Elections and factions in international parliamentary institutions: Beyond state representation?

A third of the world’s important international organizations have international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). The existing literature focuses on their creation and policy impact. Instead, we are interested in arguments that IPIs encourage cross-border elite interaction, beyond the confrontation of states that is more common in international relations. An alternative view is that IPIs reproduce the political constellations of governmental decision bodies. Studying these arguments empirically, we ask whether the electoral mechanisms and internal organization of IPIs encourages their members to represent concerns other than state interests. Is the choice of IPI members removed from governmental control? Does the allocation of seats deviate from equal state representation? And are IPI members organized in ideological or other transnational factions? We further explore variation in the organization of elections and factions. Our study is based on a comprehensive, global dataset on the design of relevant IPIs.