Although the macro and micro models of development find their origin in analyses of the evolution of the American Congress, it is possible to expand them beyond the American and even beyond the legislative contexts. The modifications necessary to apply these models of development to the European Parliament were discussed in Chapter 2. In this chapter I adapt them to an analysis of the evolution of the supranational party group system and the internal development of the party groups themselves. There is a great deal of literature on both political parties and party systems. I believe, however, that an application of the macro and micro models can further expand our understanding of the developmental process of parties and party systems. By applying these models of development we can focus on the impact that external changes (increases) in legislative power have had on the internal organization of the party groups and their interactions with each other.

I address first the development of the party system and then the internal evolution of the supranational party groups. In each case I first briefly discuss some of the traditional literature. I then move on to explain how the macro and micro models can be adapted to be applicable in each case. Finally, I use the macro and micro models to derive hypotheses about the character of party system and party group development and outline how I plan to test these hypotheses.

The Development of the Party Group System

Traditional analyses of party systems tend to focus on the number of parties within a system, the character of interparty competition, and the level of ideological polarization (Duverger, 1954; Sartori, 1976; Panebianco, 1982).

When the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Economic Community (EEC) was created in 1957 it was perceived as little more than a multinational chamber of Babel. It consisted of 142 Members appointed by the national legislators of the six Member States. It had no direct popular legitimacy, no control over the fledgling budget of the EEC, and no effective ability to influence legislative outcomes. The Assembly was in all senses a consultative body. But over the course of the last quartercentury the Parliamentary Assembly has evolved into a true European Parliament (EP). Directly elected since 1979 with partial (and increasing) control over the budget since 1975 and the ability to delay, amend, and even veto legislation, the European Parliament of today bears little resemblance to the Parliamentary Assembly of old. Today the EP deserves to be considered a “transformative” legislature capable of significantly impacting the decision-making and policy processes of the European Union (Polsby, 1975: 277–296).

This book examines the remarkable institutional development of the European Parliament since its inception in 1957, and particularly since it began its metamorphosis in earnest in the 1970s. It is not the actual increases to the powers of the EP that interest me, but rather the effect of these increases in terms of the internal institutional evolution of the EP as a legislature. In other words, the main question investigated is, What effect did exogenous increases in the powers and influence of the European Parliament have on its internal development?

As Chapter 5 demonstrated, the party groups have been fundamental in determining the internal organization of the EP as a whole. Just as the relative power of the groups vis-à-vis individual Members has varied over time, so have their relationships with each other. The purpose of this chapter is to trace the development of the party group system through an examination of the interactions between the party groups in the coalition formation process. This will help to determine the impact of increases in the legislative authority of the European Parliament on the character and evolution of the party system. The analysis will also serve as a test of the usefulness of the macro and micro models in predicting the course of party system, as opposed to parliamentary development.

Past studies of the European Union have generally concluded that the party groups, like the EP itself, are incidental to the functioning of the EU as a whole. The perceived absence of party discipline and leadership (a point that will be discussed further in Chapter 8) combined with their perceived frequent recourse to cooperation across ideological boundaries has led most scholars of the European Union to conclude that the party group system is either nonexistent or unimportant. While the role of the EP has recently begun to be re-appraised in the literature, the significance of the party groups and their interactions have not (Peters, 1992; Nugent, 1994; Corbett et al., 1995).

The internal development of the party groups is perhaps the least studied aspect of the European Parliament. Although there are numerous books written on the party groups before (Van Oudenhove, 1965; Fitzmaurice, 1975) and immediately following direct elections (Pridham and Pridham, 1979, 1980; Henig, 1979, 1980; Guidi, 1983), almost nothing has been written since that specifically focuses on the internal organization of the groups. There is an emerging body of work that examines the voting cohesion of the party groups but fails to examine their internal organization beyond that (Attinà, 1990, 1992, 1993; Brzinski, 1995). Even the best attempt to discover the role of the party groups within the EP thus far (Raunio, 1996) still largely ignores the internal development of the groups themselves.

