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This book provides a comprehensive account of national parliaments´ adaptation to European integration.

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This book provides a comprehensive account of national parliaments´ adaptation to European integration. Advancing an explanation based on political parties´ constitutional preferences, the volume investigates the nature and variation of parliamentary rights in European Union affairs across countries and levels of governance. In some member states, parliaments have traditionally been strong and parties hold intergovernmental visions of European integration. In these
countries, strong parliamentary rights emerge in the context of parties´ efforts to realise their preferred constitutional design for the European polity. Parliamentary rights remain weakly developed where federally-oriented parties prevail, and where parliaments have long been marginal arenas in
domestic politics. Moreover, divergent constitutional preferences underlie inter-parliamentary disagreement on national parliaments´ collective rights at the European level. Constitutional preferences are key to understanding why a ´Senate´ of national parliaments never enjoyed support and why the alternatives subsequently put into place have stayed clear of committing national parliaments to any common policies.

This volume calls into question existing explanations that focus on strategic partisan incentives arising from minority and coalition government. It, furthermore rejects the exclusive attribution of parliamentary ´deficits´ to the structural constraints created by European integration and, instead, restores a sense of accountability for parliamentary rights to political parties and their ideas for the European Union´s constitutional design.

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This volume will, beyond any doubt, be of great interest to anyone interested in parliamentary studies, and in democracy in general, in the EU. It covers ample ground in these fields in considering numerous aspects and in not focusing on a specific legislature, which is definitely a strong point of this monograph. It also successfully fills a gap in the existing literature in explaining the mobilization of national parliaments at domestic level despite their limited involvement at EU level, and is clear and well-written. Diane Fromage, JMCS

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Thomas Winzen is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich. Thomas´ research interests encompass the study of European and parliamentary politics. Recent projects have focussed on the creation of international parliamentary institutions, parliamentary plenary debates, and differentiated European integration. His publications have appeared in prominent journals including the European Journal of Political
Research, European Union Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Journal of European Public Policy.

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