ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the voting behaviour of the transnational political groups in the European Parliament. It examines the cohesion and coalition behaviour of European Parliament (EP) party groups by focusing on roll-call votes. As Brigitte Boyce has remarked on the whole process of European integration: “aggregation of interest is a problem whose size is directly proportional to the number of interests that need to be aggregated.” When defending their decisions not to grant the EP more far-reaching legislative powers, member state governments and advocates of intergovernmentalism have often questioned “members of the Parliament ability to maintain party cohesion and to develop coherent policies.” Writing after the first European elections, Michael Palmer described the political groups “as broad coalitions and alliances of parliamentarians with similar, but not necessarily totally shared philosophies and objectives.” The European People’s Party and the Liberals are two groups with a high degree of transnationality and fractionalisation that also achieve relatively cohesive voting behaviour.
