The Lisbon Treaty introduced an early warning system allowing national parliaments to reject European Commission legislative proposals. Previous studies assumed vetoes were based solely on independent decisions influenced by prior partisanship ('selection'). However, this article introduces a novel approach using temporal network analysis and finds that 'social influence'—where parliaments with similar party majorities impact each other during the decision period—is significantly stronger than selection effects.
| Networks and Social Influence in European Legislative Politics was authored by Thomas Malang, Laurence Brandenberger and Philip Leifeld. It was published by Cambridge in BJPS in 2019. |
