Attila Kovács PhD candidate Corvinus University of Budapest Political networks in the European Parliament Network analysis of the 2013 CAP reform ‚MAKE’ Conference 12 May 2015
-Political coalitions of decision-making in the European Parliament: -Network of Member States; -Network of EP Groups; -To highlight the non-visible relations between MEPs in the CAP legislation; -To observe the internal evolution of networks at each stages of the legislative process. Motivation and objectives
-Organic farming (Moschitz and Stolze, 2009) – EU-15 MSs tie with each other more frequently; -Agricultural policy network of the 1992 MacSharry reform (Daugbjerg, 1999) – the structure of policy networks influence policy outcomes; -Social network analysis in the European Parliament -EP Intergroups (Patz, 2011) -EP Committees (Patz, 2012) Previous research and literature
Amendments tabled to four legislative proposals: -Direct Payments -European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development -Single Common Market Organisation -Horizontal Regulation Dataset
Social Network Analysis -Edges: links that connect pairs of nodes; -Nodes: individual actors within the network (EP Groups, Member States); -Degree of a node: the sum of edges for a node; -Path length: the distances between pairs of nodes in the network; -Density of the graph: ratio of the number of lines present to the maximum possible. Methodology
Overview on the networks – EP Groups
Overview on the networks – Member States
The network of EP Groups 1.
The network of EP Groups 2.
The network of Member States – total number of amendments
The network of Member States – COMAGRI adopted amendments
The network of Member States – amendments adopted by EP plenary
The network of Member States – amendments in the final regulations
-Degree and Weighted Degree decreases at later stages of decision- making; -Graph density is higher in the network of EP Groups; -Average path length is higher in the network of Member States; -COMAGRI changes the networks the most; -The network of EP Groups is unchanged between EP Plenary and Final Regulation (unlike the network of Member States); -The link between Germany and Austria is the strongest in the network of Member States; -The links in the EPP-EFD-S&D triangle are the strongest in the network of EP Groups. Preliminary conclusions
Thank you for your attention!