Nikolay Marinov is Assistant Professor in the Political Science department at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 2004. He spent 2004-2005 as a Global Fellow at UCLA. His current research looks at the effectiveness of economic sanctions, at the role of the international community in the spread of democracy around the world, and at the effects of international institutions.

Eleonora Pasotti is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Cruz and Postdoctoral Fellow at CDDRL. Her work has been concerned with the relationship between democracy, personal power and electoral law. Pasotti's research at CDDRL is directed toward three aspects of this relationship: how proportional and majoritarian electoral systems interact with clientelistic networks; how institutions shape the cost structure of political mobilization; and how institutions of vote mobilization, from clientelism to mass campaigning, distort the normative goal of democracy. Her previous work has been based largely on the politics of Naples, Italy, but has broad comparative implications for the study of clientelism, patronage politics and populism in the developing world as well. Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Cruz, Eleonora completed a PhD in Political Science at Columbia University under the direction of Charles Tilly, Jon Elster, and Ira Katznelson. She also holds an MSc in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ambassador Pascual is Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies, at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served as Coordinator for Reconstruction & Stabilization at the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia at the National Security Council.

Professor Roland examines party politics, particularly in the context of the European parliament. Using key research throughout, he examines where loyalties lie, what affects these loyalties, and what the makeup is of the European parliament. Prof. Roland also takes a brief look at how this compares to national politics in different countries.

Synopsis

Prof. Roland explains that roll call analysis has long been an obsolete method of estimating politicians’ true values. This is mainly due to party politics. Legislative behavior, which is what Prof. Roland explores primarily in this talk, is offered a very rich platform for study in the European parliament, which consists of representative parties from 27 countries which also form into European parties. Prof. Roland explains that loyalties can lie with one’s national party, European party, and country. However, there is no reason for them to overlap. Because the European parliament plays very little role in elections in the nations of Europe, Prof. Roland argues that parties vote almost purely for legislative decision-making purposes. Prof. Roland also cites that voting for the EU parliament is not like a parliamentary democracy because nobody is put into power. In addition, he notes that the European Parliament has had a shifting role as time has passed, going from a consultative position to a probable vetoing power, as Prof. Roland predicts.

These numerous aspects of the European parliament raise several questions for Prof. Roland. He explores the strength of party cohesion within the parliament and methods used to enhance it such as disciplining those who vote against the party of contentious issues or giving signals of unification. Prof. Roland also examines what he explains as the ‘agreement index’ to investigate where members vote; for their national party, their European party, or their country. This rating, which has continually lowered, indicates that more vote for their national parties than member states or European parties. Prof. Roland is also interested in whether members’ votes are influenced more by their personal values or the party discipline effect.

Prof. Roland comes to a variety of interesting conclusions. He sees that there is overlap when members of the European parliament place themselves on the left-right scale. However, no such overlap is present in their voting patterns, showing clear evidence of the effect of party discipline. Prof. Roland finds that bigger parties, because they are more pivotal, are more cohesive as there is more at stake in their unity. On the other hand, national fractionalization has a negative effect of cohesion while ideological diversity plays almost no role in determining the extent of party cohesiveness in the European parliament. Employing a variety of statistics, Prof. Roland shows that the increase in the parliament’s power has also increased party cohesiveness. Therefore, Prof. Roland believes that while disagreement has increased in the European parliament, party cohesion has increased but not for ideological reasons. He ends by explaining that the role of ideology is in forming party coalitions in a parliament whose dimensions consist mainly of left and right.

About the Speaker

Gerard Roland is professor of economics and political science at University of California, Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1988. He is the author of five books, including Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets and Firms, published by MIT Press in 2000.

Sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Graduate School of Business.