Proposal stage coalition-building in the European Parliament

Abstract

Almost all existing studies of conflict and coalitions inside the European Parliament (EP) rely on the statistical analysis of voting behaviour. Yet who proposes the alternatives put to vote? Which political groups jointly co-author legislative amendments? Which strategic considerations (if any) determine legislative coalition-building inside the EP? To answer these questions, this article analyses information on the proposer identity for all legislative amendments drafted in the sixth legislative period. My findings suggest that, when building coalitions, political groups consider the degree of inter-institutional conflict. However, despite the highly proportional rules of procedure, the rapporteur emerges as the most powerful player in proposal stage coalition-building. Other groups may successfully challenge the rapporteur only if they aim at pulling the draft report closer to the floor median. Those who are interested in pulling the outcome away from the median have little choice but to include the rapporteur as a member of their coalition. In this case, rapporteurs must strike a fine balance between convincing their fellow Members of the European Parliament of the strategic exigency of deviating from the median and maintaining their credibility when bargaining with the members of the Council. If rapporteurs are too close to the Council, they forfeit their trustworthiness among their potential coalition partners.

Keywords

Coalition-building European Parliament legislative politics

Introduction

Almost all studies of conflict and coalitions in the European Parliament (EP) rely on the statistical analysis of observable voting behaviour. The underlying logic is straightforward: legislators who frequently vote the same way will, in all likelihood, have similar policy preferences. However, although voting is undoubtedly the ultimate form of preference revelation, it is only the last stage of political coalition-building. In parliamentary democracies, coalition formation has received so much attention because governments set the political agenda. By contrast, the EP does not elect a government. Nevertheless, political groups form coalitions that determine the alternatives put to vote. Following Baron (1990), members of such a ‘legislative coalition’ successfully coordinate their proposal and amendment activities in order to influence the policy outcome in their favour.

Recently, proposal activities such as co-sponsorship have been used as an alternative to roll-call votes for scaling individual legislators’ ideal positions in the US Congress (Deposato et al., 2011; Peress and Spirling, 2010; Woon, 2008). Yet, the behavioural assumptions underlying voting on the one hand and proposal activities on the other may differ. Specifically, when negotiating and proposing legislative amendments leaders must anticipate the discipline among their own rank and file as well as the approval of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from non-signatory political groups. At the same time, they must keep an eye on their strategic position vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers. In accomplishing both tasks they have to rely on information provided by specialized colleagues such as the (shadow) rapporteur.

We know relatively little so far about the dynamics of proposal stage coalition-building in the EP. Which political groups coordinate their proposal activities with each other? What is the size of such a legislative coalition? Are coalition agreements binding or can they be successfully challenged at the voting stage? What are the powers of the rapporteur in building successful coalitions?

The present article provides preliminary answers to these questions. In doing so it contributes to our understanding of agenda formation as a crucial step of legislative decision-making inside the EP. My analysis centres on the powers of the rapporteurs, whose reports predetermine proposal activities during the plenary stage, at which they continue to play a key role in coalition formation. My results reveal that successful proposal stage coalitions are bound to represent a position close to the floor median unless they include the rapporteur. Moreover, my findings support the argument by Hagemann and Høyland (2010) according to which a high level of inter-institutional conflict triggers larger coalitions in the EP. Under the co-decision procedure, those coalitions are particularly likely that place the rapporteur between themselves and the Council of Ministers. This constellation brings rapporteurs into a powerful bargaining position vis-à-vis the Council, while at the same time minimizing the risk of agency drift from the perspective of their coalition partners.

The article continues by summarizing the relevant literature and by formulating hypotheses about the factors that determine the composition of legislative coalitions in the EP. Thereafter, it provides an empirical test of my arguments that comprises all legislative amendments authored during the Sixth EP. My findings suggest that the EP is capable of acting strategically in the inter-institutional bargaining game. Specifically, the inter-institutional conflict constellation empowers rapporteurs to shape the EP’s strategy and thereby act as a ‘formateur’ in EP coalition-building. However, the EP’s capacity to act strategically in the inter-institutional bargaining game is limited by rapporteurs’ trustworthiness as honest agents of coalitions’ interests.

Legislative coalitions in the European Parliament

Theories of legislative bargaining provide expectations regarding the composition and size of a successful legislative coalition, as well as regarding the policy outcome agreed among its members (for a recent summary of the literature, see Diermeier et al., 2008). Legislative coalitions are primarily motivated by policy-seeking, hence they are also referred to as ‘policy coalitions’. Yet, the bulk of coalition theories focus on the making and breaking of governments (Laver and Budge, 1992; Laver and Shepsle, 1996; Müller and Strøm, 1999). This literature typically considers at least two further motivations for joining a coalition: vote-seeking and office-seeking. Whereas the office-seeking approach assumes that political parties are mainly concerned with controlling as many posts as possible (Riker, 1962), policy-driven theories take the programmatic positions of parties into account (Axelrod, 1970; De Swaan, 1973). Policy-seeking parties prefer those coalitions that produce the most favourable policies (for an overview, see Strom et al., 2003; Martin and Stevenson, 2001).

By contrast, legislative coalitions are prominently important in presidential systems where the administration is not (or at least not exclusively) elected by the legislature. The most prominent example is the US Congress, in which, however, the importance of party politics is at least disputed (Cox and McCubbins, 1993; Krehbiel, 1998). Today the majority of presidential democracies can be found in Latin America, although some of the Latin American presidents are at least partly dependent upon support by the legislature (Mainwaring, 1990). In contrast to the US Congress, many of the Latin American legislatures are similar to the EP in that they are characterized by multiple parties that enjoy considerable privileges with respect to the overall organization of the chamber and the agenda-setting rights in the legislative procedure. In these cases, political groups are considered the crucial actors at the proposal stage, despite the varying degrees of party discipline revealed at the voting stage (Carey, 2007). Whereas voting stage coalitions are a well studied phenomenon wherever votes are recorded, we know relatively little about the factors that determine coalition-building among political groups at the proposal stage.

