Representation and Committee Reports in the EP

The paper models the consequences of committee report allocation for political representation in the European Parliament. Both inter- and intra party group dynamics determine an individual legislator's ability to write reports on issues that are salient to his national party. First, party groups compete for salient reports on the basis of their delegation size. As a consequence, MEPs from smaller party groups are more constrained in their ability to represent the preferences of their national parties than their peers in the larger party groups. Second, the party group leadership distributes these reports among its MEPs in an attempt to maximize the cohesion of the group and the coherence of its policies. MEPs from larger national delegations, committee chairs and legislators whose policy preferences deviate from the rest of the group are allocated less salient reports than their fellow party members. The model is tested on data from the fifth European Parliament (1999-2001). The results confirm the importance of political representation in conditioning the legislative behaviour of MEPs. In policy areas governed by the co-decision procedure, the EP has evolved into a "normal" Parliament featuring intense competition along a left-right cleavage across party groups and a hierarchical allocation of legislative spoils within parties. In policy areas where the EP has less decision-making power, consensual politics characterised by a proportional distribution of legislative spoils prevail.