Inside the voting behaviour of MEPs: why only some votes are recorded in the European Parliament

Only some of the votes which take place in the European Parliament are so called ‘roll call votes’, where the positions of MEPs are recorded. These votes provide a set of reliable data that has been used in research to assess the dynamics of decision-making in the Parliament, but as Stefan Thierse writes, the factors which lead to a roll call vote being called are less well understood. Outlining results from a recent study, he finds that the reasons for calling roll-call votes often have more to do with advertising the positions taken by particular groups, rather than encouraging party discipline among individual MEPs.