With respect to executive–legislative relations, the European Union (EU) resembles presidential democracies, except that its executive is not the winner of a Europe-wide election (Hix et al., 2006: 38). In contrast to the US Congress, the EP is composed of seven political groups (most of the time), which enjoy significant privileges under the EP’s rules of procedure. The leaders of the political groups bargain over the composition of committees and the allocation of important reports. Each group is represented in the Conference of Presidents. Groups have the right to propose amendments and to call the roll over selected votes. Groups must be represented in the Conciliation Committee and can appoint a shadow rapporteur, who then must be kept informed by the rapporteur, who, in turn, has access to all important documents.

The recent literature on politics within the EP successfully advances two perspectives. First, it shows empirically how important party politics are inside the EP. Specifically, Yoshinaka et al. (2010) find that reports are allocated to MEPs who are closer to the political group median. Yordanova (2009) and McElroy (2006) find the party composition of committees to be highly representative of the parliament as a whole. The empirical analysis of roll-call votes (for example, Bailer et al., 2009; Hix et al., 2006) and the analysis of party positions (McElroy and Benoit, 2007, 2010; Pennings, 2002) confirm that national parties select their European group by ideological proximity. As a consequence, the political groups reveal a high level of ideological cohesion, which corresponds to the high degree of observed party discipline, which has been increasing over the past two decades (Hix et al., 2006). Earlier work has highlighted the role of national parties in the allocation of important offices such as rapporteurships and political group coordinators or membership in powerful committees (Bowler and Farrell, 1995; Kreppel, 2002). Similarly, studies have shown that members may face pressure to follow the national party line on roll-call votes (Hix et al., 2006). The pressure exerted by the national party leadership is increasing for cases in which the EP acts as a powerful co-legislator (Whitaker, 2005). In short, both national parties and European political groups are important for an understanding of the dynamics of legislative coalitions inside the EP.

A second strand within the literature scrutinizes the effects of the inter-institutional decision-making processes on political behaviour inside the legislature. Hagemann and Høyland (2010) find that patterns of conflict in the EP depend on the degree of disagreement within the Council. Specifically, their findings suggest that if under co-decision the Council adopts its common position unanimously, the EP tends to form an oversized coalition including the two largest parties. The authors argue that such a situation is characterized by inter-institutional (instead of ideological) conflict, and therefore the EP forms a coalition that is capable of surviving this conflict during subsequent readings. Similarly, Hoyland (2006) finds that MEPs from governing parties have a higher chance of attaining important reports. Costello and Thomson (2010) find that the EP’s inter-institutional bargaining success increases if the rapporteur can convincingly claim to be constrained by a majority of MEPs. Slapin and Proksch (2010) show how members from parties in the national opposition are systematically more active in EP debates, which they use to scrutinize their government.

Both the party politics inside the EP and the inter-institutional perspective are of utmost relevance in explaining proposal stage coalition-building. The question is how the two perspectives fit together. As mentioned earlier, legislative coalition-building is almost exclusively motivated by policy-seeking. Therefore, we should expect coalition partners to hold similar preferences. In other words, we expect that political groups with similar policy preferences will form a coalition. Homogeneous coalitions facilitate intra-group compromise and decrease deviant behaviour at the implementation (that is, voting) stage. However, homogeneity per se provides limited insights as to which of the seven political groups will actually form a successful coalition. To answer this question we could turn to coalition theories rooted in cooperative game theory, such as the idea of minimum winning (Riker, 1962) or minimal connected winning (Axelrod, 1970) coalitions.

Alternatively, non-cooperative game theory advises us to consider the procedural aspects of coalition-building (Diermeier et al., 2008). Specifically, this approach identifies one of the parties involved as being primarily responsible for building a coalition. Most of the time this so-called ‘formateur’ is the strongest party; sometimes the head of state is in the position to appoint the formateur (Martin and Stevenson, 2001). Non-cooperative models of legislative bargaining assume a bargaining protocol that clearly assigns proposal and voting rights to individual players (for an overview, see Diermeier et al., 2008). In this context, the formateur is known as the ‘first-mover’, that is, the player who makes the first proposal (Baron and Ferejohn, 1989; McCarty and Meirowitz, 2006). Both theories assume that (i) it is very likely that the formateur will be a member of the successful coalition and (ii) the formateur has a strong influence on the policy outcome (or receives a greater share of the pie). The question is: who (if anybody) is in the position to be the formateur of legislative coalitions inside the European Parliament?

The median versus the rapporteur

On the one hand, the EP is characterized by a very high degree of proportionality; that is, the political groups and national parties are represented in all committees and major offices according to their seat share (for example, Kaeding, 2004; McElroy, 2006; Yordanova, 2009, 2010; Yoshinaka et al., 2010). With respect to the proposal stage, this proportionality finds reflection in the open rule amendment process, which grants every political group the right to propose an amendment. Under this process, the policy of the median MEP prevails. On the other hand, some procedural rules grant privileges to individual MEPs. Most prominently, the rapporteur is said to ‘own a dossier’. However, given the power of party coordinators and shadow rapporteurs, this might be an overstatement; rapporteurs most certainly hold a powerful office: they write the report that predetermines the floor agenda. For this task they are granted administrative resources by the EP secretariat. They hold the power to move the dossier to the floor and, if deemed necessary, back to the committee stage. They also enjoy almost unrestricted speaking time and participate in the trilogue between the Commission, the Council and the EP. Rapporteurs are made a member of a potential Conciliation Committee. On the floor, rapporteurs are entitled to move the dossier from speaking to voting time and, if deemed necessary, back to speaking time. Overall, rapporteurs hold significant proposal and gate-keeping powers that – following the proposal-centred theories of coalition formation – give them the highest chance of being recognized as the formateur of any successful coalition (Baron and Ferejohn, 1989; McCarty and Meirowitz, 2006). Moreover, they hold superior information with respect to the proceedings inside the Council and the substantial as well as political effects of competing policy alternatives.

