‘who gets what’ question. Methodologically, this panel privileges theory-driven rational-choice approaches, with a clear emphasis on cross-national work. An exception is opened, however, for works on the European Parliament, due it exceptionalism. This choice aims at providing the seeds for the tentative foundations of a general theory on how mega-seats work in European legislatures. Papers: Radoslaw Zubek (University of Oxford) Parliaments, Parties and Agenda Setting Shane Martin (Dublin City University) Policy, Office and Votes Conor Little (University College Dublin/EUI), Jon Bright (JMU), Jorge Fernandes (EUI) – Dividing the spoils or keeping tabs? The role of legislative structures in coalition governments

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