Shadows as leaders? The amendment success of shadow rapporteurs in the European Parliament
| Author | David Steinecke |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165221121739 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Shadows as leaders? The
amendment success of
shadow rapporteurs in the
European Parliament
David Steinecke
Department of Politics and Public Administration, University
of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
Abstract
In light of secluded decision-making and early agreements, a binding mandate for the
European Parliament’s negotiation team is essential to prevent agency loss in trilogue
negotiations. In this article, I investigate the influence of the often-overlooked shadow
rapporteurs on this mandate. Shadow rapporteurs are their party group’s representa-
tives and act as checks on the rapporteur. Drawing on novel insights from network ana-
lysis, I expect shadow rapporteurs and their stance on EU integration to affect the
success of amendments they are sponsoring. I draw on a novel dataset of 1524 commit-
tee amendments and employ three-level multinomial logistic regression to test these
expectations. I find shadow rapporteurs to be influential policy leaders who successfully
shape the committee report and, therefore, mitigate the risk of agency loss in potential
trilogues. Shadow rapporteurs can successfully check the rapporteur and thereby influ-
ence the content of EU legislation.
Keywords
Amendment success, committee, European Parliament, policy leader, shadow rapporteur
Introduction
In the European Union (EU), early agreements have become the most common form
of concluding the legislative process. Therefore, crucial decisions are taken in
Corresponding author:
David Steinecke, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Universitätstraße
10, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
Email: david.steinecke@uni-konstanz.de
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(4) 700–720
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165221121739
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
interinstitutional negotiations, so-called trilogues, rather than in the plenary of the
European Parliament (EP). This practice has motivated scholars to criticise the
lacking democratic accountability and strong information asymmetries between
members of the European Parliament (MEPs) (e.g. Yordanova, 2013: 107). One
way to alleviate these information asymmetries consists of drafting committee
reports. As of December 2012, they are a necessary precondition to commence trilo-
gues (EP, 2014: 23) and provide the mandate for the EP’s negotiation team (EP, 2015:
Rule 73.2). Thus, understanding who is shaping committee reports and how is vital
for the EP to avoid agency loss in trilogue negotiations. In line with the power
shift resulting from early agreements, scholars have argued that research should
move its focus from the plenary to the committee (Burns, 2013). Despite amendments
being the most valuable instrument for individual MEPs to influence legislation
(Hurka, 2013: 274), only a few scholars have analysed amendments at the committee
level.
Häge and Ringe (2019) identify rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs (shadows) as
the policy leaders in the EP. Furthermore, Ripoll Servent and Panning (2019) identify
shadows meetings, comprising the rapporteur and the shadows, as the new locus of
intra-institutional conflict. While rapporteurs have received considerable scholarly
attention throughout the past few years, the impact of shadows on the legislative
process is still unclear (Finke and Han, 2014: 149). They have a dual function as
party group representatives in the legislative process and essential checks on the rap-
porteur (Häge and Ringe, 2020: 710). However, as members of the EP negotiation
team, they are also powerful relais actors who occasionally bypass the rapporteur
to strike a deal with the Council of the EU (Council) (Judge and Earnshaw, 2011).
In a first attempt to systematically measure the influence of shadows on the legislative
output, I seek to answer if shadows amend the committee report more successfully
than ordinary MEPs. Moreover, I examine if some shadows are more successful
than others.
Drawing on the perceived-preference cohesion theory (Ringe, 2009), I hypothesise
that shadows are more successful with their amendments than ordinary legislators.
However, MEPs from ideologically extreme party groups are primarily interested in sig-
nalling opposition towards moderate policies to their constituencies rather than construct-
ively shaping policies (Finke, 2015: 753). Thus, I hypothesise that Eurosceptic shadows
are less successful with their amendments than other shadows. The empirical focus is on
the 19 ordinary legislative procedure files adopted by the Committee on Employment and
Social Affairs (henceforth: employment committee) between December 2012 and July
2019. I introduce a novel dataset linking data on MEPs and 3844 amendments retrieved
from the EP web page with data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) (Bakker
et al., 2020), the ParlGov database (Döring and Manow, 2020), a software package
(Gorka, 2018) and information provided by Hurka and Haag (2020). The three-level
multinomial logistic regressions show that shadows successfully shape committee
reports and thus the mandate for potential trilogues. Besides acting as party group repre-
sentatives, they can effectively control the activities of the rapporteur and, by extension,
the content of EU legislation.
Steinecke 701
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