Within the committee, reports are allocated by an auction in which each party’s purchasing power corresponds to its seat share. Hence, party coordinators must make a strategic decision by considering the cost–benefit ratio of handling each individual report. As a consequence, we observe bid-rigging to keep the price of selected proposals low, as well as log-rolling within and across policy domains. In general, legislative reports are more valuable than non-legislative reports. Most recently, Yoshinaka et al. (2010) find that the allocation of reports to individual members of the committee is a function of expertise, experience and ideological proximity to the party line. Although this finding reiterates the high level of information possessed by rapporteurs, it also indicates their influence over the final political compromise.

Most of the rapporteurs’ coalition-building activities occur prior to the plenary stage. By drafting the report, rapporteurs present the first proposal, which, subsequently, is amended by the floor. Accordingly, we should expect that some of the other political groups try to amend the report in their favour. Yet, given rapporteurs’ superior level of information, other groups may find it hard to successfully amend the report without including the rapporteur in their coalition. In fact, my empirical analysis reveals that amendment proposals signed by the rapporteur’s group are characterized by a significantly higher rate of adoption. Hence, political groups may be prone to cooperate with the rapporteur.

This discussion leaves us with two countervailing perspectives: whereas the open rule amendment process should result in policies close to the median MEP, rapporteurs might be able to influence the outcome owing to their procedural privileges. Therefore, group leaders face a dilemma between the powers granted to them under the open rule amendment process and the privileges and superior information of the rapporteur. In the event that either the information asymmetry in favour of the rapporteur is small or the rapporteur is not trustworthy, group leaders will decide to exclude the political group of the rapporteur. For those cases we should expect to find coalitions that represent positions close to the median MEP.

H1: Those coalitions are more likely that exclude the group of the rapporteur and represent a position close to the median MEP.

Such open challenges to rapporteurs’ status as formateurs may also strengthen group leaders’ positions when bargaining with rapporteurs over the content of joint proposals. On the flipside, H1 implies that coalitions that include the rapporteur propose amendments to the report that are further away from the median MEP. In those cases, the other groups’ leaders come to the conclusion that it may be in their best interest to include and trust the rapporteur’s strategic advice. Finally, rapporteurs themselves can successfully build a coalition close to the median MEP during the committee stage. As a result, the report is supported by a stable coalition and we should observe very few successful amendments. This selection mechanism reinforces H1.

Strategic coalition-building

Under the consultation procedure, the Council can overrule the EP’s amendments by unanimous action. Therefore, the EP is widely considered to be weak, although it may act strategically by placing its amendments inside the Council’s qualified majority voting core (Thomson et al., 2006). Otherwise the EP’s amendments carry normative power and attract the attention of a broader audience. Accordingly, there is little need for a strong and stable coalition to defend the EP’s position against a majority in the Council. Under the co-decision procedure, by contrast, the EP is considered to be an equal co-legislator. Three rules stand out: first, the EP must ultimately adopt any law proposal; second, during the second reading the EP acts under an absolute (instead of simple) majority requirement; third, in the event of continuing dissent, the EP’s representatives negotiate a deal with the Council members in the Conciliation Committee that must subsequently be ratified in both chambers. The first, straightforward consequence is that, under co-decision, successful coalitions must be significantly larger to survive the absolute majority threshold.

Hagemann and Høyland (2010) argue that the size of EP coalitions depends on the degree of conflict inside the Council. A united Council indicates inter-institutional conflict. In order to be successful in inter-institutional bargaining, the EP responds to this situation by summoning up a stable and large coalition. Accordingly, the size of the legislative coalition should be conditional upon the degree of conflict in the Council.

H2: The size of successful legislative coalitions increases under the co-decision procedure as the conflict in the Council decreases.

But what coalition should rapporteurs form in order to succeed on both fronts of the inter-institutional bargaining game? The question implies that their choice of coalition partners depends on their locations vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers or, more precisely, the expected outcome of intergovernmental bargaining in the Council. If they could choose freely, they would prefer to place themselves in between the Council and their coalition. This constellation would tie their hands, so to speak, and enable them to avoid further concessions to the Council. However, they can choose only among feasible coalitions, that is, coalitions that are supported by a majority of MEPs. Given the information asymmetry, coalitions must trust rapporteurs to honour the coalition agreement and bargain in their interest. Presumably, this trust will be lower, the closer the position of rapporteurs is to the Council compared with their coalition partners.

H3: Coalitions in which (i) the rapporteur is closer to the coalition agreement than to the Council and in which (ii) the rapporteur is located in between the Council and the coalition are more likely.

Below, I analyse cases handled under co-decision as well as cases handled under consultation. For obvious reasons, I expect that H2 and H3 are less important for the consultation sample.

