ABSTRACT
Introduction Since the outbreak of the European financial crisis national parliamentary parties have been involved in approving the new legal and policy measures reforming European economic governance. The new role has been particularly challenging for national parties. On one hand, parliamentary parties, being responsible for tailoring national budgets, possess considerable fiscal policy expertise. Furthermore, financial crises are by no means new for parties: since the Second World War European economies have been regularly confronted with currency or asset prices crises. On the other hand, the introduction of a common currency (euro) radically changed the initial scope conditions. First, members of the eurozone were limited in their choice of anti-crisis policies: for instance, governments were no longer free to devaluate. Second, the crisis generated a profound tension between the domestic demands of national constituencies and international interdependence of decision-makers; that is, in many states the preferences of voters collided with the anti-crisis approach agreed by governments of the eurozone. The crisis also antagonized northern and southern European states giving rise to a new conflict between ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ eurozone states. Against that background, the general question emerges: to what extent has parliamentary parties’ voting behaviour on anti-crisis measures been affected by the new economic and institutional conditions? In particular, which factors account for national parliamentary parties’ vote outcomes on the major legislative measures reforming European economic governance? What are the major conflict lines among the analyzed parties? Are the established patterns of political parties’ voting behaviour confirmed or disconfirmed by the new empirical data?
