Networks and social influence in European legislative politics

Malang, T., Brandenberger, L. and Leifeld, P. (2019) Networks and social influence in European legislative politics. British Journal of Political Science, 49(4), pp. 1475-1498. (doi: 10.1017/S0007123417000217)

Abstract

The Treaty of Lisbon strengthened the role of national parliaments in the European Union. It introduced an ‘early warning system’, granting parliamentary chambers the right to reject legislative proposals by the European Commission. Previous studies assumed independence between the decisions of parliaments to reject a legislative proposal. We apply recent advances in inferential network analysis and argue that parliamentary vetoes are better explained by conceptualizing parliaments’ veto actions as a temporal network. Network effects can be observed along the dimension of party families. Based on a new permutation approach, we find that parliaments with similar party majorities influence each other over the course of the decision period (‘social influence’), rather than basing their decisions independently on joint prior partisanship (‘selection’).

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Leifeld, Professor Philip
• Authors: Malang, T., Brandenberger, L., and Leifeld, P.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Journal Name: British Journal of Political Science
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 0007-1234
• ISSN (Online): 1469-2112
• Published Online: 04 December 2017
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 Cambridge University Press
• First Published: First published in British Journal of Political Science 49(4): 1475-1498
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy