The Sanction That Isn’t Imposed? Roll-Call Voting Loyalty and Demotion in European Parliament Elections

Through their role in candidate selection and in the distribution of offices in the European Parliament (EP), national parties can be considered the gatekeepers and the main principal of MEPs. However, a puzzle of the growing literature connecting legislative behavior and EP elections is that voting loyalty towards the national party delegation does not affect MEPs' re-selection and re-election (van Thomme 2015, Frech 2016; Wilson et al 2016). The current study retests more thoroughly this (non)finding by analyzing the extent to which MEPs dissenting from the national party are demoted: either not re-selected at all, or nominated on worse list positions than previously. We control for two alternative explanations regarding how national parties evaluate their incumbents' EP behavior when drawing their electoral lists. Thus, national parties might reward MEPs for effort (measured through attendance of committee meetings) or for their performance (defined as ability to secure offices such as rapporteur, committee chair, EPG leader). Unlike past scholarship which focused on one election only, we assess the phenomenon across 3 different terms, relying on an original longitudinal dataset.