Empirical analysis

Using the Official Journal of the European Union and the Legislative Observatory (OEIL), I compiled a dataset containing information on 28,979 of the 29,795 (that is, 97.4 percent) votes scheduled in the Sixth European Parliament (2004–9). The dataset provides information on the subject of the vote, the responsible committee, the advisory committees, the (legislative) procedure, the existence of a legal status quo, the date of the vote, the identity and partisanship of the rapporteur, and the vote result. For votes on amendments, the dataset contains the identity of the author(s). Please note that the subsequent analysis excludes the ITS (Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty), a right-wing political group that existed between January and November 2007 and that drafted a total of three single-authored legislative amendments.¹

Tables 1 and 2 present information on the (co-)authorship of legislative amendments in the Sixth EP. Specifically, Table 1 refers to proposals that were accepted by the plenary, and Table 2 refers to those proposals that were rejected. Overall, I observed 3011 successful legislative proposals that had been authored by at least one political group,² 964 of which were signed by more than one group. The PPE authored the most (1482) and the IND/DEM the fewest (146) of the successful proposals. The Greens authored 819 (27 percent) of all successful proposals. The percentage of co-authored proposals varied between 52 percent for the PPE and 75 percent for the UEN. The average number of co-authors was lowest for the largest party: when co-authoring proposals, the PPE had on average 2.4 partners; in contrast, the UEN partnered with an average of 3.6 other groups. Although it makes intuitive sense that smaller groups need more partners to be successful, this trend is amplified by the fact that the two large parties joined forces in almost 80 percent of their proposals. The upper part of Tables 1 and 2 should be read in the following way: of all its co-authored proposals, the ALDE signed together with the PPE 50.78 percent, with the GUE/NGL 17.13 percent and with the IND/DEM 4.36 percent of the time. Note that these numbers do not tell us anything about the involvement of third parties. The tables show that the PPE was the single most important coalition partner. However, the PPE coordinated its proposal activities with different combinations of partners. Moreover, I still found 1529 successful proposals without the participation of the PPE, 241 of which were signed by more than one party. This raises the question of under what conditions other groups manage to formulate successful proposals while excluding this ideologically moderate party group, which also is the largest.

Table 1.

Patterns of (co-)authorship in the Sixth European Parliament: Successful legislative proposals

	ALDE	PPE	GUE/NGL	IND/DEM	Verts/ALE	UEN	PSE
Percent of proposals co-authored with ALDE	100.00	33.00	42.75	28.77	36.26	50.52	43.59
Percent of proposals co-authored with PPE	50.78	100.00	51.55	36.99	38.46	70.93	57.38
Percent of proposals co-authored with GUE/NGL	17.13	13.43	100.00	24.66	23.93	31.49	19.13
Percent of proposals co-authored with IND/DEM	4.36	3.64	9.33	100.00	4.40	8.30	3.30
Percent of proposals co-authored with Verts/ALE	30.84	21.26	50.78	24.66	100.00	41.18	31.75
Percent of proposals co-authored with UEN	15.16	13.83	23.58	16.44	14.53	100.00	19.32
Percent of proposals co-authored with PSE	46.63	39.88	51.04	23.29	39.93	68.86	100.00
Total no. of proposals authored	963	1482	386	146	819	289	1030
Of which, single-authored	384	709	105	67	377	72	333
Of which, co-authored	579	773	281	79	442	217	697
Percent single-authored	39.88	47.84	27.20	45.89	46.03	24.91	32.33
Average no. of co-authors	2.72	2.40	3.15	2.85	3.09	3.62	2.57

Note: ALDE: Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; PPE: European People’s Party; GUE/NGL: European United Left/Nordic Green Left; IND/DEM: Independence and Democracy; Verts/ALE: Greens/European Free Alliance; UEN: Union for a Europe of Nations; PSE: Party of European Socialists.

Table 2.

Patterns of (co-)authorship in the Sixth European Parliament: Failed legislative proposals

	ALDE	PPE	GUE/NGL	IND/DEM	Verts/ALE	UEN	PSE
Percent of proposals co-authored with ALDE	100.00	12.00	2.83	3.90	4.53	6.00	8.06
Percent of proposals co-authored with PPE	14.29	100.00	1.17	4.55	2.20	6.00	11.29
Percent of proposals co-authored with GUE/NGL	5.40	1.87	100.00	13.64	17.03	1.00	11.94
Percent of proposals co-authored with IND/DEM	1.90	1.87	3.50	100.00	3.98	0.00	2.58
Percent of proposals co-authored with Verts/ALE	10.48	4.27	20.67	18.83	100.00	5.00	17.10
Percent of proposals co-authored with UEN	1.90	1.60	0.17	0.00	0.69	100.00	1.61
Percent of proposals co-authored with PSE	7.94	9.33	6.17	5.19	7.28	5.00	100.00
Total no. of proposals authored	315	375	600	154	728	100	310
Of which solo	223	290	436	99	519	89	196
Of which co-authored	92	85	164	55	209	11	114
Percent solo	70.79	77.33	72.67	64.29	71.29	89.00	63.23
Average no. of co-authors	1.40	1.37	1.28	1.29	1.22	2.09	1.41

Table 2 displays the same information for the 2183 proposals authored by at least one party group that were rejected.³ Most of these unsuccessful proposals were authored by the Verts/ALE (728) and the GUE/NGL (600), whereas the PPE authored only 375 failed proposals. The percentage of co-authorship is significantly lower for failed proposals, ranging between 36 percent for the IND/DEM, 23 percent for the PPE and 11 percent for the UEN. On average, the Verts/ALE had 1.2 partners and the UEN teamed up with 2.1 partners. With respect to the failed proposals, the PPE lost its position as the most important coalition partner. Instead, the Verts/ALE appeared as the driving force when it came to organizing unsuccessful coalitions. They signed in as a partner in 50 percent of the coalitions joined by PSE, the IND/DEM and UEN as well as in 75 percent of all coalitions joined by the GUE/NGL. At the other end of the ideological continuum was an unsuccessful conservative coalition of ALDE, PPE and the UEN, appearing jointly in 50 percent of the failed coalitions they chose to form.

