How do Spanish EuroMPs vote?

Authors

  • ALFONSO EGEA DE HARO

Keywords:

European Parliament, MCMC, NOMINATE, regionalist parties,

Abstract

The pattern of voting in the European Parliament seems to follow the traditional ideological cleavage between left and right. Neither the last enlargement of the European Union nor the important redistributive effects of European policies seem to have changed this. However, the pattern might not completely capture the political debate in states with a complex territorial structure, such as Spain. Using optimal scaling techniques (NOMINATE) and Bayesian estimation (MCMC), the study represents the ideal position for Spanish MEPs. The representation of results suggests that the left-right dimension captures the differences between representatives of Spanish political parties, and between representatives of regionalists and nation-wide parties. The analysis of votes during the V term shows that regionalist representatives adopt positions towards the left of the ideological spectrum regardless of the parliamentary group to which they belong.

Published

2009-02-26

Issue

Section

ARTICLES