The reason for this lacuna is simple: There is very little available information on the internal development of the groups. For example, even the largest and most stable groups rarely keep organized records of their previous internal rules. Beyond the dearth of historical documents, and probably more important, is the informal nature of much of the internal organization of the party groups. As we shall see in this chapter, one of the most important aspects of internal party group organization is given only passing mention in the rules of both of the two largest groups (the EPP and the PES). In effect, there are very little quantitative or consistent data on the internal development of the groups available.

1. • 1st Edition Règlement, Luxembourg, September 1958.

2. • Modifications du Règlement de L'Assemblée Parlementaire Conformément à la résolutions du 25 Septembre et 21 Novembre 1959; 31 Mars et 28 Juin 1960; 26 Juin 1961; 30 Mars et 27 Juin 1962; 28 Juin 1963; et 20 Janvier 1965.

3. • Texte Modifiè Règlement Parlement Européen, 20 Novembre 1967.

4. • 1st English language version, Rules of Procedure, December 1972.

5. • Règlement, Janvier 1974.

6. • Rules of Procedure, July 1976.

7. • Rules of Procedure, December 1976 (as amended by Resolution of 17 November, 1976).

8. • Rules of Procedure, May 1977.

9. • Rules of Procedure, April 1979 (including the supplement to the rules pertaining t• the General Instructions of the Bureau).

10. • Rules of Procedure, November 1979.

11. • Rules of Procedure, December 1981 (1st edition after general revision).

12. • Rules of Procedure, February 1983, 2nd Edition.

13. • Rules of Procedure, June 1984, 3rd Edition.

14. • Rules of Procedure, June 1987, 4th Edition.

15. • Rules of Procedure, July 1989, 5th Edition.

16. • Rules of Procedure, April 1991, 6th Edition.

17. • Rules of Procedure, September 1993, 7th Edition.

18. • Rules of Procedure, June 1994, 9th Edition.

19. • Rules of Procedure, February 1995, 10th Edition.

20. • Rules of Procedure, July 1996, 11th Edition.

21. • Rules of Procedure, September 1997, 12th Edition.

22. • Rules of Procedure, July 1998, 13th Edition.

23. • Rules of Procedure, June 1999, 14th Edition.

The previous examination of coalition formation across time focused exclusively on behavior during votes on resolutions. As the only form of decision making in the EP that has remained constant across time (in terms of both existence and relative importance) resolutions were an obvious choice to trace change in the patterns of coalition formation. Here, however, the focus will shift to examining patterns of coalition formation when, presumably, it matters most. That is when the EP can directly impact legislative outcomes. The cooperation and co-decision procedures grant the EP real legislative influence through amendment and veto powers. How the EP and the party groups behave under these procedures is of the utmost importance. If the party groups can effectively use the new powers granted to the EP, the possibility to effect legislative outcomes and achieve policy goals becomes a reality; if they cannot, the EP risks once again being relegated to observer status within the EU legislative process.

Therefore we must understand the extent to which the EP has been able to surmount the procedural challenges of the new procedures and come up with compromise proposals that are acceptable to the other EU institutions. In other words, we must find out if the party groups have been able to adapt not just to their new legislative role, but also to the restrictions placed upon their actions by the majority requirements of the second and third rounds and the institutional organization of the EU as a whole.

As Chapter 4 has clearly demonstrated, the European Parliament has only recently been successful in its long struggle for the attainment of true political power. A result of the EP's long history of legislative impotence has been a notable lack of scholarly interest in its internal development and organizational mechanisms, including the activity and interaction of the party groups. The earliest discussions of the Parliament consisted primarily of comparisons between the new institution and the national parliaments of the Member-States and tended, almost inevitably, to conclude that the EP was both politically handicapped and institutionally immature (Dehousse, 1967; Bubba, 1970; Fitzmaurice, 1978; Henig, 1979). There were some excellent descriptions of the party groups during the early years of the Parliament and during the run-up to, and immediately following, the first direct elections in 1979 (Van Oudenhove, 1965; Pinder and Henig, 1969; Fitzmaurice, 1975). The focus of these works, however, tended to be the traditional counting of parties and locating them along the left–right spectrum. Little was said about their internal development or their interactions with one another beyond noting their comparative weakness. Unfortunately, the failure of the EP to immediately become a significant political actor following direct elections discouraged further studies of both the internal structures of the EP and the party groups.