Martin and Stevenson (2001: 38) model coalition formation as an unordered discrete choice problem in which each formation opportunity constitutes a single case. The number of choice alternatives is equal to 2 ⁿ − 1, where in the present case n = 7. Thus, given the seven groups in the EP, we encounter 127 permutations of possible coalitions, 67 of which we observe in the dataset. Following McFadden (1974), this discrete choice problem can be modelled as a system of conditional logits in which the probability of individual i choosing alternative k is:

p_{ik} = \frac{e^{z_{ik} α + x_{i} β_{k}}}{\sum_{k = 1}^{K} e^{z_{ik} α + x_{i} β_{k}}}

where z _ik denotes covariates that vary across alternatives and individuals, and x_i denotes covariates that vary across individuals. In the present application, the ‘individuals’ are the proposed legislative amendments, 3011 of which were adopted and 2183 of which were rejected. The alternatives are the 127 possible coalitions. With the notable exception of the applicable inter-institutional procedure, all of the above hypotheses relate to alternative-varying covariates (z _ik ). Accordingly, I estimate a model in which the alternative-specific parameter β_k is unrelated to any covariate at the individual level. In this case, the conditional logit model can be simplified to the fixed-effects logistic regression model that is used for the analysis of panel data. Please note that a single law proposal can be subject to multiple amendments. Specifically, half of all 501 legislative initiatives in the dataset came with more than 10 amendments but only one-quarter of the proposals had more than 20 amendments. Here, I assume that all potential dependencies across amendments related to the same law proposal are accounted for by my independent variables, including the case-level fixed effects.

The histogram in Figure 1 depicts the percentage of coalitions by number of seats. Splitting the sample into four categories reveals that (i) the average coalition is larger under co-decision and (ii) the average coalition is larger for successful than for failed proposals. This supports my expectation that the co-decision procedure produces larger coalitions to survive the inter-institutional bargaining procedure, including the absolute majority threshold applicable in the second reading. Moreover, all four groups share two peaks. First of all, parties tend to propose unilaterally, that is, without forming a coalition in the literal sense. The second peak emerges at around 300 seats, which is slightly below the absolute majority threshold. At this peak, possible coalitions comprise one of two large political groups plus smaller partners. When proposing such ‘close-to-majority’ coalitions, members either anticipate the support of non-members at the voting stage or expect a substantial level of abstentions.

Figure 1.

Frequency distribution over the observed coalitions' seat share by inter-institutional procedure and vote result.

Above, I argue that successful legislative coalitions are ideologically compatible and differ from the floor median. To test these claims, I add a proxy for the position of national parties. Specifically, I use ten variables from the data on policy positions gathered by the Chapel Hill expert survey in 2006 (Hooghe et al., 2010). Unfortunately, the dataset does not contain information on 28 of the 162 national parties represented in the Sixth EP; among the missing are all the parties from Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg, as well as some of the Italian electoral alliances.⁴ The Web Appendix lists my assignment of the Chapel Hill variables to the policy areas defined by the leading committees. Compared with the data on party positions gathered by Benoit and Laver (2005), the Chapel Hill dataset covers a higher number of policy areas of relevance for legislative politics in the EP. In order to cross-validate my findings, I utilized the data provided by the Comparative Party Manifestos (CMP) project.⁵ The Web Appendix contains my assignment of quasi-sentences to each of the policy areas. Subsequently, the median MEP is operationalized as the median national party. However, please note that the vast majority of national parties are represented by one or two MEPs only.⁶ Finally, I assume the position of the European political group (p_k) to be the weighted mean of its members’ positions,⁷ that is,

p_{k} = \frac{\sum_{i = 1}^{m} n_{i} s_{i} v_{i}}{\sum_{i = 1}^{m} n_{i} s_{i}}

where n_i is the size of the national party i and s_i is the relative salience that party i attaches to the issue at hand. In a different operationalization, I relinquish the weight for salience. The substantial results remain unchanged. This procedure can be justified with reference to McElroy and Benoit (2005), who find that the position of the political group is relatively close to the mean of its members.

Table 3 provides the summary statistics for my variables. On the left-hand side, the values for all 562,991 observations that actually enter the subsequent regression are shown. As a result of missing data on several of the independent variables, I lose approximately 763⁸ of the 5196 amendments in the dataset (4433 amendments × 127 possible coalitions = 562,991 observations) when estimating the full model. On the right-hand side, Table 3 provides the summary statistics for the observed coalitions (that is, yes = 1). A simple means comparison reveals several interesting results: legislative coalitions are usually connected (85 percent compared with 22 percent), exclude the political group of the rapporteur (31 percent compared with 51 percent), are rather homogeneous (mean = 0.36 compared with mean = 1.74) and are undersized, representing on average 26 percent of the available seats. Interestingly, legislative coalitions tend to represent a position that is closer to the Council mean than to the median MEP. Finally, I created three dummy variables that indicate whether (i) the rapporteur is located in between the Council mean and the median MEP, (ii) the rapporteur sides with the Council, or (iii) the rapporteur sides with the median MEP. Across all possible cases, the rapporteur is located in between the two actors in only 12 percent of cases, which reflects the fact that, compared with the entire ideological range, the median MEP and the Council mean are often located close to each other. This number rises to 32 percent once I restrict my analysis to the 4433 observed coalitions. Even more interesting is that the rapporteur is twice as likely to side with the Council as to side with the median MEP in the remaining 67 percent of cases.

Table 3.

