The appointment of rapporteurs in the European parliament

Committee rapporteurs are central to decision making in many multiparty legislatures. It is not clear, however, whether these rapporteurs are best characterized as partisan animals or technical experts seeking consensus in nonmajoritarian institutions. We addressed this question by examining which members of the European Parliament become repeat rapporteurs. Using an original dataset comprising all committee reports from the 4th and 5th European Parliaments (1994-2004), we found that the report allocation process provides a way to pursue partisan policy goals within a multiparty, consensual institution that rewards both coalition building and expertise.