The so-called ‘standard account’ of democratic representation has been seriously challenged by the recent economic and debt crises in the European Union (EU): The conditional measures taken to rescue severely indebted member states as well as the wider reforms to EU economic governance structures have shown that the authority to make binding decisions does not necessarily have to coincide anymore with a citizenry defined by the territory of a nation-state. Decision-making power has increasingly become out of sync with democratic authorization and accountability mechanisms.
Surprisingly, the debate on the role of national parliaments within this configuration has so far been dominated by precisely this narrow focus on representation of a national constituency via scrutiny functions, and has furthermore neglected the role orientations of national parliamentarians (MPs) themselves. Especially the current crisis, however, could be an opportunity for MPs to claim new democratic links by Europeanizing their representative patterns beyond national borders. Hence, the research question addressed by this paper is: Which patterns of representation do national parliamentarians convey during the European Economic Crisis and how can we explain their choices?
Theoretically, four ideal typical EU patterns of representation by MPs are conceptualized from a Principal-Agent perspective. Essentially, the model broadens the abovementioned classic representative understanding of MPs in two ways: Firstly, to the classic form of bottom-up delegation through policy-influencing, it adds an emphasis on top-down accountability via policy-presenting. Secondly, the representative focus on national citizens is supplemented by a wider Europeanized focus of representation including citizens from other member states and a European citizenry. Empirically, this paper explores conveyed patterns and explains potential differences in the choice thereof with a comparative design including Austria, France, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. It uses a Representative Claims Analysis (RCA) of plenary debates related to the European debt crisis.
