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This article draws upon the literature on comparative political institutions in order to re-examine the logic of Twitter usage during campaign periods, now that social media has become a standard tool that is used across the political spectrum. We test how electoral institutions and individual characteristics shaped Twitter activity during the 2019 European elections cycle and compare the nature of this usage with the previous 2014 campaign. Our findings allow for an evaluation of social media campaigning against the backdrop of its dynamic evolution, while also confirming its normalisation in the European elections' revival of the Spitzenkandidat process. Rather than seeking to differentiate themselves from party-internal and external competitors or highlighting their own qualities, our findings suggest that Members of the European Parliament used Twitter in 2019 to emphasise the lead candidate that they have in common.

This article draws upon the literature on comparative political institutions in order to re-examine the logic of Twitter usage during campaign periods, now that social media has become a standard tool that is used across the political spectrum. We test how electoral institutions and individual characteristics shaped Twitter activity during the 2019 European elections cycle and compare the nature of this usage with the previous 2014 campaign. Our findings allow for an evaluation of social media campaigning against the backdrop of its dynamic evolution, while also confirming its normalisation in the European elections' revival of the Spitzenkandidat process. Rather than seeking to differentiate themselves from party-internal and external competitors or highlighting their own qualities, our findings suggest that Members of the European Parliament used Twitter in 2019 to emphasise the lead candidate that they have in common.

This article analyses the impact of electoral institutions on the re-election campaigning and outreach strategies of Members of the European Parliament on the Twitter social media platform. Social media offers politicians a means to contact voters remotely and at low cost. We test the effect of diverse national proportional representation electoral institutions in European elections on a possible online electoral connection. We draw upon an original dataset of Members of the European Parliament Twitter activity before, during, and after the 2014 European elections. Our results confirm that variation in electoral institutions leads to meaningful differentiation in representatives' social media campaigning, which is further affected by national party, voter and legislator characteristics. Representatives make constructive use of Twitter, but there is no sustained online electoral connection.

The European Parliament organizes its legislative activities along two chains of delegation to the rapporteurs – one institutional, one partisan. We analyze discretion and agency loss along these chains of delegation from the perspective of party group coordinators who select the rapporteur on behalf of the party group. Do coordinators minimize agency loss towards their national party, their European party group, the committee median or the plenary median when allocating reports? Data from the 2009–2014 legislative term demonstrate that coordinators tend to select rapporteurs who are close to their own national party's ideal point on the integration dimension. This has important implications for intra-parliamentary and intra-party delegation, party group cohesion and broader policy-making in the European Union.

AbstractThis article investigates the determinants of assignments to European Parliament negotiating teams comprising both rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs. We re‐examine the argument that under‐representation of MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) from new Member States on these key posts after enlargement might have been due to a 'learning phase'. We find that MEPs from newer Member States remain considerably less likely to act as rapporteurs during the second term after enlargement (2009–14). Most importantly, this trend also holds for shadow rapporteurships under the co‐decision procedure, which is when they matter most. This structural under‐representation entails important implications for European integration, most importantly that MEPs from newer Member States are less able to influence legislation. We suggest that the patterns we find could be the result of reduced willingness, a more limited skill set, or a structural disadvantage of MEPs from the accession states in the report allocation process.

European Union policy-making requires Member States to determine national positions by means of national coordination in order to defend their preferences. This article analyses the coordination systems of the twelve "new" Member States in the middle of 2009 and compares them along the two major lines of divergence in coordination systems: their centralisation and their coordination ambition. In so doing, it ties in with a framework developed by Kassim (2003) and plots the new Member States in a diagram which is compatible with that of Kassim, including thirteen old Member States. A pronounced diversity of coordination systems in the new Member States is found. At the aggregate level, the systems are relatively decentralised. Four countries even combine this with a selective coordination ambition. The article suggests that this can be explained by a lack of resources and proposes avenues for further research.

In this article, we examine the static and dynamic factors that explain the use of the Twitter social media platform by all active Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during the Fall and Winter of 2015–2016. Our analysis demonstrates that MEPs have an incentive to take to Twitter that varies across the European Parliament's (EP) highly segmented legislative calendar, but that MEPs are also affected by more constant differences in their national political parties and electoral systems of origin, as well as by their home constituencies. Our findings contribute to a picture of the EP as a diverse legislature that fosters diverse legislator interests with respect to voter outreach.