Dear all, for the next session of our Brown Bag seminar, we are excited to host Philipp Bien. He will present his project "Scrutinizing or Strengthening Diplomatic Efforts? Parliamentarians in International Organizations" on Friday, Dec 05, at 12:00 in D351. Please find the abstract below:
Traditionally dominated by the executives, parliaments increasingly push for a more active role in multilateral affairs through International Parliamentary Institutions (IPIs). Conceptual research has argued that IPIs improve the democratic legitimacy of IOs by strengthening the accountability of IOs as they allow parliamentary oversight over executives. Empirically, it remains unclear if IPIs are accomplishing this task (Lipps, 2021; Malang, 2018). This paper provides further evidence in this regard. I theoretically derive the hypothesis that IPIs help MPs to hold the executive to account by way of improved access to otherwise scarce information. I test this hypothesis on a novel dataset on individual IPI membership and meeting attendance and question behavior in the German Bundestag between 2005 and 2021. Using fixed effects models, I show that MPs who are part of an IPI delegation do ask more questions to the foreign ministries, but that this effect is likely driven by self-selection. Within-MP evidence on individual meeting attendance and question behavior shows that MPs do not change their scrutiny behavior when they attend an IPI meeting. Further exploratory qualitative interview evidence suggest that MPs do not attend IPIs to improve their parliamentary oversight capacity, but rather to engage in informal diplomacy. My findings lend support to the water’s edge hypothesis and cast doubt on the claim that IPIs enhance the legitimacy of IOs by way of improving legislative control. We are looking forward to seeing you on Friday! All the best, Flora, Tyler, and David
-- David Knoll PhD Student Graduate School of the Social and Behavioural Sciences Department of Politics and Public Administration University of Konstanz https://www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/zuber/team/david-knoll/