Union Decision-making Research Articles

Roll call votes in the committees of the European Parliament: A new dataset

This forum article presents a new dataset on roll call votes in the committees of the European Parliament in the 2014 to 2019 legislative term. Data on roll call votes in the plenary has greatly informed research on the functioning of the European Parliament, broader legislative politics and European Union decision-making. Responding to transparency concerns about legislative decisions increasingly taken at committee level, a change of the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure introduced mandatory roll calls in committees from 2014. The article explains the context of the rule change, the data collection effort, and the data as such. A discussion of conflict across committees, party group cohesion and participation in roll call votes illustrates potential applications of the data.

From fringe to front? Assessing the voting influence of the radical right in the European Parliament

Scholars have long believed that the influence of radical right parties in the European Parliament was indirect due to their internal heterogeneity, limited involvement in parliamentary activities, and the existence of a cordon sanitaire. However, the consolidation of these parties, marked by the Identity and Democracy group becoming the fourth largest group in 2019, raises concerns about their impact on European Union decision-making. This article seeks to understand the extent and conditions under which the radical right group in the European Parliament can influence policymaking. By analysing roll-call votes from the 9th term (2019 to 2024), we introduce a measure of voting influence, operationalised as the ability of a party group to sway the outcome of a vote in plenary. Our analysis reveals that while the radical right group frequently joins winning majorities in the European Parliament, its voting influence remains limited because of the low levels of conflict in plenary.

Beyond the North–South divide: transnational coalitions in EU reforms

ABSTRACT The literature on fifteen years of European crises leaves the reader with a puzzle. Prominent accounts of the longest crisis – that of the euro area (EA) – assert that the EA is deeply divided between North and South, with Central Eastern European (CEE) member states being ignored. This makes it hard to explain how the union has managed to reform since 2008 and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Scholars have started to talk of transnational coalitions, but they equate coalition-formation with bringing together the like-minded, typically over solidarity versus sovereignty and more or less integration. However, coalitions of the like-minded are typically too small to sustain reforms and compromise has to be sought with others who have different preferences. To establish empirically how stable or fluid transnational coalitions are, we exploit the EMU|Choices database (Wasserfallen, Leuffen, Kudrna, and Degner 2019) [Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data. European Union Politics, 20 (1), 3–23] on EA reforms and our own original data on Covid-19 reforms. Our findings show a stable pattern but no geopolitical divide – coalitions have varying CEE members. These findings can provide a basis for developing a more plausible conceptualisation of transnational coalitions.

Multi-Criteria-Based Optimization Model for Sustainable Mobility and Transport

This paper deals with problems of freight transport sustainability from the perspective of four key factors: greenhouse gas production, fossil fuel dependence, congestion, and accident rates. It is based on the results of the FreightVision project, in which the author participated as a researcher and member of the design team. The aim was to develop a set of 35 recommendations to serve as a tool for European Union decision-making in transport policy matters at the highest level. The developed measures were prioritized, and a list of individual recommendations was drawn up according to their potentials. Then, the set of measures was processed using multi-criteria analysis tools, and these results were compared with the original list using comparative analysis to identify differences between the two approaches. The contribution of this work is the development of a methodology for evaluating the traffic measures according to their priorities and, at the same time, the verification of the empirical results thus obtained with the results that were the output of the mathematical processing. This work fills a research gap in a similar problem area by working with specific measures systematically developed for the purposes of analysis; these results are used to formulate recommendations for the European Commission whose policy decisions should lead to an increased level of freight transport sustainability.

Disparities in the level of regional technical infrastructure development in Poland: multicriteria analysis

Research background: The development policy currently promoted by the European Union is focused on the use of the territory?s internal resources. Among the factors affecting regional development, by building its potential, infrastructure, being a basic necessity for developing activity in a given area, is of significant importance. Hence, investment in infrastructure is critical to stimulating economic dynamism, as it is the basis for supporting a variety of measures aimed at economic growth. Purpose of the article: This paper aims to evaluate the level of development of technical infrastructure and changes taking place in this field in Polish voivodeships in 2008 and 2020. Methods: The study was carried out using the Hellwig development pattern method and a comparative analysis of the technical infrastructure of Polish regions. The above approach makes it possible to measure the diversity of the state and availability of infrastructure for the communities of the regions. Findings & value added: While implementing the study aim, particular attention was paid to the spatial differences in the level of development of the technical infrastructure of Polish voivodeships. The analysis enabled to distinguish groups of voivodeships with the highest, high, low, and very low level of technical infrastructure development. From a long-term perspective, the conducted research can be seen as a contribution to existing research and serve to further compare the impact of technical infrastructure on the economic development of countries. The strength of the study is the adequately long time span of the analysis (2008 ? the period of the financial crisis and 2020 ? the COVID 2019 pandemic), which provides a basis for the formation of the infrastructure in question. The added value of the article is also a regional perspective on the level of development of technical infrastructure using multidimensional methods of statistical analysis. The results of the study can be used to make decisions at the national level regarding the retrofitting of infrastructure in regions with a low level of infrastructure development. For the European Union's decision-makers they can be a source of knowledge of where to direct EU funds the purpose of which is the infrastructural development of regions.

