The Power of the European Parliament in European Trade Negotiations

The  PhD project of Alice Jacobi M.A. aims at investigating the relationship between power and influence in the case of the European Parlament (EP) in the Common Commercial Policy (CCP). Investigating whether and under which conditions the increase of EP powers translates in influence in the CCP, this PhD will thus contribute to the literature on EP empowerment and more specifically the literature on the EP’s empowerment in trade policy. In addition, it will make a theoretical contribution to the question how institutional empowerment connects to influence.

First of all, the project conceptualises power and influence. Hereafter, the EP’s influence on trade agreements will be measured as the dependent variable. The dependent variable will be measured through a thorough analysis of the negotiation process of trade agreements in two steps: First, the dependent variable, influence, shall be measured by quantitative text analysis. Second, the so far under-researched mechanisms of how empowerment translates to influence will be investigated through process tracing. In this second step, intervening variables will be identified. The empirical base of the PhD project are trade agreements that have been negotiated since the enforcement of the Treaty of Lisbon.

This research project runs from 01.06.2021 to 01.06.2024.