ABSTRACT
Institutionalist approach to political science and international relations examines decision-making and preference formation by focusing on the institutional environment in which the various actors perform their activities and functions. Majority of the recent contributions on institutional features of parliamentary politics have been in the rational choice framework. Criticising alternative approaches for their excessive focus on the role and autonomy of the committees, Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins view the role of parliamentary parties as critical in understanding legislative organisation. Voting is the time when members of the Parliament must decide whether to support the group position or not, and therefore roll-call analysis is arguably a better method for measuring party cohesion inside the legislature than alternative methods. For the European Parliament to be called informationally efficient, and for the party groups to be able to achieve and especially maintain cohesion, two points are of particular importance: transnationality of committee membership, and specialisation within the party groups.
