"When and Why the Council of Ministers of the EU Votes Explicitly"

This paper reports newly collected empirical data sets on explicitly contested voting at ministerial level in the Council of Ministers of the European Union. These data sets cover the period 1994-2004, with more detail for the years 1998-2004. They provide us with rather steady patterns of explicitly contested voting across the period in terms of: proportions of decisions taken where contested voting was recorded; the different levels of contestation by country; and the issue areas in which explicit voting occurred more often. The data sets draw on the material available on the Council's own website, but they have been supplemented by hand-collected data, in particular as regards issue areas and types of decision. Once arranged appropriately the data sets will be posted on the web, so that other researchers can have access to the material. The initial analysis of the data is reported in the second edition of Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, The Council of Ministers, Palgrave, forthcoming, Chapter 10. The data show that explicit voting on agreed decisions at ministerial level is rather rare, that in nearly half the roll calls dissent is expressed only by singleton member states, that nearly half the cases concern 'technical' decisions on agriculture and fisheries, and that Germany more often votes 'no' or abstains than any other member state. The data confirm that ministers generally endorse collective decisions by consensus, even on the 70% or so cases where they could activate qualified majority voting (QMV). To the extent that voting takes place in these latter cases, it occurs implicitly rather than explicitly, operates mostly at the level of officials rather than ministers, and is not recorded systematically in publicly accessible form. These patterns are consistent with earlier accounts based on qualitative interview evidence

From procedural chore to political prestige: historic development and recent reforms of the Presidency of the Council

'Die Ratspräsidentschaft wurden in den 1950er Jahren als administrative Pflicht auf der Basis strikter Gleichheit zwischen den damals zehn Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Gemeinschaften eingeführt. Heute stellt es ein Amt von hohem politischem Prestige dar, das in einer tieferen und weiteren Union wichtige Rechte und Verantwortlichkeiten mit sich bringt, auch wenn viele davon sowohl formell als auch informell beschränkt sind. Dieser Beitrag verfolgt die Veränderungen, die das Amt im Lauf der Zeit erfahren hat, als Folge unter anderem einer Schwächung der Kommission, der zunehmenden Rolle des Europäischen Rates, Änderungen der Abstimmungsregeln, Abweichungen von der sog. Gemeinschaftsmethode, Erweiterungen und neuen Regeln der Transparenz. Die historische Entwicklung und jüngste Reformen des Amtes werden nachgezeichnet, indem dessen vier zentrale Funktionen (Administration und Koordination, das Setzen politischer Prioritäten, Mediation sowie interne und externe Repräsentation) und die Organisation der Präsidentschaft sowohl aus der Perspektive der EU insgesamt als auch aus der Perspektive des den Vorsitz innehabenden Mitglieds untersucht werden. Die vordringliche Beschäftigung jüngerer Präsidentschaften mit den Themen Öffentlichkeit und Information mag als Versuch gewertet werden, es der Öffentlichkeit zu erleichtern, eine Präsidentschaft von der anderen zu unterscheiden.' (Autorenreferat)'The Council presidency was conceived in the 1950s as an administrative chore to be shared on the basis of strict equality among the member states of the then European Communities. Today, it is a politically prestigious office, carrying with it important rights and responsibilities in a wider and deeper European Union, although many of the office's rights and responsibilities are constrained both formally and informally. This article tracks the changes which have occurred to the office over time as a result inter alia of the weakening of the Commission, the burgeoning role of the European Council, changes in voting rules, deviations from the so-called 'Community method', enlargement and new transparency rules. The historic development and recent reforms of the office are traced by examining its four main functions (administration and coordination, the setting of political priorities, mediation, and internal and external representation) and the organisation of the presidency from the point of view both of the EU as a whole and of the member state in the chair. The preoccupation of recent presidencies with issues of publicity and information may be an attempt to help the public to distinguish one presidency from another.' (author's abstract)

The Janus Face of Brussels: Socialization and Everyday Decision Making in the European Union

This article examines the European Union\u27s Committee of Permanent Representatives, or COREPER, a group composed of the EU permanent representatives (permreps) and responsible for preparing upcoming ministerial meetings of the Council. As the heart of everyday decision making in the EU, COREPER is a key laboratory to test whether and how national officials become socialized into a Brussels-based collective Culture and what difference this makes for EU negotiations. The key scope conditions for COREPER socialization are high issue density/ intensity and insulation from domestic politics. COREPER also displays a range of socialization mechanisms, including strategic calculation, role playing, and normative suasion. Based on extensive interview data and a detailed case study of negotiations for a controversial EU citizenship directive, this article documents a socialization pathway in COREPER marked by adherence to a set of norm-guided rules and principled beliefs in collectively legitimating arguments and making decisions. COREPER socialization does not indicate a pattern of national identities being replaced or subsumed; rather, the evidence points to a socialization process based on a logic of appropriateness and an expanded conception of the self

Bargaining over an endogenous agenda

We present a model of bargaining in which a committee searches over the policy space, successively amending the default by voting over proposals. Bargaining ends when proposers are unable or unwilling to amend the existing default, which is then implemented. Our main goal is to study the policies that can be implemented from any initial default in a pure-strategy stationary Markov perfect equilibrium for an interesting class of environments including multidimensional and infinite policy spaces. It is convenient to start by characterizing the set of immovable policies that are implemented, once reached as default. These policies form a weakly stable set and, conversely, any weakly stable set is supported by some equilibrium. Using these results, we show that minimum-winning coalitions may not form and that a player who does not propose may nevertheless earn all of the surplus from agreement. We then consider how equilibrium outcomes change as we vary the order in which players propose, the identity of proposers, and the set of winning coalitions. First, if the policy space is well ordered, then the committee implements the ideal policy of the last proposer in a subset of a weakly stable set, but this result does not generalize to other cases. We also show, surprisingly, that a player may prefer not to be given the opportunity to propose and that the set of immovable policies may shrink as the quota increases. Finally, we derive conditions under which immovable policies in semi-Markovian equilibria form a consistent choice set

Non-mammalian model systems for studying neuro-immune interactions after spinal cord injury

Mammals exhibit poor recovery after injury to the spinal cord, where the loss of neurons and neuronal connections can be functionally devastating. In contrast, it has long been appreciated that many non-mammalian vertebrate species exhibit significant spontaneous functional recovery after spinal cord injury (SCI). Identifying the biological responses that support an organism\u27s inability or ability to recover function after SCI is an important scientific and medical question. While recent advances have been made in understanding the responses to SCI in mammals, we remain without an effective clinical therapy for SCI. A comparative biological approach to understanding responses to SCI in non-mammalian vertebrates will yield important insights into mechanisms that promote recovery after SCI. Presently, mechanistic studies aimed at elucidating responses, both intrinsic and extrinsic to neurons, that result in different regenerative capacities after SCI across vertebrates are just in their early stages. There are several inhibitory mechanisms proposed to impede recovery from SCI in mammals, including reactive gliosis and scarring, myelin associated proteins, and a suboptimal immune response. One hypothesis to explain the robust regenerative capacity of several non-mammalian vertebrates is a lack of some or all of these inhibitory signals. This review presents the current knowledge of immune responses to SCI in several non-mammalian species that achieve anatomical and functional recovery after SCI. This subject is of growing interest, as studies increasingly show both beneficial and detrimental roles of the immune response following SCI in mammals. A long-term goal of biomedical research in all experimental models of SCI is to understand how to promote functional recovery after SCI in humans. Therefore, understanding immune responses to SCI in non-mammalian vertebrates that achieve functional recovery spontaneously may identify novel strategies to modulate immune responses in less regenerative species and promote recovery after SCI