Improving the explanatory power of bargaining models - New evidence from European Union studies

Focusing on recent studies of European Union legislative decision-making, this research note evaluates the current literature that attempts to improve the explanatory power of bargaining models by integrating game-theoretic spatial models with micro-level data gained from expert interviews or from document analyses

Pares inter pares? The bargaining success of the commission, the council, and the parliament in European Union legislative negotiations

This research note tries to determine how politically successful the Council, the Commission, and the European Parliament are in the area of EU legislative decision-making. After reviewing the literature, a research design is presented which incorporates information on the policy preferences of the different institutional actors for 70 recent EU legislative decisions that were negotiated under the consultation and the codecision procedure. We use correlation and OLS regression to analyze the distances between what the EU institutional actors want and what they eventually get out of the process. The findings of the analysis are that (1) the preference profiles of the three actors are rather dissimilar, and that (2) the success rates of the Council are higher than the rates of the Commission and Parliament

The Evolution of Legislative Power-Sharing in the EU Multilevel System

While governance in multilevel systems involves many processes, legislation at the upper jurisdictional level is at its core. The lower levels of jurisdiction are represented at the upper level through a second legislative chamber. The exact competences of the second versus the first chamber are indicative of the degree of integration of a multilevel system. This chapter explores the evolution of the relationship of the two chambers in the European Union: the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The authors develop an empirical approach to evaluate the gradual change of their relative legislative influence. The Consultation, Cooperation and Codecision II procedures are analysed for the period from 1976–2009, covering the most important changes. Parliament has clearly gained influence on legislation through Cooperation and, most prominently, Codecision II. Whereas a unanimous Council could mostly have its will in Consultation, Parliament and Council are on equal footing in Codecision II.publishe