Rewarding parliamentary work? The effect of MEP performance on re-selection.

The EP's considerable powers increasingly incentivize MEPs and political parties to pursue European careers and influence EP policy-making. This thesis tests the tacit assumption that electoral accountability is absent in European elections by examining the connection between an MEP's performance in parliament to his/her chances of being (s)electorally rewarded in the 2014 and 2019 EP elections. I argue that parties are policy-seeking in the EP and therefore reward more active and influential MEPs. I test whether parliamentary performance in the EP is selectorally rewarded by performing binomial regressions measuring the impact of parliamentary activities and leadership functions on MEPs' likelihood to be reselected and re-elected. In party-centered systems I further identify selectoral reward by the value of the ballot position an incumbent MEP obtains. For this I propose a novel measurement of ballot position value specifically designed for European elections. I also briefly explore instances where an MEP's ambition to return is denied by the party, i.e. the occurrence of de-selection. The empirical analysis shows that there is a weak - if any - connection between MEP performance, as measured here, and re(s)election chances. Any positive findings are not consistent across parliamentary terms or across electoral systems, even though the inconsistency is partly justified because of the electoral system variation. While performance may not be the main driver of selectoral turnover in the EP, an MEP's ambitions is not sufficient to return to the ballot either. The exploration of mismatches between ambition and reselection in the EP presented in this thesis illustrates de-selection may be more common than often presumed. An in-depth exploration of the selectoral accountability of MEPs and the priorities of selectorates charged with the composition of ballot lists for EP elections would be a welcome future line of research to contextualize the results presented in this thesis further.