Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
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National parliaments are often labeled the ‘losers’ of European integration. However, most studies in the field of Europeanization focus only on parliamentary influence in the ex-ante decision...Show moreNational parliaments are often labeled the ‘losers’ of European integration. However, most studies in the field of Europeanization focus only on parliamentary influence in the ex-ante decision-making phase in Brussels. In principle national parliaments have, however also the potential to influence the final outcome of EU policy making in the ex-post phase when EU law is transposed into national law. This role of parliaments has received only limited scholarly attention. Nevertheless, how national parliaments use this opportunity has important practical implications in terms of the EU democratic deficit thesis and the effectiveness of EU law. This thesis tackles the question, to what extent and under what conditions do national parliaments and their committees use their legislative review power to influence the transposition of EU law? A cross-country and cross-directive study in the area of EU migration law is conducted to explore the explanatory power of a prominent coalition model of legislative review. Contrary to the model which assumes that different types of government and levels of coalition conflict determines the scope of parliamentary scrutiny, this analysis finds that other factors are more important determinants for parliamentary influence on the timeliness and correctness of transposition measures. Such factors relate to the overall salience of a directive, high issue linkage with politicized national policy projects and case specific factors. The case studies provide particularly challenging evidence concerning the minister autonomy model on which the coalition model is based. This has important implications for the study on conflict anticipation, as ministers seem to be relatively well prepared to foresee their coalition partner’s preferences and adapt their legal drafts to prevent public coalition conflict in parliament. Secondly in terms of institutional design the analysis shows that even parliaments under unfavorable institutional preconditions and singly party governments are not necessarily weaker in their EU scrutiny activities than those that are assumed to be institutionally strong in the national policy making process.Show less
