An elephant on the 13th floor of the Berlaymont? European Council and Commission relations in legislative agenda setting

While a rich literature addresses legislative agenda-setting in multiparty democracies, relatively little is known how members of parliament disseminate the legislative agenda beyond the parliamentary floor. Drawing on content analyses of 110 legislative debates and 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013–2017), we test whether legislators are more likely to send press releases on issues that are salient to their party ( party agenda-setting) and to other parties in the party system ( systemic salience). MPs should also communicate more on issues that fall within their area of expertise ( issue specialization) and when they have given a speech on that issue during the legislative debate ( intra-party delegation). While we find empirical support for all these expectations, communication of the legislative agenda largely rests on each parties’ issue specialists and their speakers in plenary debates. Importantly, there is no significant discrepancy overall between the actual parliamentary issue agenda and the agenda communicated by party MPs.

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Legislative agenda-setting in parliamentary democracies

European Journal of Political Research ◽

10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.00850.x ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 48 (6) ◽

pp. 804-839 ◽

Cited By ~ 49

Author(s):

THOMAS BRÄUNINGER ◽

MARC DEBUS

Keyword(s):

Agenda Setting ◽

Parliamentary Democracies ◽

Legislative Agenda

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The European Commission and the European Council: Coordinated Agenda setting in European energy policy

Journal of European Integration ◽

10.1080/07036337.2016.1178252 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 38 (5) ◽

pp. 571-585 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Philipp Thaler

Keyword(s):

European Commission ◽

Energy Policy ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

European Council ◽

European Energy Policy

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Agenda Setting and Intra-Party Deliberation: Who gets represented at party national meetings?

10.31235/osf.io/8f562 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Zac Greene ◽

Javier Sajuria

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Information Sharing ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

Text Analysis ◽

Party Competition ◽

National Party ◽

Party Leaders ◽

Legislative Agenda ◽

Automated Text Analysis ◽

Broad Theory

National party meetings provide members with opportunities to express distinct preferences and issue priorities that guide the party’s future policies. Although scholars recognize that party leaders dominate the structure and content of meetings, little empirical research examines the extent of their agenda setting role. Who gets to speak and whose preferences get represented? Adapting theories of legislative agenda setting to the intra-party context, we hypothesize that party candidates are less likely to be chosen as speakers at party conferences when the party’s leadership most demands unity due to their incumbency status. Using self-placements from candidate surveys, we predict the likelihood that MPs and leaders speak at parties’ national meetings in the U.K. We then link candidates’ self-placements to the content of speeches using automated text analysis. These results add to a broad theory of party decision-making which perceives parties’ national meetings as a forum for information sharing, intra-party competition and deliberation. More broadly, evidence in line with this approach suggests that treating parties as unitary actors in a range of settings overlooks important intra-party divisions.

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