The European Parliament (EP) has grown from a “talking shop” to a fully-fledged legislative body in the European Union (EU)’s bicameral system. This process of communautarization and parliamentarization has generated considerable attention in the academic field. Furthermore, in today’s political environment—characterized by the polarization of public opinion, Brexit, the lingering effects of the Eurozone crisis, and the steady rise of Euroskeptical and radical forces throughout Europe—the role of the European Parliament (EP) is perhaps more critical to understand and assess than ever before. An overarching question in the literature is how “normal” the EP has become. Drawing on David Easton’s political systems approach, we examine this condition in three sub-literatures: the literature on inputs (demands), the literature on withinputs (inter-institutional processing of inputs), and the literature on outputs (EP decisions and actions, and the impact thereof). Building on this literature and contributing to the ongoing debate on the nature and significance of the EP, we propose to conceptualize the EP as “a normal parliament in a polity of a different kind.” This paradoxical conceptualization reflects abundant insights that, despite the EP gaining comprehensive lawmaking powers that are quite unparalleled in the world of international politics, its functioning and significance remain profoundly, distinctly, and probably durably, shaped by the multilevel nature of EU politics.
