Informal Coalition-Building and Issue Attention in the European Parliament: Patterns of Co-Sponsorship of Written Parliamentary Questions

Written parliamentary questions provide Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) an opportunity to indirectly contribute to the EU agenda individually or in a group. Yet, so far, the literature has focused on the individual use of this procedure only, and MEPs’ patterns of co-sponsorship of written questions remain understudied. This paper fills this gap and investigates why MEPs unite forces to table questions collectively. Furthermore, it sheds light on the rationales of MEPs to draw attention to specific policy issues in their group questions. Building on the theories of legislative organization, I formulate hypotheses on the role of specialization, nationality, and partisan affiliation for MEPs’ co-sponsorship of written questions. I further argue that MEPs who represent different national and partisan interests are likely to table questions together if the policy issue that they ask about is salient for their national parties and publics. To test the argument, I rely on the original dataset of all group written questions addressed by MEPs to the European Commission and the Council in the period 2009-2019 as well as on the Euromanifesto study and Eurobarometer opinion polls. This paper contributes to our understanding of EU agenda formation, informal coalition-building and legislative networks in the European Parliament, and MEPs’ representation of public and partisan issue priorities.