Even the best of the subsequent analyses of the European Union have generally included little more than a descriptive chapter about the EP (Dinan, 1994; Nugent, 1994). Modern analyses of the European Union very rarely delve into the internal operating procedures of the EP beyond a brief description of the hierarchical structures. No attempt is made to analyze how these structures have developed across time.

The position of the European Parliament (EP) within the broader European community has changed significantly over time. As the competencies and breadth of the European Communities, and then the European Union, expanded, the EP pressed for, and adapted to, increases in its powers. Before we explore the adaptive process of the EP it will be helpful to review the evolution of the EU as a whole and the changing role of the EP within it.

A full understanding of the history of the EP requires that we examine its immediate predecessor, the Common Assembly (CA) of the European Coal and Steel Community, and the political environment that led to the initial creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). Following this, the general history of the EP will be divided and discussed in four sections: the early years (1958–1969), which include the initial organization of the Parliament and the institutional role of the EP as established by the Treaties of Rome; the first period of development (1970–1978), during which the EP gained partial control over the budget and direct elections were established; the second period of development (1979–1986), when the first direct elections were held, the EP's power of delay was reinforced, and the Single European Act was created; and, finally, the most recent period of development (1987–1999), which includes the acquisition of true legislative power by the EP through the implementation and reform of the cooperation and co-decision procedures. I focus in particular on the political role of the EP and its relationship vis-à-vis the other Community institutions during each of these periods.

The primary goal of this research was to chart and explain the evolution of the European Parliament and the supranational party system. This was accomplished through the modification and then application of the macro and micro models of institutional development founded in the American congressional literature to the evolution of the EP's organizational structures, the supranational party group system, and the party groups. The macro model was used primarily to predict the timing of institutional change, while the micro model suggested the character of reform based on an understanding of the goals of the actors, the rules of the game, and who had the power to effectively pursue change.

As predicted by the macro model, the timing of the internal institutional development of the EP, as well as the transformation of the party group system, was connected to large exogenous increases to its political power and authority. The micro model was similarly successful in predicting the character of internal institutional reforms and the type of party group system based on an assumption of strategic action by the EPP and PES as they pursued their policy goals. Both models fell short of a satisfying explanation of internal party group reform; however, the reason for their lack of success lies more with the stunted nature of this evolution than with any inherent weakness in the models.

In this final chapter I briefly summarize the findings of the previous chapters and discuss some additional questions that arise naturally out of this research, in particular, to what extent are the macro and micro models of institutional development generally applicable beyond the American congressional context?

In this chapter I examine two current models of legislative development that are based primarily on the U.S. Congress. The models each suggest different catalysts for institutional evolution, which, I argue, can be effectively combined to create a more complete understanding of the variables that influence legislative development. The models are then adapted and applied to the European Parliament to create testable hypotheses about the character and direction of its institutional development since 1957.

The Theoretical Models

Theories of legislative development (as opposed to systems of classification) have focused primarily on the U.S. Congress. This has led to several assumptions that are not directly applicable in the European case, in particular, the relationship between the majority and minority parties and between individual representatives and their constituencies. Nonetheless, models of the evolution of the American Congress can help us to understand the development of the European Parliament and how this process has changed over time.

Discussions of the development of the American Congress are frequently divided into two broad categories, based on their assumptions about what motivates internal change (Cooper and Brady, 1981; Cooper and Young, 1989; Gamm and Shepsle, 1989; Binder, 1996; Katz and Sala, 1996; Koelble, 1996). The two approaches have been called variously macro and micro, environmental and purposive, or sociological and economic; in all cases a similar dichotomy is created between two interpretations of the causes of institutional development and change. The macro model posits that the internal development of a legislature's organizational structure (hierarchy, rules, structure, etc.) is modified as a reaction to changing external demands.