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The European Parliament in Times of EU Crisis pp 1–21Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction: The Need for Further Research on the European Parliament

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Part of the book series: European Administrative Governance ((EAGOV))

Abstract

The introduction is structured in four sections. It first makes an assessment of the very vast scientific literature that has been devoted to the European Parliament (EP), and explains that it is structured according to two dimensions: disciplines and methods. It then examines the six main topics addressed by scholars studying the EP. In a third section, it analyses the evolutions of the research in the field, underlining its recent decline, and deals with issues such as routinisation and over-specialisation. The introduction, moreover, underlines the need for new research agendas to account for the many evolutions of the EP. It finally describes the contents of the volume, which is structured in four parts, dealing respectively with the place of the EP within the EU political system, its role in the EU policy-making, its election and internal politics, and lastly its impact on EU policies.

‘Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.’

Frank Herbert, Dune

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The creation by the EP of the ‘Parlemeter’, a biannual survey similar to the Eurobarometer, conducted twice a year in all EU member states, has provided researchers with a huge amount of data on a wide range of issues, such as citizens’ knowledge of the EP, their perceptions of the EU, and their expectations in view of the European elections, the EP, and the EU in general.

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  1. College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium

    Olivier Costa

  2. CNRS, Bordeaux, France

    Olivier Costa

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  1. Sciences Po Bordeaux, Centre Emile Durkheim, Pessac Cedex, France

    Olivier Costa

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Costa, O. (2019). Introduction: The Need for Further Research on the European Parliament. In: Costa, O. (eds) The European Parliament in Times of EU Crisis. European Administrative Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97391-3_1

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