Giacomo Benedetto

Royal Holloway, University of London | RHUL · Department of Politics and International Relations

This article examines the changes of the Lisbon Treaty to the rules on agreeing the European Union's (EU) annual budget and multiannual financial framework. The comparative budgets literature as well as theories of agenda-setting, veto players and empowerment of the European Parliament inform the analysis of how the EU's budgetary powers changed an...

In this editorial statement we present a balance of the first year of life of the European Journal of Government and Economics. We discuss the main developments that concern the journal’s indexation by academic databases. We also comment on the approval of a code of publication ethics and malpractice. Finally, we emphasise the dangers of excessive...

In this editorial statement we explain the reasons for the creation of the European Journal of Government and Economics. We argue that there is a general shortage of academic journals. Although the new journal we are starting will not solve or significantly reduce this problem, it will represent a marginal step in the right direction. We also expla...

This article analyses the proposed reform of the annual budgetary procedure of the European Union (EU) during the 2002–04 Convention and Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). We offer two findings. First, the European Parliament already has the power to reduce agricultural and fisheries spending subject to support from a blocking minority in the Coun...

In this work, we compare the Euroscepticism of three West European parties from the same party family: the Communists. We address the questions of how the parties of France, Italy and Spain have adapted to the process of European integration and also the factors that have affected their different responses over time. The French and Italian parties...

The combination of parliamentary government and plurality elections in the British House of Commons is often assumed to produce highly cohesive parliamentary parties. However, the number and magnitude of backbench revolts against the governing party in the British Parliament has increased since the 1960s. The contention of this article is that part...

The Constitutional Treaty, like each set of reforms since the Single European Act, would constitute another incremental increase in the European Parliament’s powers. But the Parliament did not get everything it wanted. What we do in this paper is investigate why the European Parliament tends to ‘win’ in some areas but not in others. We consider fiv...

1 Abstract The legislative powers of the European Parliament (EP) vary consid-erably across procedures. Resolutions adopted by the EP have no direct policy implications. The position of the EP matters in the codecision procedure. Existing research has been criticized for pooling across proce-dures. This paper compares voting behaviour in in these t...

Recent literature on the European Parliament has focused on its powers arising from the co-operation and codecision procedures, although little attention has been paid as to who exercises this power. Rapporteurs are appointed to draft parliamentary reports on proposed legislation during the committee stages before presenting them to the plenary, ne...

The paper challenges the prevailing view that the European Parliament divides along ideological lines until the 2004 elections. Although the extent of left-right division between the political groups has increased, on issues of policy it remained negligible until 2004. Institutionalised consensus that is path dependent provides the explanatory fact...

Consensus is embedded in the European Parliament. One of its forms is in the proportionality that applies between political groups in the distribution of office positions, such as Committee Chairman or Bureau members, that affect policy outcomes. Consensus has withstood successive institutional change and enlargement of Parliament’s membership in 2...