The emphasis national parties put on European Union (EU) issues in their manifestos varies to a great extent between countries. A systematic explanation of this variation is, however, still lacking. We address this gap by exploring the effect of the temporal proximity between national and European Parliament (EP) elections within the national electoral cycle on national parties’ EU issue emphasis. Multilevel mixed-effects Tobit regressions on a sample of 956 manifestos, produced by 340 parties running for national elections in 27 EU member states between 1979 and 2019, indicate that temporal proximity displays a positive effect on national parties’ EU issue salience: the closer in time EP elections are to national elections within the national electoral cycle, the more parties emphasize EU issues in their national election manifestos. This is particularly the case for non-Eurosceptic parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition in EU member states.

Most analyses dealing with the interaction of parties in parliament assume their interests to be fixed between elections. However, a rational perspective suggests that parties adapt their behaviour throughout the legislative term. I argue that this change is influenced by incentives and possibilities to shape legislation and the need to distinguish oneself from competitors. While for government parties it matters whether they have to share offices, for opposition parties the influence on policy-making is important. By examining the sentiment of all parliamentary speeches on bill proposals from six established democracies over more than twenty years, I analyse institutional and contextual effects. The results show that single-party governments tend to become more positive towards the end of the legislative cycle compared to coalition governments. On the other hand, opposition parties under minority governments, or with more institutionalised influence on government bills, show a more negative trend in comparison to their counterparts.

This paper examines the capacity of governments to implement fiscal reforms in times of austerity. Unlike existing studies, which mostly focus on gradual policy changes like government spending, this analysis distinguishes between consolidation events and consolidation size to examine fiscal reforms. This strategy clarifies contradictory results in previous research and yields new insights into the underlying mechanism of fiscal reform. Based on an action-based data set that includes information about discretionary changes in taxation and government spending policies from 1978 until 2009 for 16 advanced (OECD) countries, the study shows that left and right governments are equally likely to implement cuts. Strategic considerations play a major role for the timing of fiscal consolidation, as the probability of fiscal cuts is highest at the beginning of the legislative term. When governments reform, the left cut as much as necessary, whereas right governments take the opportunity to reduce spending more.