Summary statistics

	All cases					Observed coalitions (Yes = 1)
	Obs.	Mean	SD	Min.	Max.	Obs.	Mean	SD	Min.	Max.
Dependent variable	562,991	0.008	0.088	0.000	1.000	4433	1.000	0.000	1.000	1.000
Connected coalition? (yes = 1)	562,991	0.220	0.414	0.000	1.000	4433	0.847	0.359	0.000	1.000
Intra-coalition conflict (weighted SD)	562,991	1.739	0.698	0.000	3.986	4433	0.361	0.555	0.000	3.986
Coalition size (seat share)	562,991	0.488	0.242	0.029	1.000	4433	0.259	0.234	0.029	1.000
Rapporteur included in coalition? (yes = 1)	562,991	0.505	0.499	0.000	1.000	4433	0.307	0.461	0.000	1.000
Distance: Coalition (weighted mean) to median MEP	562,991	4.776	0.958	0.913	7.343	4433	4.616	1.658	0.913	7.343
Intra-council conflict (weighted SD)	562,991	0.573	0.078	0.355	0.775	4433	0.573	0.078	0.355	0.775
Coalition >= Rapporteur >= Council OR Coalition <= Rapporteur <= Council	562,991	0.120	0.324	0.000	1.000	4433	0.314	0.470	0.000	1.000
Coalition >= Council >= Rapporteur OR Coalition <= Council <= Rapporteur	562,991	0.485	0.499	0.000	1.000	4433	0.540	0.498	0.000	1.000
Rapporteur >= Coalition >= Council OR Rapporteur <= Coalition <= Council	562,991	0.402	0.490	0.000	1.000	4433	0.294	0.555	0.000	1.000
\|Rapporteur–Council\| − \|Rapporteur–Coalition\|	562,991	−0.118	0.892	−4.323	4.323	4433	−0.535	1.441	−4.323	3.862
Inter-institutional procedure (co-decision = 1)	562,991	0.731	0.443	0.000	1.000	4433	0.731	0.443	0.000	1.000
Successful amendments (success = 1)	562,991	0.512	0.499	0.000	1.000	4433	0.512	0.499	0.000	1.000

Next, I turn to the discussion of the regressions results (Table 4). I estimated a set of four regression models, each separately for the set of consultation (CNS; n = 1191 proposals) and co-decision (COD; n = 3242 proposals) cases, with my main focus of attention on the latter. Model 1 includes my measure for intra-coalition conflict, the dummy for whether or not we are dealing with a connected coalition, and the percentage of seats represented by the coalition. The two variables that pertain to the coalition’s ideological composition turn out strongly significant, with intra-coalition conflict being the most powerful explanatory variable overall. The coalition size reveals a strongly significant negative effect for this model on the consultation cases and no effect on the co-decision sample. The overall explanatory power of this baseline model is rather impressive.

Table 4.

Results of the conditional logistic regression analysis (proposal-level fixed effects)

	M1 (CNS)	M1 (COD)	M2 (CNS)	M2 (COD)	M3 (CNS)	M3 (COD)	M4 (CNS)	M4 (COD)
	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Connected coalition? (yes = 1)	0.74**	0.91***	0.72**	0.87***	0.71**	0.79***	0.69**	0.75***
	(0.17)	(0.06)	(0.18)	(0.06)	(0.18)	(0.06)	(0.18)	(0.06)
	(0.32)	(0.15)	(0.35)	(0.15)	(0.36)	(0.17)	(0.36)	(0.17)
Intra-coalition conflict	−4.98***	−2.14***	−5.07***	−2.14***	−4.85***	−2.08***	−4.97***	−2.10***
	(0.24)	(0.06)	(0.26)	(0.06)	(0.25)	(0.06)	(0.26)	(0.06)
	(0.76)	(0.30)	(0.85)	(0.31)	(0.80)	(0.35)	(0.81)	(0.36)
Size of coalition (seat share)	−1.66***	−0.18	−2.40***	−0.48	3.02**	5.87*	2.36	5.18
	(0.20)	(0.45)	(0.26)	(0.11)	(0.97)	(0.76)	(1.04)	(0.75)
	(0.53)	(0.46)	(0.70)	(0.61)	(2.82)	(3.40)	(3.44)	(3.40)
Rapporteur included? (yes = 1)			−0.66	−1.63***			−0.61	−2.05***
			(0.27)	(0.15)			(0.32)	(0.18)
			(0.60)	(0.52)			(0.70)	(0.62)
[Distance: \| Coalition − Median MEP \|] * [Rapporteur included]			0.26**	0.39***			0.21*	0.50***
			(0.06)	(0.03)			(0.06)	(0.03)
			(0.12)	(0.08)			(0.14)	(0.10)
Distance: \| Coalition − Median MEP \|			−0.16***	−0.16***			−0.17***	−0.17***
			(0.02)	(0.01)			(0.02)	(0.01)
			(0.03)	(0.04)			(0.04)	(0.03)
[Size of coalition] * [Intra-Council conflict]					−7.85*	−10.41**	−7.17	−9.86*
					(1.57)	(1.34)	(1.65)	(1.32)
					(4.40)	(5.80)	(5.28)	(5.92)
Rapporteur in between (if EP > Rapporteur > Council = 1)					0.16	0.06	−0.00	0.09
					(0.09)	(0.05)	(0.10)	(0.05)
					(0.21)	(0.13)	(0.21)	(0.13)
Relative distance: Rapporteur to Council					−0.11**	−0.13***	−0.06	−0.19***
					(0.03)	(0.02)	(0.03)	(0.02)
					(0.06)	(0.04)	(0.06)	(0.04)
[Relative distance: Rapporteur to Council] * [Rapporteur in between]					0.28*	0.29**	0.18	0.10
					(0.07)	(0.04)	(0.08)	(0.04)
					(0.18)	(0.13)	(0.17)	(0.12)
Number of observations	165,862	466,344	157,734	412,623	151,257	411,734	151,257	411,734
Number of groups	1306	3672	1242	3249	1191	3242	1191	3242
Observations within groups	127	127	127	127	127	127	127	127
Log-likelihood	−3583.10	−13288.92	−3297.34	−13134.70	−3201.07	−11642.41	−3163.72	−11473.99
Pseudo R² (McFadden)	.43	.25	.45	.26	.44	.26	.45	.27

Notes: CNS: consultation; COD: co-decision. Upper standard errors are robust; lower standard errors are clustered in legislative reports.

