Re-Selecting Members of the European Parliament

244 Pages·2018·2.093 MB·English

by  Elena Frech

Elena Frech
Re-Selecting
Members of the
European Parliament
Candidate Selection, Party
Goals, and Re-Election Probabilities
Re-Selecting Members of the European
Parliament
Elena Frech
Re-Selecting
Members of the
European Parliament
Candidate Selection, Party
Goals, and Re-Election Probabilities
Elena Frech
Geneva, Switzerland
Dissertation University of Mannheim, Germany, 2016
ISBN 978-3-658-21750-1 ISBN 978-3-658-21751-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-658-21751-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939303
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To all the bears in my life.
Thank you!
Acknowledgements
It is most important to me to thank my loved ones. My family is my
anchor, providing me with endless love and support, with energy and
balance. I am very grateful for the love and support of my closest friends
and siblings. My parents piqued my curiosity, have always encouraged me
to pursue my dreams, and have supported me in many ways during my
studies. I would have never reached that far without their love, faith in
me, and encouragement. I am indebted to my husband, who endured my
ups and downs during the last years and lifted my spirit time and again.
I am deeply grateful for his love, his firm belief in my abilities, and for
making me smile.
I would like to thank my academic advisor Professor Dr. Thomas König,
who supported me and from whom I learnt a lot about research and
academia. I am very grateful for his support and advice during the last
few years. I am furthermore thankful to Professor Dr. Nikoleta Yordanova,
my former colleague, second thesis advisor, and committee member, for
being always available, supportive, and for her comments on numerous
drafts. I would also like to thank Professor Dr. Wolfgang C. Müller for his
interest in my research and for acting as a thesis reviewer and chair of the
committee. Moreover, I am thankful to Professor Dr. Hermann Schmitt,
withwhomIhadtheprivilegetodiscussmyresearchonmultipleoccasions.
With his expert knowledge on European elections, his suggestions were
particularly helpful.
Furthermore, I am very thankful to many colleagues and friends for
fruitful discussions, helpful suggestions, and their company during count-
less breaks. From the numerous colleagues who have made suggestions
over the past years I would like to mention Mariyana Angelova, Serra
Boranbay, Eva-Maria Euchner, Matthias Haber, Sebastian Köhler, Moritz
Marbach, Daniel Müller, Dominic Nyhuis, Moritz Osnabrügge, Sander
VIII Acknowledgements
Renes, and Michael Stoffel. Special thanks go to James Lo. I am not
sure I would have finished this book without his help and friendship.
I am grateful for the time and cooperation of my interview partners and
the German party organizations. Their willingness to answer my questions
and their willingness to share information was an important prerequisite
for this thesis. Furthermore, I thank Hobolt and Høyland (2011), Høyland
et al. (2009), Höhne (2013b), the German Federal Statistical Office (Stat-
istisches Bundesamt, 1999, 2004, 2009); and the European Parliament
archive and documentation center (European Parliament, 2012, 2014) for
providing me with data.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Graduate School of Eco-
nomic and Social Sciences (GESS) as well as the Collaborative Research
Center (SFB) 884 ‘Political Economy of Reforms’ at the University of
Mannheim. Parts or previous versions of this study have been presented
at different colloquia and conferences. I am grateful for helpful comments
and suggestions from the various participants and discussants. The quality
of this book was furthermore improved by the detailed comments of three
anonymous reviewers of my article at European Union Politics, which was
partially re-printed in this book (Frech, 2016). I also thank Lisa, Johannes,
Katharina, Celine, Xiao, Fabian, Hollie, and Andrej for double-checking
the data and the text.
Contents
1. Introduction 1
1.1. An Information Deficit Concerning Selection or Why Study
German Parties’ Candidate Selection for European Elections? 2
1.2. Candidate Selection in Germany. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Party Goals in European Elections and Expected Effects . 6
1.4. Factors Influencing Re-Election Probabilities . . . . . . . 9
1.5. Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.6. Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. State of the Art 17
2.1. Legislative Recruitment and Candidate Selection . . . . . 18
2.1.1. Legislative Recruitment to the European Parliament 20
2.2. Measuring Political Behavior in the European Union . . . 25
2.3. Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3. Theoretical Framework 29
3.1. The Principal-Agent Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.2. Party Goals and Trade-Offs in European Elections . . . . 32
3.2.1. Legislative Leverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2.2. Loyalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2.3. Attractiveness to Voters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2.4. Trade-Offs between Party Goals . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3. (S)electoral Institutions and the Re-Selection of MEPs . . 41
3.3.1. Party Incentive-Based Hypotheses . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.2. MEP Reputation-Based Hypotheses . . . . . . . 42
3.4. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4. Methods, Data Collection, and Measures 47
4.1. The Best of Both Worlds or Mixing Methods . . . . . . . 47
X Contents
4.2. Qualitative Methods – Interviews, Documents and a Survey 52
4.2.1. Data Collection and Validation . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3. Quantitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.3.1. Electoral Lists and List Placement . . . . . . . . 60
4.3.2. Measuring List Place Quality – The Dependent
Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.3.3. Party Goal Measures and other Variables . . . . . 70
4.3.4. The Quantitative Analysis, or Which Model to Run 84
4.4. Research Design, Data, and Variables – Summary . . . . 85
I. Candidate Selection 89
5. Candidate Selection for European Elections in Germany 91
5.1. Dimensions of Candidate Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2. Legal Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3. The German Parties and Candidate Selection . . . . . . . 98
5.3.1. The Social Democratic Party of Germany . . . . 100
5.3.2. The Christian Democratic Union . . . . . . . . . 105
5.3.3. The Christian Social Union . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.3.4. Alliance ’90/The Greens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.3.5. The Free Democratic Party . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.6. The Party of Democratic Socialism/The Left . . 125
5.4. Analysis of the Four Dimensions of Candidate Selection . 129
5.5. Summary of Candidate Selection in German Parties . . . 139
II. MEP Re-Selection 143
6. The Factors Determining the Re-Election Probabilities of
MEPs 145
6.1. Legislative Leverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
6.2. Loyalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.3. Attractiveness to Voters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Contents XI
6.4. Institutional Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.4.1. National Party Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.4.2. A ‘Strong Home Base’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.4.3. Gender Quota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.4.4. Selectorate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.4.5. Informal Pre-Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
6.5. Personality and other Personal Characteristics . . . . . . 165
6.6. Summary of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7. Candidate Selection, Party Goals, and Re-Election Prob-
abilities: Conclusions 169
7.1. Avenues for Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.1.1. Broadening the Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
7.1.2. How Party Institutions Affect Legislative Behavior
and Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
7.2. Main Findings and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Bibliography 177
Appendix 195
1. Document Analyses and Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
2. Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
3. Variables and Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
4. Quantitative Analyses and Robustness Checks . . . . . . 222