Ideology and Representation in Committee Organisation in the European Parliament

• In Event: The European Parliament

Abstract

I provide a comprehensive analysis of the committee system in the European Parliament from 1994 to 2014. Using novel preference data, I show that the committees are highly representative of the plenary. Further, I show that preference heterogeneity is similar across committees and more variation is present over time than across committees. Contrary to the distributional and party political theories of legislative organisation, ideology does not predict committee membership. It is previous membership – expertise – that is the most robust predictor of committee membership. I use original data on individual preferences of all members of Parliament combined with web scraped contextual information such as birthdates, nationalities, national party affiliations, European party group affiliations, and committee functions, i.e., chairmanships, vice-chairmanships, memberships, and substitute memberships. For each of the committee functions, I collected exact start and end dates and constructed committee membership over the twenty years period. I contribute to the literature on legislative organisation and provide evidence in favour of the informational theory of legislative organisation. The findings suggest that one should not expect biased policy from the Parliament’s committee system.

Author

• Philipp Christian Broniecki, University College London