Party policy and group affiliation in the European Parliament

• Main Authors: McElroy, Gail, BENOIT, Kenneth
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: Party Competition; Policy Positions; European Parliament; Expert Surveys; Party Switching; Applied Bayesian statistics; Eastern European Studies; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3992; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/5250/viewcontent/PolicyGroupAffiliation_EuropeanParliament_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Systematic empirical research has yet to explain how national parties join political groups in the European Parliament. This article first demonstrates, using original empirical measures from expert surveys of party positions, that EP party groups consist of national parties sharing similar policy positions. Secondly, using Bayesian/MCMC methods, the paper estimates the policy determinants of group affiliation using a (conditional) multinomial logit model to explain that party group choice is largely driven by policy congruence. Finally, predictions from the model identify national parties not in their ideally congruent EP groups. The findings suggest that the organization of and switching between EP groups is driven mainly by a concern to minimize policy incongruence between national and transnational levels.