Deeper Integration and Voting on the Common European External Tariff

Since the 1987 Single European Act, the European Union has deepened its integration process. In the case of the determination of the common external tariff, deeper integration implies that the tariff reflected union-wide preferences. If integration is still shallow, though, the observed tariff will reflect the preferences of a pivotal national government. How governments voted, however, was not public information. This paper uses a unique dataset to test the deep vs. shallow integration hypothesis in an effort to shed light on how decisions are made in the EU. Results support the deep integration hypothesis

Regulation formulation in the European Union: a case of the life insurance industry

This paper provides an illustration of the difficulties in harmonising European Member State legislation and explores the intricacies and practicalities of successful decision-making in the European Union [EU]. In the aftermath of the Single European Act [SEA], the beginnings of the Single European Market [SEM] and the initiation of monetary union it has become evident that financial service sectors need to involve themselves in the creation of the EU. Through a study of the discussions that revolved around the creation of the Third Life Assurance Directive this paper investigates the extent of sector involvement in EU decision-making and in doing so, analyses the utilisation of interest groups and supranationality in the process of European regulation formulation

Decision-making in the European Union's Council of Ministers.

This thesis presents a theory of voting behaviour for the governments represented in the European Union's Council of Ministers and analyses a large original data set covering all legislation adopted by the EU from 1999 to 2004. It argues that the governments' voting behaviour is dominated by party political preferences rather than national preferences over EU integration issues. The already very elaborate EU policies and processes for adopting laws mean that most issues related to decisions on the degree of integration are solved outside the Council. Instead, decision-making in the Council is over actual policy content and the level of regulation. Consequently, the governments negotiate over possible policy outcomes along the traditional left/right political dimension. In addition to presenting the actors in the Council as political parties rather than national representatives, the thesis argues that the governments act strategically rather than sincerely when deciding how best to pursue their policy preferences. The Council members consider their possibilities for influencing new legislation as dictated by their voting power, and voting behaviour is the result of strategic estimations of when support or disagreement needs to be voiced, and how. Empirically, the prediction is a difference between left- and right-wing governments and, within this policy space, between small- and large member states. The theory is tested in a series of multivariate analyses and geometrical scaling methods. A range of alternative hypotheses from the literature is included in each of the empirical tests. The evidence supports the theory: Legislative politics in the Council take place within a one-dimensional policy space, and each of the Council members' ideal policy points are found to be aligned with their preferences over left/right political issues in the domestic sphere. Furthermore, the member states that experienced a change in government during this period similarly changed their voting behaviour in the Council, indicating that EU politics are indeed a party political matter. When taking into account also the governments' voting power, larger Council members in the opposition are generally more likely to oppose the majority than smaller members. However, smaller members frequently use the option of making formal statements following a vote as a mean of voicing disagreement. The findings are robust across different stages of the legislative process as well as most policy areas, although a variance in magnitude appears

Corporate diplomacy and European Community information technology policies: The influence of multi-nationals and interest groups, 1980-1993.

While the European-owned information technology multinationals, as represented in the IT Roundtable, exerted a preponderant influence on the development, approval and implementation of ESPRIT in the early and mid-1980s; by the early 1990s, they appeared unable to translate their policy preferences into policy outcomes.' This thesis seeks to establish whether or not these companies lost some of their influence over the European Community and, if so, why. It argues that the IT Roundtable members' corporate diplomacy was less effective in the late 1980s and early 1990s than it was in the early and mid-1980s, for the following three reasons. First, the effectiveness of the IT Roundtable as a channel of political activity was undermined by its declining representativeness, following the structural changes taking place in the industry; by its lack of internal coherence caused by the diverging interests of its members; and by the perception that the Roundtable was suitable for articulating preferences in the area of R&TD but inappropriate for voicing broader preferences on industrial policy. Second, doubts about the necessity of an indigenous IT capability depreciated the perceived value of the asset which conferred political weight on the Roundtable companies: their capability to supply economically and militarily strategic technologies and products. While the realization of short-term economic objectives became more important - even amongst those governments paying lip-service to the necessity of an indigenous IT capability - public investments into the Roundtable companies, ridden by crisis, were not perceived as yielding "value for money", particularly in terms of employment and social and economic cohesion. Third, the EC's ability to realize the IT Roundtable's policy preferences was hampered by the lack of consensus amongst the national governments; the latter's insistence on subsidiarity, national solutions and juste retour; their resistance to spending money, and the fragmentation of the EC's decision-making structure. The EC's ability to supply the policies requested was further hampered by the increasingly globalized nature of the IT industry, and the EC's limited economic leverage over Japan and the US in international negotiations on IT