How representative is the European Union Parliament?
Abstract
We test the closeness of the correspondence between the preferences of EU citizens and their delegations to the European Parliament using data on roll-call votes. Differences in EU citizens' preferences are captured using a variety of country characteristics including bilateral country dummy variables, and the demographic, social and economic characteristics of the countries. We find that the differences in delegations' voting patterns are not strongly related to underlying differences between the countries they represent. Our findings support the existence of a democratic deficit in the EU -- a gap between the preferences of EU citizens and the way their delegations vote.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal European Journal of Political Economy.
Volume (Year): 27 (2011)
Issue (Month): 1 (March)
Pages: 61-74
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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544
Related research
Keywords: European parliament Roll-call votes Voter preferences;References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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