1 A Very Broad Literature
In the last two decades, around a hundred books and a thousand papers have been devoted to the study and analysis of the European Parliament (EP)âmainly in English, but also in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. On top of that, numerous PhD students have also proposed their own vision of the most diverse aspects of the assembly. This literature is very rich but, with the exception of a few textbooks, quite fragmented and increasingly specialised. It is organised around two key dimensionsâdisciplines and methodsâbut also by topics.
First, there are diverse approaches depending on the discipline. Public lawyers were first to study the EPâwhich was the case for all European institutions. They soon proposed institutional analyses, describing the assemblyâs organisation, powers, and activities. Political scientists started to complement those views by the end of the 1980, with a major contribution by authors working within EU institutions. The EP became a mainstream subject for political science in the 2000s, when a growing number of scholars, specialised in legislative and electoral studies, started to apply their methods, concepts, and hypotheses to the European assembly and European elections. Since then, most social sciences have started to pay attention to the assembly. Sociologists have studied in detail the identity, values, and careers of members of the EP (MEPs), but also of their assistants and other staff members. Historians have assessed the developments of the institution and its role in European integration. Anthropologists and ethnologists have analysed the actors and âtribesâ of the EP. Specialists of quantitative methods and economists have mobilised their skills to make a sophisticated use of data, in order to analyse the behaviour of members and voting patterns. Philosophers and political theorists have included the EP in their reflexions on the possibility of democracy or deliberation at supranational level. The EPâs contribution to main EU policies has also been studied, sector by sector, by specialists of each field. Finally, international relations scholars have explored the role of the EP in external affairs and its relations with other international parliamentary organs.
The literature on the EP is also structured around the use of different methods and approaches. Obviously, each discipline and sub-discipline is grounded on specific epistemological and methodological choices. But there is more: there are continuous scientific discussions on the kind of data and analyses that should be chosen in order to better understand the EP. Today, academics use a very vast array of sources: databases on EP or EU activities; data sets on MEPsâ socio-biographical profiles and roll-call votes; the results of closed questionnaires with MEPs and staff members; open or semi-structured interviews with them; observations conducted in plenary sessions or within various EP organs; quantitative and qualitative analyses of all kinds of official documents; public opinion surveys; media databases, and so on. There are also many scientific discussions around the suitability of the use of comparison in order to study the EP: Can it be compared to national parliaments? Or better, to the US Congress? To which extent is it possible to apply classic tools, theories, and hypotheses of legislative studies to the EP? Can we consider the EP and the Council as the two chambers of a bicameral European legislature?
It is worth mentioning that not all central debates around EU studies make sense in the EPâs case. The various approaches of neo-institutionalism are obviously prominent in the research field, and scholars are endlessly discussing the compared merits of its various declinations (historical, rational-choice, sociological, discursiveâŠ), including deep controversies between partisans of the rational-choice approach and supporters of a constructivist/cognitivist one, or between proponents of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Compared to neo-institutionalism, the classic controversies between neo-functionalists and intergovernmentalists do not make much sense in the case of the EP, because both are quite unable to account for its historical developments and empowerment, and do not propose an institutional model in which it plays a central role. In contrast, part of the research devoted to the EP is better linked to the general debates in social sciences than the studies focusing on the other EU institutions which are more specific. At least in the field of political sciences, the EP has indeed attracted the attention of âmainstreamâ scholars, especially in legislative studies, and elections specialists, which is still not the case of the Commission or of the Court.
2 The Six Main Topics Under Study
The literature on the EP is also structured around topics. There are several textbooks that propose a more or less exhaustive approach of the EP, but most of the work focuses on a specific aspect of the institution. We can distinguish six main areas of research that have all generated a significant amount of publications.
