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Party group leaders seemingly use a variety of disciplinary measures to achieve unified voting behavior in party groups. However, there is little systematic knowledge about the nature of such disciplinary measures and the interaction between leaders and group members remains a black box. Most studies of party voting concentrate on institutional variables such as electoral systems and take disciplinary measures as a given. This study presents a new way to measure party discipline, based on data from semi-structured interviews with 76 party group leaders and experts from five European parliaments. The discipline index provided here is the first to consider in a systematic way the means available to reprimand or reward party group members. In a second step, the study shows that disciplinary measures can compensate for a leader's lack of control over candidate selection processes, and relate to group composition or size.

For decades the European Commission's possible legislative influence has interested scholars of EU studies, yet few empirical studies on the determinants of the Commission's influence exist. This paper analyses quantitative data on 60 EU proposals to show to which degree rather endogenous resources of the Commission, external conditions determined by the EU member states or institutional constraints determine the Commission's influence on EU legislation. Modeling the Commission as an agent having resources and strategic options, I demonstrate that the Commission's ability to defend the content of its original proposals is to a large extent dependent on its principals, the member states. Endogenous resources of the Commission such as expertise and experience influence only to a small extent the legislative success of the Commission. Thus, this study allows gaining a deeper understanding on the factors influencing the European Commission's influence on legislative affairs. Adapted from the source document.