Intertwined parliamentary arenas: Why parliamentarians attend international parliamentary institutions
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120946480 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Jana Lipps |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120946480
European Journal of
International Relations
2021, Vol. 27(2) 501 –520
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120946480
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E
JR
I
Intertwined parliamentary
arenas: Why parliamentarians
attend international
parliamentary institutions
Jana Lipps
Center for Comparative and International Studies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland
Abstract
The internationalisation of political authority elongates the chain of delegation
between the citizen and elected representatives. It increases executive dominance
while weakening parliamentary control. International Parliamentary Institutions (IPIs),
parliamentary assemblies affiliated with international organisations, could potentially
mitigate the ‘parliamentary deficit’ of global governance but are commonly criticised
for their weak authority. This paper revisits this critical perspective and argues that
IPIs provide access to information circumventing the privileged access of governments.
Thereby, IPIs strengthen national parliaments’ capability to control the executive. This
benefit explains the motivation of national MPs to attend IPIs. The study is based on
novel data on the attendance of parliamentarians to the sessions of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe Parliamentary Assembly from 2007 to 2015. The results speak in favour of
intertwined parliamentary arenas, as attributes of national parliaments drive attendance.
For one, parliaments with higher scrutiny capacity participate more in delegations to
IPIs. Moreover, the composition of delegations is related to control incentives, causing
a difference in attendance patterns of government and opposition parties.
Keywords
International organization, international parliamentary institutions, democratic deficit,
parliamentary control, attendance, OSCE
Corresponding author:
Jana Lipps, Center for Comparative and International Studies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH
Zürich D-GESS, Haldeneggsteig 4, Zurich 8092, Switzerland.
Email: jana.lipps@eup.gess.ethz.ch
946480EJT0010.1177/1354066120946480European Journal of International RelationsLipps
research-article2020
Article
502 European Journal of International Relations 27(2)
Introduction
The internationalisation of political authority elongates the chain of delegation between
the citizen and elected representatives, and sparked academic disagreement as to whether
this has created a lack of democratic legitimacy. The increase of executive dominance
and consequently the decline of parliamentary control has received much scholarly atten-
tion, especially in studies of the European Union (Finke and Dannwolf, 2013; Føllesdal
and Hix, 2006; Rittberger, 2003; Winzen, 2012). Researchers have recognised two adap-
tion processes. On one side, we witness a strengthening of parliamentary rights at the
domestic level in some countries (Winzen, 2017). On the other side, International
Organisations (IOs) have reacted to legitimation pressure by opening up to non-govern-
mental actors such as civil society groups or business organisations (see Tallberg et al.,
2013). Most notably, legitimisation issues increased the participation of actors in posses-
sion of democratic legitimacy: parliamentarians. Parliamentary involvement in interna-
tional politics gave rise to a new type of institution – International Parliamentary
Institutions (IPIs). Today about a third of IOs have parliamentary organs. Recent research
on the emergence of IPIs argues that their appearance often comes as a strategic commit-
ment to widespread democratic norms (Rocabert et al., 2019). That concerns over demo-
cratic legitimacy drive their foundation does however not imply that IPIs enhance
procedural democracy at the international level. We know that IPIs are born as weak
consultative bodies (Cofelice, 2019).
Consequently, IPIs have been dismissed as talk-shops and venues of ‘parliamentary
tourism’ (Malamud and Stavridis, 2011: 106). Generally, authors refer to the primacy of
constituency interests of re-election when putting in question the incentives of parlia-
mentarians to join IPIs (Martin, 2013; Slaughter, 2004). However, increasing awareness
on the part of citizens for the provision of public goods through international co-opera-
tion has now shifted the debate (Raunio and Wagner, 2017). Parliamentarians, who face
issues of internationalisation in their district, seek ways to catch up with executive domi-
nance in international affairs (Malang, 2019).The number of IPIs increases and attend-
ance by parliamentary delegations is vivid. Yet, the focus of existing studies on the
emergence and competences of IPIs has failed to answer the question on their benefits
for democratic accountability (Costa et al., 2013; De Puig, 2004; Šabič, 2008, 2014;
Squarcialupi, 2000). Comparing IPIs to their national proto-type has not produced fruit-
ful insights beyond showing how dissimilar they are in terms of organisation and func-
tions. Studies of single delegations within IPIs do not enable us to compare systematically
the value added of IPIs across varying national democratic arrangements (Malang, 2019).
In this paper, I argue that rather than mirroring the functioning of national parliaments
in a separate political arena, IPIs extend the national parliamentary arena and comple-
ment in particular the control function of national parliaments. Therefore, I suggest that
attendance to IPIs is driven by characteristics of the national parliamentary arena. From
this point of view, attendance to IPIs is a tool to circumvent the privileged access of
governments to international politics and enhance parliamentary control of governmen-
tal actors in the respective policy field (Malang, 2019; Marschall, 2005; Wagner, 2013).
The goal of this contribution is to theoretically derive and test under which conditions
IPIs serve the functions of parliamentary scrutiny. I propose several arguments as to how
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