Political Integration and National Parliaments in Europe

Abstract

Does political integration challenge democracy by undermining the impact of national parliaments and parliamentary elections on policy making? This question has given rise to an expansive body of literature on the role of national parliaments in the world’s most advanced project of political integration, the European Union. This paper reviews what we have learned from this literature, focussing on how European integration affects and is affected by (1) parliamentary influence on legislation and (2) parliamentary links to citizens. While we have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of a variety of mutual effects regarding the first question, we observe few effects between European integration and parliamentary links to citizens.