ABSTRACT
The ability of parliaments to control executives has declined since the 1950s, and most existing research claims that European integration has contributed a great deal to this decline, by providing executives with an arena away from domestic parliamentary scrutiny and a monopoly on information in an ever-larger portfolio of public policies. However, when looking empirically at the impact of the European integration on parliamentary government, one finds that in the 1990s most parliaments in Europe established institutions and mechanisms that forced governments to explain their policies and actions in the European arena to national legislatures. Also, since EU policy choices adopted constrain member states' domestic choices, parliamentary scrutiny of EU issues has contributed to greater supervision of executives on other domestic matters. It is argued that the driving force behind this partial assertion is the desire by non-governing parties and backbench parliamentarians to redress the ‘information gap’ between governing elites and the parliamentary rank-and-file.
