Career Ambition and Legislative Behaviour in the European Parliament: A Longitudinal Analysis (1979-2019)

This paper builds upon the foundational work of the Hix and colleagues on the European Parliament (EP), examining the motivations that drive MEPs' legislative activities in multilevel systems, highlighting the effect of electoral institutions. Our study introduces three key innovations to enhance the understanding of the relationship between political ambitions and legislative behaviour. First, unlike previous studies, we extend our analysis over the entire history of the EP from the first direct elections of 1979 until 2019. This longitudinal approach allows us to capture the dynamics of change in territorial authorities in multilevel systems (namely stronger Europeanization and regionalization at the expanse of national authority) over time. Second, we extend the scope of investigated parliamentary activities by adding written questions to the classic analysis of voting. The analysis of written questions allows us to expand our study from an exclusive focus on EU-based activities (originally speeches and voting), to the content of legislative behaviour. We will show how ambition affects the content of parliamentary questions. Third, we refine the empirical measurement of political ambition thanks to a new typology of MEPs’ career patterns across electoral arenas, acknowledging its multifaceted nature. Drawing on a rich dataset from the Evolv’EP project (3654 MEPs’ career bio, 164.000 parliamentary questions and thousands of votes), we assess how changes in territorial authorities in multilevel systems influence the behaviour of MEPs over time. Moreover, our expanded analysis sheds light on the varying impacts of ambition on different facets of legislative work, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive understanding of political motivations in multilevel systems.