"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

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.Council of Ministers; majority voting

Heading for the Exit: the United Kingdom’s Troubled Relationship with the European Union

So Brexit means Brexit, or so says Theresa May, the United Kingdom’s (UK) new Prime Minister. But what does it actually mean? And how did the UK find itself travelling along this stony road towards withdrawal from the European Union (EU)? This article looks at the back story, gives comments on the referendum held on 23 June 2016, and identifies some of the issues that now lie ahead of the UK and the EU as they address the consequences of the referendum vote for leaving the EU

Henry Wells Lawrence Memorial Lectures, Number 3

Third volume of addresses given as part of a lecture series in honor of Connecticut College Professor of History, Henry Wells Lawrence. Edited by Chester McA. Destler. Contents are as follows: The Reasons for the Failure of the Paris Peace Settlement, Hajo Holborn, Professor of History, Yale University From Individualism to Collectivism in American Land Policy, Paul Wallace Gates, Professor of History, Cornell University Representative Institutions in England and Europe in the Fifteenth Century in Relation to Later Developments, Helen Maud Cam, Professor of History, Radcliffe College, Harvard Universityhttps://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/ccbooks/1009/thumbnail.jp

Dramatic Form and Embodiment: Robert Browning and the Epistemology of Romantic Drama

Browning\u27s famous distinction between the subjective and the objective poet, Shelley and Shakespeare, as well as his own abandonment of the lyric in favour of dramatic poetry, has been commonly interpreted as an epistemological demarcation that separates Browning, as a Victorian poet, from his Romantic predecessors. Defining Shelley as the subjective poet who looks through the individual soul toward not what man sees, but what God sees--the Ideas of Plato (283), and Shakespeare as the objective poet who looks, not to his own soul, but upon the material world, choosing to produce things external and to deal with the doings of men (284), Browning delineates the work of Shelley as the poetry of idealism and the dramatic work of Shakespeare as the poetry of realism; therefore, as idealism and realism are commonly viewed as diametric opposites, Browning\u27s concept of objectivity has been seen as antithetical to the philosophical idealism of the subjective poet. Although the recent critical consensus has been that Browning rejects idealism, this study will argue that it is actually in idealism, where the ideal is seen to embody itself in the material forms of empirical reality, that Browning develops his poetics of objective realism. I look at the influence of German idealism on Browning\u27s objective poetics and how he utilizes the famous distinction made by August and Friedrich Schlegel between classical and romantic epistemology to explore the origins of Christian, romantic art and to trace its modern correlative in philosophical idealism. In doing this Browning presents his own dramatic poetry as the next objective stage in the historical development of romantic idealism. I focus on Browning\u27s neglected early verse dramas, because it is my contention that Browning\u27s theory of dramatic form and its culmination in the dramatic monologue cannot be considered in isolation from his plays. Indeed, these verse dramas are not only key to understanding Browning\u27s development of the monologue form, but also to the very epistemological grounds of his objective poetics