Pursuing Who you are or Where you are from? Explaining the Focus of Representation of MEPs

The representative character of the European polity and the role of MEPs therein have been fiercely debated over the past years. Media coverage of legislative amendments regarding the General Data Protection Regulation, which were based on interest group position papers, highlights that both scientists and the public do not know enough about which interests or objectives individual MEPs are representing in their legislative behaviour. Furthermore, the literature on role switching shows that the choice of focus of representation and behaviour is dependent on the situation at hand. Therefore, it is put forward in this Paper that MEPs are expected to have a distribution of foci that can be skewed towards one or more foci. In the context of the EU this means a step beyond the traditional divide of national vs. (European) party representation towards a more nuanced picture of representative behaviour. In this Paper I will use content coded committee amendments and their justifications to substantiate the distributions of foci. The distribution of foci will be explained using both individual level characteristics - like status in the parliament, ideological position and several socio-structural characteristics – and country level explanations - like the electoral system. The multilevel nature of the EP provides an interesting setting to not only assess how minor differences in the electoral rules for EP elections affect representative behaviour, but also incorporate the effects of socialization in the electoral system used at ‘home’.