Political Representation in the European Union. A Multi- Channel Approach.
Mårtensson, M. 2015. Political Representation in the European Union. A Multi- Channel
Approach. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of
Social Sciences 120. 70 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9412-4.
The European Union (EU) is the most far-reaching attempt yet undertaken to institutionalize
democratic policy-making beyond the nation-state. To what extent, and in what ways, do
various channels of representation contribute towards the realization of this aim? This
dissertation takes stock of current research on the EU’s system of representation, and seeks to
expand its agenda so that this central question can be properly addressed. In contrast to prior
empirical work in the field, the dissertation employs research designs that incorporate several
forms of representation into a unified evaluative framework. This multi-channel approach to
political representation paves the way for a systematic comparison of how different forms of
representation (electoral, territorial and corporate) perform in the EU context. It also makes
possible an empirical assessment of a key proposition in current representation theory: that
elections, in large and heterogeneous political systems, are outperformed by other forms of
representation.
The three articles in the dissertation draw on existing cross-country data, interviews with
policy-makers and a new dataset collected by the author. They scrutinize representation in
three principal channels: electoral representation in the European Parliament, government
representation in the preparatory bodies of the Council of Ministers, and representation
through organized interests that seek to influence EU policy. The first article examines the
balance of power that has emerged between these three channels of representation in the EU’s
legislative process, and how the current balance is likely to affect the Union’s legitimacy. The
second article investigates how different channels of representation perform in terms of
providing linkage between Brussels-based representatives and their domestic principals. The
third article examines the extent to which different channels of representation contribute to the
coordination of EU policy-making domestically, at the European level, and across the two
levels of government.
Finally, this dissertation makes a methodological contribution by applying social network
analysis (SNA) to classic problems of representation within and across different channels of
representation. This approach is novel to the field. Researchers should be able to exploit SNA
and relational data fruitfully in the future, in the study of representational relationships in the
EU and numerous other contexts.
Keywords: political representation, EU, multi-channel approach, European Parliament,
Council of Ministers, interest representation, linkage, Services Directive, social-network
analysis, coordination