European Parliament

This article asks how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent Syrian and Ukrainian refugees and whether implicit hierarchies of race and gender shape those representations. Drawing on Critical Securitisation Theory, the authors compare discursive patterns to test a hypothesis that stigmatisation based on race and gender affects EU representations of refugees. The manuscript reports a computational comparison of EP speech acts to see when refugees are cast as urgent threats and when speech enables de‑threatening or protective framings.

The traditional gender gap in voter turnout persists in supranational elections like those for the European Parliament (EP), despite women's higher participation rates or parity in national polls.

This study explores how political parties select female candidates for parliamentary elections in proportional systems. It examines why some parties place women in viable list positions while others do not.

Election campaigns are often seen as a way candidates signal their future work in office. However, new research finds that who wins depends more on campaign intensity than how hard they will legislate afterward.

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.

Legislators represent multiple principals (national parties vs. European groups). How do they balance competing demands? This article argues that electoral uncertainty forces them to prioritize whichever principal is most influential for their re-election chances. Using roll-call data from the second through sixth European Parliaments (1984-2009) and measuring electoral uncertainty via volatility, we demonstrate a clear trend: periods of higher volatility corresponded with decreased legislative group cohesion.

Members of the European Parliament (EP) from national opposition parties leverage parliamentary questions to hold governments accountable for failing to implement EU policy.