Matthew Gabel& Clifford Carrubba* The European Parliament and Transna­tional Political Representation: Party Groups and Political Conflict O ne of the central issues for the emerging Europol­ity is whether policy-making at the European level can or has been transformed so that a new political space is available for the articulation of organized so­cial interests that might transcend national borders. In particular, we might ask whether the European Parlia­ment(EP) is a suitable arena for contestation among transnational political inte rests, where European na­tional political parties re-align themselves in European parties reflecting transnational political conflict and provide voters with an electoral connection to EU pol­icy-making. This issue is the general focus of this paper. Specifi­cally, we re-examine the conclusion drawn in the litera­ture that party groups—coalitions of national party delega tions in the European Parliament—successfully organize legislative behavior in the EP such that na­tionality is dominated by shared transnational political interests defined mainly along traditional left-right po­litical lines. Based on analysis of a novel set of data re­garding EP legislative behavior, we will argue that the empirical basis for these conclusions is dubious. 1 In ad­dition, we discuss how party group management of legislative votes affects the transparency of EU policy­making and therefore the quality of accountability and representation in the EP. The major conclusion on this front is that party groups hide the vast majority of leg­islative votes from the eyes of voters, therefore obfus­cating legislative behavior. Thus, while the EP is often identified as a source of democratic accountability for EU policy-making because its members are directly elected, our findings suggest that in practice party groups significantly obstruct this channel of popular control over policy-making. The paper is divided into three parts. The first sec­tion surveys a variety of recent studies of voting beha v­ior in the EP designed to examine positive questions about the level of party group cohesion and the cha r­* University of Kentucky, Department of Political Science; Emory University, Department of Political Science. 1 The dataset is described more generally and used to address more ge neral issues of roll-call vote analysis in Carrubba, et. al.(2003). acter of party group competition. They examine whether a supranational party system exists and how it organizes political conflict. These data have also been used to address more general questions of normative democratic theory related to European integration. Adopting a“responsible party” model of democracy for the EU, this research has concluded that party groups, at least in terms of organizing the legislature, function in a manner consistent with normative expe c­tations about party cohesion and competition. The second section revisits the empirical basis for these positive and normative conclusions. Previous analyses of voting behavior in the EP rely on roll call votes. But roll call votes represent only a small fraction of EP votes and, importantly, the selection of votes for roll call may be endogenous to the level and type of conflict among MEPs. Thus, before we draw conclu­sions from roll call votes about the character of the party system in the EP, we need to evaluate whether roll call votes are a representative sample of voting be­havior. Using a novel dataset of information about votes not decided by roll-call, we conduct such an analysis. 2 The third section of the paper discusses how the sampling properties of roll call votes affect our conclu­sions about party group cohesion and competition. We also discuss how the prevalence and pattern of roll call vote requests affects the transparency of policy-making in the EP. The concluding section discusses what voting behavior and the use of roll calls indicate about whether the EP provide a forum for the articulation and contestation of transnational political interests and an electoral connection between voters and policy­makers in the EP. 2 The EP uses one of four methods for casting votes: 1) voice; 2) hand; 3) electronic; or 4) roll call. Voice and hand votes only record whether the motion passed, electronic votes record the final tally of the vote, and roll call votes record exactly how each legislator voted. The default method of voting is by voice or hand. Electronic votes occur when a voice or hand vote is too close to call, and RCVs occur if a party group or thirty-two members issue a formal request for a roll call. A small number of votes—e.g., the Commission investiture—require a RCV.