The Eurozone crisis and the European Parliament's changing lines of conflict
| Author | Simon Otjes,Harmen van der Veer |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116515622567 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Union Politics
2016, Vol. 17(2) 242–261
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116515622567
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Article
The Eurozone crisis and
the European Parliament’s
changing lines of conflict
Simon Otjes
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Harmen van der Veer
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
There is a broad consensus that the left-right dimension has been the dominant line of
conflict in the European Parliament since1979. A pro-/anti-EU dimensionis found to be of
secondary importance, which is attributed to the fact that decision-making over the
competences of the European Union is the realm of intergovernmental negotiations. In
this article, we show that the seventh EP witnessed a transformational moment in the
history of the EU. The Eurozone crisis amplified the importance of the pro-/anti-EU
dimension and increasingly shapes the voting behaviour of Members of the EP. This
change is particularly pronounced for voting on economic issues. To demonstrate this
transformation, we employ a novel deductive method that allows us to predict the rela-
tive importance of two dimensions structuring MEPvoting behaviour. Our results contra-
dict established wisdom about the strength of the left-right divide in EP politics.
Keywords
Economic left/right, European Union integration dimension, European Parliament,
Eurozone crisis, Parliamentary voting
Introduction
During the 2009–2014 term of the European Parliament (EP), the European Union
(EU) underwent one of its most serious crises. The economic turmoil that started out
in the United States turned into a sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone. At a time when
European integration was challenged from both the left and the right, integration of the
Corresponding author:
Harmen van der Veer, Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe
Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: h.a.a.vanderveer@uva.nl
macro-economic policy of member states was presented as the solution to the Eurozone
crisis. In order to prevent future debt crises, the European Commission (EC) expanded
its budgetary oversight powers (Bauer and Becker, 2014). The seventh EP (2009–2014)
thus witnessed a transformational moment in European history. However, the effects of
the Eurozone crisis on the patterns of decision-making in the EP have not been studied
extensively (Braghiroli, 2014). This article seeks to determine how these events have
affected the political dynamics in the EP.
A key question in the study of the EP has been which dimensions structure
decision-making. Ever since Kreppel and Tsebelis (1999), political scientists have
aimed to map the political space of the EP. From these works, it is clear that,
since its first directly elected term, the dominant dimension shaping the voting behav-
iour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) is the left-right dimension.
This finding is attributed to the fact that the competences of the EU and thus the
issues voted upon in the Parliament are primarily economic in nature. Additionally,
the extant literature points to the dimension of the EU integration as the second line
of conflict structuring the MEPs voting behaviour. This line of conflict matters less
than the left-right because competences of the national governments and the EU are
negotiated in treaties between governments and not in the EP itself (Mair, 2003).
The question we seek to answer in this article is to what extent the dimension-
ality of voting in the EP has changed between 2004 and 2014. On the one hand, the
financial crisis may have intensified the conflict between the economic left and
right, as politicians from these two sides offer different ways to get out of the
crisis. Therefore we might find a stronger left-right dimension than before. On
the other hand, we see an unprecedented move of competences to the European
level. This raises the question whether these issues should be the responsibility of
the EU or rather those of the member states. This may express itself in a stronger
division between pro-European and Eurosceptic MEPs in the seventh EP term
compared to the sixth, even when economic issues are on the table.
In addition to a substantive contribution to the study of EU politics, this study
offers several methodological improvements. First, it proposes a novel method-
ology of studying what types of votes (e.g. the substantive issue voted upon) con-
tribute to which dimension. Second, whereas earlier studies on EP voting focussed
on macro-level patterns (with the exception of Høyland, 2010), our method allows
for determining to what extent particular votes are structured by particular polit-
ical dimensions. Studies have tended to assume that, for example, votes about
economic issues contribute to the left-right dimension (Hix et al., 2003; Kreppel
and Tsebelis, 1999). This article provides a methodology that empirically estab-
lishes this influence by using regression analysis techniques, rather than the com-
monly used dimension reduction methods.
Theory and expectations
The question which dimensions structure political contestation at the European
level is central to the study of European politics in general and that of the EP in
Otjes and van der Veer 243
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