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Inside European Parliament Politics

Informality, Information and Intergroups

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  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Laura Landorff

    1. Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

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  • Provides original and comprehensive, yet nuanced data on the meaning and motives that MEPs attach to their Intergroup activities
  • Enriches our knowledge on the life of the EP beyond descriptive accounts of its formal organs and position within the EU’s institutional set-up
  • Makes a valuable contribution to a strand within EU studies calling for a return of sociological approaches in European integration studies

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology (PSEPS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. Introduction

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 1-30

  3. Opening up Institutional Black Boxes: The European Parliament from a Sociological Perspective

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 31-60

  4. Intergroups in the European Parliament: Institutionalisation and Regulation

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 61-80

  5. Who Are the MEPs Making up Intergroups? A Sociopolitical Analysis

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 81-107

  6. Finding Allies: The Intergroup as Bridging Social Capital

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 109-134

  7. Seeking Information: The Intergroup as Informational Capital

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 135-157

  8. Conversion and Mobilisation of Political Capital

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 159-186

  9. Conclusion

    • Laura Landorff
    Pages 187-200

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 201-258
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Keywords

About this book

The study of the informal dimension of EU politics is more important than ever in order to understand how the EU system works. This book presents an innovative and original study on informal cross-party, cross-committee groupings in the European Parliament, so-called Intergroups. Building on extensive fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews and observations, this study shows how parliamentarians of the seventh European Parliament (2009-2014) gain a variety of social resources, such as social, informational and political capital, in Intergroups, which they subsequently mobilise to foster opinion-formation across political groups and parliamentary committees, and to shape the EP’s agenda and policy outcomes. Drawing on an interdisciplinary, Bourdieusian-inspired framework, this book makes a valuable contribution to sociological approaches in European integration studies. Shedding new light on the informal dimension of parliamentary practices and politics, this book appeals to EPas well as EU scholars, to students and practitioners of EU politics, and civil society.

Reviews

“A highly original study on a little studied aspect of the European Parliament’s Intergroups. It offers valuable information on the internal working of an institution that has become more and more central in the functioning of the EU. A must read.” (Niilo Kauppi, Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor and Directeur de recherche CNRS, France)

“Inside European Parliament Politics makes an important contribution to research on EU politics as it provides the most systematic, comprehensive, in-depth and theoretically sophisticated analysis of Intergroups in the European Parliament to date. It certainly contributes to filling a gap on this peculiar informal mechanism that is still being largely neglected by EU analysts. The author gathered impressive empirical evidence and convincingly explains in which manifold ways Intergroups matter for MEP’s.” (Professor Ulrike Liebert, Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics, University of Bremen, Germany)

 

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Laura Landorff

About the author

Laura Landorff is Assistant Professor in European Studies at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. Her research focuses on the European Parliament, informal politics, political sociology and European integration.

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