The voting behaviour of national delegations in EU institutions

When national delegations make voting decisions on the European stage, how do they act? How does the domestic political context affect such voting behaviour? This thesis, composed of three papers, analyses the voting behaviour of national representatives in two primary decision-making bodies of the European Union – the Council of the European Union (the Council) and the European Parliament. My first paper examines who the 'public' is that government parties respond to when voting in the Council – the general electorate or their party supporters. By differentiating types of public opinion and evaluating two conflicting models – the general electorate model and the partisan constituency model, I demonstrate that governments respond to partisan supporters’ preferences on the pro-/anti-EU dimension rather than to the general electorate mood. Based on this, my second paper looks at how domestic party competition dynamics and electoral factors play a role in the party-partisan linkages in the Council. Specifically, I look at the conditions under which voter Euroscepticism is translated into party Euroscepticism when parties vote in the Council. The findings suggest that negative EU issue salience to a party strongly predicts party responsiveness to its Eurosceptic supporters, while proximity to national elections also has a limited moderating effect. Last, my third paper examines the mechanisms that explain the voting behaviour of MEPs in the European Parliament when the ideological position of the national party differs from that of the EP party group. I find that party-level issue salience and proximity to European Parliament elections condition the effect of ideological distance on MEPs’ voting defection from the EP group. This thesis sheds light on the interconnectedness of domestic politics and EU-level decision-making. It also contributes to the fields of political representation, mass-elite linkages, the politicisation of Europe, legislative behaviour, and public opinion and party politics in the European context.