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

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