Calling the roll. Roll-call vote requests in the early European Parliaments and their consequences1

Simon Hug2, Bjørn Høyland3 

First version: February 2024, this version: Feb 12, 2024
Paper prepared for presentation at the 12th Biennial Conference of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union (19-21 June 2024, Universidade NOVA, Lisbon)

Abstract

With the exception of the first European Parliament, each subsequent one experienced a treaty change during its term, almost always implying changes in its powers and in the decision procedures it is involved in. As a consequence votes in this parliament changed in importance and significane over time and at the same time covered more and more policy areas. What has become visible of these votes, namely the individual voting behavior in roll call votes, is thus likely to have changed. Drawing on a new data collection of all legislative votes (whether roll called or not) covering the five first EPs, we can demonstrate that roll call votes and their requests are affected by changes in the agenda and in decision-making procedures. Thus, we can offer a new view on the first twenty-five years of parliamtary work by directly electied MEPs.

Footnotes:

1 Partial financial support by the Research Council of Norway (Grant No. 120120), as well as the research assistance of Charlotte Béglé and Noael Froehlich is gratefully acknowledged.
2  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Faculté des sciences de la société ; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; phone +41 22 379 83 78; email: simon.hug@unige.ch
3  Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Postbox 1097, Blindern, 0317 Oslo Norway ; phone +4722858598 ; email: bjorn.hoyland@stv.uio.no

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