The inter-institutional division of power and time allocation in the European Parliament

Abstract

This paper examines whether the European Parliament strategically adapts to the interinstitutional balance of power by allocating its resources so that it spends more time in those areas of competence where it has the greatest power. Focusing on the legislative area, the authors examine whether differences in the inter-institutional division of power between different legislative procedures affect how long the EP spends on reaching its first reading position. They conduct a large-N analysis of over 3,000 legislative acts and a complementary analysis of treaty articles where the required decision procedure changed. In all analyses, the inter-institutional balance of power has the expected effect. The authors show that the EP spends more time reaching its first reading opinion in codecision than it does in the consultation procedure where it has less power, even when they control for the characteristics of the files debated and the level of disagreement on the files. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.