Comprehensive coverage of how populists have responded to the pandemic Great selection of international case studies Extremely distinguished contributor list

Comprehensive coverage of how populists have responded to the pandemic Great selection of international case studies Extremely distinguished contributor list

How do individual legislators in the European Parliament (EP) make decisions on the wide variety of policy proposals they routinely confront? Despite a flourishing literature on the European Union's only directly elected institution, we know surprisingly little about the micro-foundations of EP politics. Who Decides, and How? seeks to address this shortcoming by examining how individual legislators make policy choices, how these choices are aggregated, and what role parties and committees play in this process. It argues that members of the EP lack adequate resources to make equally informed decisions across policy areas. Therefore, when faced with policy choices in policy areas outside their realms of expertise, members make decisions on the basis of perceived preference coherence: they adopt the positions of their expert colleagues in the responsible EP committee whose preferences over policy outcomes they believe to most closely match their own. These preferences are difficult to determine, however, which is why legislators rely on a shared party label as stand-in for common preferences. This results in cohesive parties, despite the inability of EP parties to discipline their members.
Who Decides, and How? relies on the respective strengths of quantitative and qualitative data to shed new light on the inner workings of the EP. It illustrates how legislators make broadly representative decisions under conditions of resource scarcity, informational uncertainty, and problematic policy preferences, and how structurally weak EP parties can act in an internally cohesive and externally competitive manner when carrying out their policy commitments to Europe's citizens.

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in numerous political contexts around the world, including both multilingual states and international organizations. It is also an increasingly important reality in a globalized world that consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. Nils Ringe uses the case of the European Union to investigate how politicians' reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. In-depth interviews with almost 100 policymakers and language service providers in the EU's main institutions, paired with quantitative and linguistic data, show multilingualism to be an inherent, ubiquitous, and consequential feature of EU politics and vividly illustrate how it influences political interactions, deliberations, and negotiations. Existing research at the intersection of language and politics would suggest that multilingualism makes EU politics more conflictual. This is not the case, however. Instead, multilingualism depoliticizes policy-making, meaning that it reduces its political nature and potential for conflict. That is because both foreign language use and reliance on translation result in communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly shared phrases and expressions, which masks the national and political backgrounds, preferences, and priorities of EU actors. Policymakers also tend to disregard politically charged language because it might not reflect what a speaker meant to say, and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages.

Comparative Regional Integration and Multilevel Governance: The European Union and Beyond seeks to examine current debates and issues in the study of regional integration, multilevel governance and European Union studies. Contributions focus on a diverse set of topics related to these areas, including monetary union, trade, public administration, legislative representation, free movement and comparisons of the European Union to other federal systems, and supranational organizations. The chapters are diverse in approach with contributors coming from the fields of public administration, political economy, law, international relations and comparative politics. The goal of the volume is to provide an up-to-date assessment of the current debates and issue in these fields of study.

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in numerous political contexts around the world, including both multilingual states and international organizations. It is also an increasingly important reality in a globalized world that consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. Nils Ringe uses the case of the European Union to investigate how politicians' reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. In-depth interviews with almost 100 policymakers and language service providers in the EU's main institutions, paired with quantitative and linguistic data, show multilingualism to be an inherent, ubiquitous, and consequential feature of EU politics and vividly illustrate how it influences political interactions, deliberations, and negotiations. Existing research at the intersection of language and politics would suggest that multilingualism makes EU politics more conflictual. This is not the case, however. Instead, multilingualism depoliticizes policy-making, meaning that it reduces its political nature and potential for conflict. That is because both foreign language use and reliance on translation result in communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly shared phrases and expressions, which masks the national and political backgrounds, preferences, and priorities of EU actors. Policymakers also tend to disregard politically charged language because it might not reflect what a speaker meant to say, and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages.

The European Union and Beyond: Multi-Level Governance, Institutions, and Policy-Making seeks to examine current debates and issues in the study of regional integration, multilevel governance and European Union studies. Contributions focus on a diverse set of topics related to these areas, including monetary union, trade, public administration, legislative representation, free movement and comparisons of the European Union to other federal systems, and supranational organizations. The chapters are diverse in approach with contributors coming from the fields of public administration, political economy, law, international relations and comparative politics. The goal of the volume is to provide an up-to-date assessment of the current debates and issue in these fields of study.