Shocks and Institutional Change: The European Parliament, 2004-2021

• In Event: New Research on the European Parliament

Abstract

It is a commonplace assumption across the social sciences that exogenous shocks to stable systems provide the impetus for change. In this paper we question this assumption by investigating whether such shocks affect the basic distributional and identity dimensions of politics based on the case of the European Parliament. To do so, we introduce a new database on the universe of plenary votes cast by European legislators from 2004 to 2021. Using principal component analysis, we find that such shocks do matter, but manifest themselves as a self-reinforcing sequence. Specifically, we find that during the eurozone crisis the pro-/anti-EU divide has replaced the left-right axis as the main dimension of conflict, upsetting the old institutional equilibrium. Subsequent shocks reinforced the influence of the European dimension, which reached its peak with the Covid-19 pandemic. This evidence contributes to the debate on institutional change by showing that shocks indeed matter for institutional change, but that they do so in a way previously unseen in the literature.

Authors

• Nicolò Fraccaroli, Brown University

• Anatole Cheysson