First, there is the institutional approach. Since the 1950s, the EP has been obviously addressed by all EU institutional law textbooks, but the main books that are specifically focused on the institution itself have always included considerations about the political dynamics or the sociological dimensions of the assembly (Corbett et al. 2016; Costa 2001; Judge and Earnshaw 2008; Palmer 2015; Ripoll Servent 2018; Steunenberg and Thomassen 2002; Westlake 1994). They all deal with the main features of the EP: its role, competences, process of empowerment, interaction with other institutions, and so on. The question of the history (Corbett 1998; Priestley 2008; European Parliament 2009) and empowerment of the EP (Christiansen 2002; Farrell and HĂ©ritier 2005; Hix 2002b; Hix and HĂžyland 2013; Judge and Earnshaw 1994; Rittberger and Schimmelfennig 2006; Rittberger 2005 and 2014; Tsebelis 1994) has attracted many publications. As previously stated, a growing number of researchers, trained in comparative politics, tend to consider that the EP is a ânormalâ parliament, which should be compared to national legislatures (Hooghe and Marks 2008; Hix and HĂžyland 2013; Kreppel 2012; Young 2016; Yordanova 2011). However, most international relations scholars refuse this idea of ânormalisationâ or, better, propose an alternative approach of it: they consider the EP as an international parliamentary organisation among others, to be compared to its peers (Costa et al. 2013; Malamud and Stavridis 2011; Ć abiÄ 2008).
A second set of researches discuss the organisation of the EP. They focus on MEPs (see below), political groups (Brack 2018; Kreppel 2002; Raunio 1997), various organs (committees, delegations, intergroups, leadership structures) (Coman 2009; Whitaker 2011; Costa 2013), staff (Egeberg et al. 2013; Winzen 2011) and assistants (Pegan 2017), procedures (Bressanelli et al. 2016; Kreppel 2000; Brack and Costa 2018b), or specific issues such as the seats or languages (Priestley and Clark 2012).
The first direct elections of the EP in 1979 have led to a vast literature analysing European elections and discussing their specificities (DĂ©loye and Bruter 2007; Gabel and Hix 2002; Hix and Hagemann 2009; Hobolt 2015; Lodge 2016; Reif and Schmitt 1980; Viola 2015), or developments such as the âSpitzenkandidatenâ procedure (Schmitt et al. 2015; Priestley and Peñalver GarcĂa 2015). They have led to researches dealing with the question of electoral support, attitudes of the public opinion towards the EP and its members (Blondel et al. 1998), and the public image (Lord 2018) and communication strategy of the assembly (Anderson and McLeod 2004).1
The interactions between the EP and external actors are a fourth stream of studies. It includes national and European parties (Gallagher et al. 2011; Hix 2002b), national parliaments (Auel and Benz 2005; Hefftler et al. 2015; Maurer and Wessels 2001), interest groups (Marshall 2010; Kluger Dionigi 2016), and civil society organisations (Warleigh 2000; Foret 2017). It also comprises organisations and actors outside the EU, with researches analysing the relations of the EP with other parliamentary bodies, at the national level and within international organisations, as well as with the representatives of states outside of the EU (Diedrichs 2004; Thym 2006).
The analysis of the EP, thanks to the various tools of legislative studies, has given birth to a very vast body of literature. These studies focus on MEPsâ socio-biographic profiles (Kauppi 2005; Scarrow 1997; Whitaker et al. 2017), professionalisation (Beauvallet and Michon 2010), views and beliefs (Whitaker et al. 2017), and allegiances and representational roles (Hix 2002a; Noury 2002; Wessels 2005). A central question has always been the one of socialisation: do MEPs go native, that is, do they become more favourable to European integration during their time in the EP (Franklin and Scarrow 1999; Scully 1998, 2006)? MEPsâ voting behaviour has also attracted a lot of interest (Hobolt and de Vries 2016; McElroy and Benoit 2012; Ringe 2010), especially since the introduction of roll-call votes for the final vote on each text (Carrubba et al. 2006; Hix et al. 2007). Other activities of MEPs, in the plenary meetings and committees (Hurka and Kaeding 2012; Judge and Earnshaw 1994; Bowler and Farrell 1995), or in the constituency (Poyet 2018), have also generated much research.
Finally, the activities of the EP are quite well-studied nowadays. The objective of this vast array of work is to understand how the assembly implements its competences. Authors deal with the question of coalition building (Kreppel and Tsebelis 1999; Kreppel 2000), interinstitutional relations and negotiations (Rasmussen and Toshkov 2011), and influence within the EP (Burns 2005; Tsebelis et al. 2001) and of the EP (HĂ©ritier 2017; Maurer 2003; Shackleton 2...