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The politics of justification? Applying the ‘Discourse Quality Index’ to the study of the European Parliament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Christopher Lord  and
Dionysia Tamvaki
Christopher Lord*
Affiliation:
ARENA – Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Dionysia Tamvaki
Affiliation:
Former Post-Doc Researcher on the Recon Programme, Co-ordinated from ARENA, The Centre for European Studies, The University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
*
*E-mail: Dtamva@gmail.com
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Abstract

In this paper, we apply a revised version of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) developed by Steenbergen et al. to European Parliament (EP) debates. This updated measurement instrument, after the inclusion of new indicators, helps us identify not just the principles of European Union (EU) deliberation but most importantly the favourable contextual conditions of supranational deliberation. We illustrate the new DQI coding for selected debates over the last EU parliamentary term and discuss how the data can be employed to assess the overall quality of deliberation in the EP. At the same time we demonstrate that institutional issues matter for the quality of EP discourse, as do Members of the European Parliaments’ personal characteristics. Issue attributes on the other hand, influence supranational deliberation but not in the expected direction.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 27 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2012

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