***p < .01, **p < .05, *p < .1 (p-values are based on clustered errors).

The second model tests my first hypothesis. Specifically, I include a variable indicating whether or not the rapporteur is a member of the coalition, a variable measuring the distance of the coalition to the median MEP, and, finally, the interaction of these two variables. Overall, coalitions are less likely to form that include the political group of the rapporteur. Instead, most of the time other political groups author amendments aimed at modifying the draft report. I will come back to this finding when comparing successful amendments with failed ones. My first hypothesis expects that the exclusion of the rapporteur is especially promising for coalitions that represent a position close to the median MEP. My regression results support this argument. The distance between coalition and median MEP is estimated to have a significant positive effect for coalitions joined by the group of the rapporteur. Using the estimates of the full model (M4), Figure 2 features the corresponding marginal effects plots. It reveals that this interaction effect is significant only for the cases handled under the co-decision procedure. Again, this supports my argument according to which the rapporteur’s power as strategic intermediary between the two legislative bodies is of greater relevance under the co-decision procedure.

Figure 2.

Marginal effect of coalition’s distance to the floor median conditional upon whether or not the rapporteur joins the coalition.

The third model tests my second and third hypotheses. For this purpose, I include an interaction term between coalition size and the degree of conflict in the Council. Note that the third constitutive term of this effect (intra-Council conflict) provides no within-group variation and, accordingly, is absorbed by the fixed effects. As expected by H2, the estimated interaction effect is negative, that is, the less conflict inside the Council, the larger the legislative coalition in the EP. This finding lends further support to the argument advanced by Hagemann and Høyland (2010) according to which the EP is capable of acting strategically in cases of strong inter-institutional conflict. Figure 3 depicts the corresponding marginal effects derived from the estimates of the full model (M4). Note that whereas the coefficient for coalition size is very strong and significant for the co-decision sample, it turns out weak for those reports handled under consultation. Correspondingly, Figure 3 finds the interaction effect to be significant only for the co-decision sample, which supports my theoretical argument.

Figure 3.

Marginal effect of coalition size conditional upon intra-Council conflict.

Finally, I test my argument according to which rapporteurs attempt to place themselves between the legislative coalition and the expected outcome in the Council if such a coalition is feasible. I argue that one condition for feasibility is rapporteurs’ trustworthiness, which is a function of their relative closeness to the Council. Accordingly, I include a dummy indicating whether or not the rapporteur is in fact located between the coalition and the Council, their relative distance from the Council, as well as the interaction of these two variables. Figure 4 depicts the marginal effect for the corresponding estimates of the full model (M4). Although it finds the expected effect for both the co-decision and the consultation sample, the latter is barely significant.

Figure 4.

Marginal effect of strategic constellation conditional upon relative distance from the Council.

The results presented so far highlight that legislative coalition-building is driven by strategic considerations on behalf of the relevant actors, that is, the party group leaders. In particular, I find distinct differences between the consultation and the co-decision procedures. First, under co-decision, seat share can in fact have a positive effect on the likelihood of coalition formation if deemed necessary in response to a homogeneous Council. Second, under co-decision the distance from the median MEP can have a positive effect on coalition formation if group leaders opt for a strategic coalition vis-à-vis the Council including the group of the rapporteur. Third, under co-decision, rapporteurs’ ability to act strategically depends on their credibility as a trustworthy broker operationalized as relative distance from the Council.

Finally, I would like to know whether my evidence for strategic coalition-building holds for both successful and failed amendments in equal measure (Table 5). If policy-seeking is indeed the sole motivation that drives legislative behaviour, we are left with only one possible explanation for failed amendments: incomplete information. Party group leaders may, for example, evaluate the inter-institutional bargaining game differently than the ordinary MEP. I ran the full model (M4) separately for the sample of successful and failed amendments. Table 5 reveals three major differences. First, under the consultation procedure seat share has a positive effect on the formation of successful coalitions. The effect is barely significant for successful amendments under the co-decision procedure and cannot be found for the subset of failed coalitions. In addition, the interaction effect between intra-Council conflict and coalition size turns out much stronger for the set of successful amendments. This result illustrates that forming small, undersized coalitions carries a significant risk of failure at the voting stage. The large number of failed single-authored coalitions can be explained by low coordination costs and a perceived residual chance for success.

Table 5.

Results of the conditional logistic regression analysis (proposal-level fixed effects): Comparing successful with failed amendments

	Consultation		Co-decision
	Successful amendments	Failed amendments	Successful amendments	Failed amendments
	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Connected coalition? (yes = 1)	0.54	0.99*	0.70***	0.59**
	(0.21)	(0.37)	(0.08)	(0.11)
	(0.53)	(0.61)	(0.20)	(0.28)
Intra-coalition conflict	−4.67***	−5.91***	−2.36***	−2.06***
	(0.31)	(0.50)	(0.08)	(0.10)
	(0.98)	(1.19)	(0.23)	(0.66)
Size of coalition (seat share)	5.34**	−0.49	6.52	0.59
	(1.35)	(1.71)	(0.89)	(1.60)
	(2.70)	(4.68)	(4.76)	(3.24)
Rapporteur included? (yes = 1)	0.03	−1.21*	−1.20**	−2.95***
	(0.42)	(0.49)	(0.24)	(0.29)
	(0.74)	(0.85)	(0.71)	(0.64)
[Distance: \| Coalition – Median MEP \|]*[Rapporteur included]	0.09	0.32*	0.38***	0.57***
	(0.08)	(0.10)	(0.05)	(0.05)
	(0.15)	(0.17)	(0.12)	(0.11)
Distance: \| Coalition – Median MEP \|	−0.09**	−0.23***	−0.08**	−0.20***
	(0.03)	(0.03)	(0.02)	(0.01)
	(0.05)	(0.04)	(0.04)	(0.03)
[Size of coalition] * [Intra-Council conflict]	−10.35**	−4.55	−9.62	−4.87
	(2.13)	(2.70)	(1.56)	(2.80)
	(4.25)	(6.95)	(7.06)	(5.86)
Rapporteur in between (if EP > Rapporteur > Council = 1)	0.00	−0.03	−0.12	0.38**
	(0.14)	(0.14)	(0.08)	(0.07)
	(0.22)	(0.30)	(0.16)	(0.15)
Relative distance: Rapporteur to Council	−0.08	−0.02	−0.15**	−0.21***
	(0.05)	(0.05)	(0.03)	(0.02)
	(0.08)	(0.08)	(0.06)	(0.05)
[Relative Distance: Rapporteur to Council] * [Rapporteur in between]	0.16	0.19	0.08	0.21**
	(0.11)	(0.11)	(0.06)	(0.06)
	(0.16)	(0.23)	(0.15)	(0.12)
Number of observations	75,692	75,565	213,106	198,628
Number of groups	596	595	1678	1564
Observations within groups	127	127	127	127
Log-likelihood	−1721.05	−1391.51	−6293.31	−4852.44
Pseudo R² (McFadden)	.40	.52	.23	.36

