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This chapter illustrates that the ‘West Lothian Question’ is not an issue between the Scottish and English public. It explains how the attitudes of those living on both sides of the border have developed in the immediate wake of the creation of the Scottish Parliament. It specifically highlights the three sets of attitudes that might be thought to be central to the relationship between two countries that share the same state: constitutional preferences, policy preferences and identities. The extent to which people in the two countries have similar or different constitutional preferences is investigated. The chapter then explores how far people in England and Scotland do or do not share similar policy preferences. It further looks at how far people in England and Scotland do or do not have a set of identities and symbols in common. Devolution has so far not helped to drive England and Scotland apart from each other. They lack on strong common commitment to a shared set of identities and symbols, but even they appear to have enough in common for them to be capable of sharing the same multinational state.

There is something puzzling about parliamentary oversight competences in EU affairs and domestic policy-making alike. The majority parties that would have the voting power to create these competences do not urgently need them, while the opposition parties that need institutional rights lack the votes to get them. This chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of existing explanations of national parliaments’ institutional adaptation to European integration, such as those of accounts based on party political incentives arising from minority and coalition governance. It then elaborates an alternative account, relating EU-related parliamentary reforms to the nature and configuration of political parties’ constitutional preferences.

This chapter asks why national parliaments lack a strong ‘direct’ or ‘collective’ European role in EU policy-making. Extending an explanation based on constitutional preferences to this question, the chapter argues that intergovernmentally oriented parliamentarians oppose a ‘direct’ European role that is incompatible with a focus on domestic oversight. Parliamentarians with federal constitutional preferences oppose a ‘direct’ European role that they consider as a threat to the European-level dominance of the European Parliament. Furthermore, parliamentarians are sceptical of a direct role to the extent that ‘their’ parliaments enjoy significant domestic and EU-related rights at the domestic level. Different configurations of constitutional preferences and institutions across countries contribute to divergent aggregate institutional preferences and render inter-parliamentary agreement on a ‘strong’ direct European role difficult.

This concluding chapter summarizes the main argument that relates national parliaments’ institutional adaptation to European integration to the constitutional preferences of political parties. It surveys the empirical findings and contrasts them with the results of previous studies. Considering the broader implications of the arguments and evidence, the chapter contends that an explanation based on constitutional preferences encourages the attribution of accountability for variation in parliamentary rights to political parties. It also discusses the pitfalls of building parliamentary rights on constitutional preferences. It may be the case that ‘reality bites’. Newly created oversight institutions in EU affairs might not affect political behaviour in daily EU policy-making.

This chapter traces debates about the reform of EU-related oversight institutions in the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer, from the mid-1980s to2010. Do the assumptions and mechanisms underlying an explanation of national parliaments’ adaptation to European integration based on constitutional preferences play out as expected in reform debates? The chapter shows that the Dutch parties’ positions and arguments about reform reflect their constitutional preferences. It further underlines that parliamentary parties from the same country seek mutually acceptable reform compromises, even in the face of criticism of the proposed institutional changes by party leaders in the cabinet. The results provide support for key assumptions and mechanisms envisaged in the theoretical argument.

This chapter introduces the two research questions of the study: What explains domestic parliamentary adaptation to European integration?, and Why have parliaments reacted to integration with domestic reforms, whereas their collective European role has remained weak? It summarizes the arguments and findings of the following chapters. The key point is that the nature of, and cross-national variation in, national parliaments’ institutional adaptation to European integration results from the ideologically and institutionally motivated constitutional preferences of political parties. This argument implies that the potentials and pitfalls of parliamentary adaptation are mixed: agency and accountability on the one hand, and low impact on the other.

This chapter analyses variation in the strength of national parliaments’ oversight institutions across countries, and in the likelihood of reforms of oversight institutions in response to reform opportunities arising from the process of European integration. It contrasts an explanation based on constitutional preferences with an alternative view stressing strategic partisan exigencies arising from minority and coalition government. The empirical results support the first account. Most importantly, where partisan configurations in national parliaments strongly favour European integration, and can thus be said to tend towards federal constitutional preferences, reforms that strengthen EU-related oversight institutions at ‘home’ are highly unlikely, whereas they become almost certain otherwise. In contrast, oversight institutions appear to be unrelated to the occurrence of minority government, and are affected by coalition conflicts only in exceptional circumstances.

This chapter addresses whether the Scottish National Party (SNP)'s ‘victory’ in May 2007 does show that the introduction of devolution has served to undermine public support for the Anglo-Scottish Union in Scotland. It also evaluates the trends in national identity. It then looks at Scots' constitutional preferences and how they might have been influenced by devolution. Devolution is more probably to be regarded as having had a favourable rather than an unfavourable impact on a number of measures. There is significant public support for changing the way in which the devolved institutions are financed. The SNP may be devoted to making Scotland independent, but its election to office does not appear to have signified growing public discontent with the Union. The SNP has always outscored other parties in Scotland when people are asked how closely the various parties look after the interests of people in Scotland.