The Diffusion of the EU Model of Electoral Rights for the Direct Election of Members of Supranational Parliaments

Research on enfranchisement of EU citizens in EP elections has explained its original design (Lodge 1982; Closa 1992) and its national implementation (Herman 1979; Bieber 1984; Duff 1994). A number of other regional organizations have created supranational parliaments and some studies have explained the logic behind their creation (Malamud and Sousa 2007; Dri 2010). In some cases, their institutionalization also led to the introduction of the direct election of the members of these parliamentary assemblies. Yet, this enfranchisement process at the supranational level remains largely unexplored, as it happens for the variance in its design across different regional organizations and, within these, of the variances in implementation of these electoral rights. This paper aims to fill this gap by explaining the reasons for the introduction of electoral rights and their uneven implementation across six supranational parliaments holding direct elections. The paper draws on the diffusion theory which allows identifying the origin of a given institution and the mechanisms for its transference, as well as the elements explaining variance in its incorporation to receiving contexts. The first part of the paper applies a plausibility probe of the diffusion theory to the case of electoral rights, whereas the second part of the paper seeks to explain the patterns of decoupling in citizens’ enfranchisement at the supranational level (i.e. the adjustment of the diffused institution of directly elected parliaments to the receiving environment of the Member States).