Notes: Upper standard errors are robust; lower standard errors are clustered in legislative reports.

***p < .01, **p < .05, *p < .1 (p-values are based on clustered errors).

Second, the interaction effect between ‘rapporteur membership’ and the coalition’s distance from the median is widely insignificant for the sample of successful amendments but highly significant for the sample of failed amendments. Specifically, for the sample of successful amendments I find a much weaker negative effect of the coalition’s distance from the median – regardless of whether the rapporteur is a member of the coalition or not. These results indicate that more radical coalitions, whether towards or – jointly with the rapporteur – away from the median, are often doomed to fail.

The third difference pertains to the interaction effect between the relative distance of the rapporteur from the Council and her strategic position in between the coalition and the Council under the co-decision procedure. For the sample of successful votes, coalitions are more likely if (i) they are closer to the rapporteur than the rapporteur is to the Council and if (ii) they place the rapporteur between themselves and the Council. In the sample of failed amendments, by contrast, the rapporteur forms a coalition that places her in between, even if she is closer to the Council. One possible explanation for failure could be that the rapporteurs over-estimate their trustworthiness and their power of persuasion.

In short, my three hypotheses pertaining to strategic coalition-building turn out differently for the sample of successful amendments compared with the sample of failed amendments. These differences can be explained by strategic misperceptions and errors, in combination with the relatively low costs of co-authoring an amendment in the first place. The corresponding marginal effects plots can be found in Web Appendix A3.

Conclusion

Led by studies of the US Congress, the empirical analysis of coalition and conflict in parliaments has long focused on observable voting behaviour. Only recently have comparative scholars begun to question the institutions and procedural rules that shape the observable voting patterns (Hix and Noury, 2011). These early comparative studies focus on the powers of majority government in determining the legislative agenda. Whereas the EU does not have an elected government, the rules of its inter-institutional law-making procedures nonetheless determine legislative coalition-building inside the EP. Hence, the primary focus of my analysis has been on strategic coalition-building, in particular on the impact of inter-institutional bargaining on coalition-building inside the EP. The present article reveals three important insights.

First, the EP is capable of reacting strategically to strong inter-institutional conflict. Following Hagemann and Høyland (2010), such a situation is characterized by a homogeneous Council, which the EP should confront with a large and stable coalition. My results reveal that the EP is in fact capable of reacting appropriately. The coalition size increases as the conflict in the Council decreases.

Second, despite the highly proportional rules of procedure, the rapporteurs emerge as primus inter pares, not least because they are the link between the Council and the EP. Their reports pre-structure the political conflict for the plenary involving the proposal activities. Political leaders from other groups may challenge the rapporteur by authoring amendments aimed at pulling the draft proposal closer to the floor median. However, those who are interested in pulling the outcome away from the median have little choice but to include the rapporteur as a member of their coalition. Because the open rule amendment process promotes the position of the median, other proposals can be successful only if supported by credible strategic considerations. Given procedural privileges and their high level of information, it is usually the rapporteurs who map out the strategy of the EP vis-à-vis the Council.

Third, in so doing, rapporteurs must strike a fine balance between convincing their fellow MEPs of the strategic exigency of deviating from the median and maintaining their credibility when bargaining with the members of the Council. If possible, they prefer to place themselves in between the coalition and the Council. However, their choice of a strategically favourable coalition is limited by their colleagues’ trust in them as honest agents of the coalition’s interests. If rapporteurs are too close to the Council, they forfeit their trustworthiness among their potential coalition partners. In that case, they either opt for an alternative coalition or risk co-authoring numerous failed amendments.

My results imply a careful interpretation of observable voting behaviour in the EP. The strategic calculus at the proposal stage predetermines the observable degree of party group discipline as well as the sample of votes on which we base our estimates for MEPs’ ideal points. An increase in party discipline does not necessarily imply a growing importance of political groups but may have its roots in the increased applicability of the co-decision procedure, which, according to my findings, implies a different strategic calculus for building legislative coalitions than the consultation or assent procedure. The next step in this line of research is to properly link the proposal and the voting stage in a single analysis.

Finally, theories of legislative bargaining are not restricted to predicting the composition of a successful coalition. In fact, they aim at explaining the coalition agreement – if not the final legislative outcome (Costello and Thomson, 2011). Accordingly, the next step on this research agenda should be a combined analysis of proposal activities, coalition agreements and the policy outcomes reached inside the EP.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andreas Fleig, Bjorn Hoyland and three anonymous reviewers for their very valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

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