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Scrutiny by means of debate: the Dutch parliamentary debate about the Banking Union

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Abstract

This paper suggests a new approach to analyze the level of scrutiny of EU affairs provided by national parliaments. We develop a fine-grained measurement of how parliaments responded to the Eurozone crisis, by means of an in-depth analysis of the debate in the Dutch Lower House about the Banking Union. We use a mixed method design to determine whether parliament(arian)s succeeded in giving the government a hard time—by being informed on the topic, asking valid questions, knowing the state of play in Brussels, or by committing and confronting the government on their negotiation behavior. We uncover variation in the level of scrutiny that so far was neglected by the literature. Our analyses furthermore reveal a punctuated pattern of the level of scrutiny that is related to media attention, the varying sensitivity of different parts of the dossier and the proximity to relevant meetings in Brussels.

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Notes

  1. Moreover, in the routines of the Dutch parliament, the debate about the latest and the upcoming Eurogroup and Ecofin Council are generally combined in one Committee meeting.

  2. The arguably more conservative Krippendorff’s Alpha for nominal data cαnominal was 0.901. See web-appendix 1 for a detailed discussion of the coding scheme and measures to ensure validity and intercoder reliability.

  3. Web-appendix 1 contains an overview of these components.

  4. The SRF is filled with contributions of banks in different member states. For example, contributions made by banks in Germany can be used to restructure banks in Italy (and vice versa).

  5. See web-appendix 2 for information on and analysis of the control variables.

  6. Authors interviews, the Hague 23-1 & 25-2-2017.

  7. Authors interview, the Hague, 21-12-2016.

  8. Authors interviews, The Hague 14-12-2016, 25-1-2017.

  9. Authors interviews, the Hague, 25-1-2017.

  10. Authors interviews, the Hague, 12-1-2017.

  11. Rather, it was the competence of national supervisors.

  12. Authors interviews, The Hague, 14-12-2016.

  13. Authors interviews, The Hague, 21-12-2016 & 12-01-2017.

  14. This also points to a potential limitation to our study; the asymmetry in the debates, which tended to be driven by a few key MPs. This means that personal characteristics and interests might also play a role.

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Funding

This work is part of a research project supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research under Grant DFF-4003-00199.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Alle 7, Aarhus, Denmark

    Sandrino Smeets

  2. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Sandrino Smeets

  3. Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Postbus 13228 2501 EE Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Rik de Ruiter

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  1. Sandrino Smeets
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  2. Rik de Ruiter
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Correspondence to Rik de Ruiter.

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Smeets, S., de Ruiter, R. Scrutiny by means of debate: the Dutch parliamentary debate about the Banking Union. Acta Polit 54, 564–583 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-018-0091-3

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