The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any

Reviewed by: The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any Polly Jones Any, Carol. The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2020. xiv + 318 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00; $39.95. The Soviet Writers' Union was the main institution of Soviet literature from the early 1930s to the regime's collapse. Membership granted considerable privileges and imposed heavy obligations; it was one of the main determinants of Soviet-era writers' economic and political status. Despite its central role in twentieth-century literary history, however, the union has received scant scholarly attention in its own right. It is well-known that Writers' Union decision-making had decisive impacts on many authors' lives, and there now exist substantial collections of union archive documents, but analyses of the union's institutional history remain thin on the ground. John and Carol Garrard's classic study, which could draw on only limited Russian sources and focused more on writers' experiences than the union's organizational history, has until recently been the standard work in English. A handful of studies have [End Page 753] also appeared more recently in Russian, including excellent research on the litfond and union-run writers' accommodation. Carol Any's thorough history of the union, based on a huge amount of Soviet archive material, therefore represents a major step forward in our understanding of the institutional and political history of Soviet literature. Firstly, it offers by far the most detailed and nuanced account of the emergence of Stalinist literary culture to date (its final chapter offers a briefer overview of post-Stalinist developments). Much of the first half of the book is devoted to a detailed reconstruction of the union's emergence from the gruppovshchina of the 1920s and its institutionalization and organization in the 1930s. Any proves more conclusively than previous studies that the union was initially and widely preferred to proletarian literary organizations, because writers and leaders considered it more tolerant and less politicized. However, hopes for an inclusive, diverse Soviet literature were soon scuppered by the clear (though not always clearly articulated) desire of the party elite to control writers: aesthetically, politically, and in almost every other aspect of their lives. Particularly interesting is the rich account of Maksim Gor´kii's disillusionment with this direction of travel in the early 1930s, even as he still appeared to wield substantial influence over Soviet literature, Socialist Realism and the union itself. Despite their collaboration on creating the union and the state aesthetic doctrine, Gor´kii and Stalin were at odds almost from the start, and it was Stalin's (and the Politburo's) vision of literary controls that won out early on. This desire for control would continue to shape all key decisions on union personnel and policy, which are shown here as even more top-down than previously thought. Alongside this persuasive recasting of Gor´kii's role, the book also devotes unprecedented attention to other leading figures in the organization who have been strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) overlooked: Ivan Gronskii, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, Vladimir Ermilov and Vladimir Stavskii. Comparing them with the better-known union leader Aleksandr Fadeev, and drawing on a wide range of little-known personal and institutional sources, Any explores their intrigues and in-fighting as they led the union through Stalinist Terror, war and recurrent ideological campaigns. While these stories of union politics are richly fascinating, the conclusions drawn from them seem more familiar. Stalinist literary politics appears as a 'force-field' of top-down political pressures where even (or especially) union heads had 'limited agency'. At the same time, these bosses had to manoeuvre constantly to stay in the good graces of the party leadership and within the 'honour group' of the Soviet literary world. The overwhelming need to profess political loyalty entailed repeated betrayals of previously (and often sincerely) held positions on writers and their works, and literary policy. While these contradictory stances were illogical, the [End Page 754] literary system possessed and reproduced a distinct behavioural logic. As Any contends, such behaviour proved morally and...

Emotions in the European Union's decision-making: the reform of the Dublin System in the context of the refugee crisis

The European Union's decision-making process has mostly been pictured as a technocratic and consensual process with little or no place for the logics of passion. The reform of the Dublin System in the wake of the refugee crisis (2015–16) has been analyzed from different angles but not from a political psychology perspective in which emotions are fully taken into account. Crises are often seen as a window of opportunity because key players engage in a strategic process of sense-making. This article explores the role of emotions in this process: to what extent do emotions – seen via crisis-framing processes – contribute to the understanding of the reform of the Dublin System? To this purpose, I show first how emotions are related to crisis-framing efforts. Second, I discuss how the study of emotions contributes to the understanding of decision-making processes. I carry out a critical-frame analysis illustrated by a systematic qualitative content analysis of primary documentation. Data include European Parliament debates on the topic of the refugee crisis (covering also the points of view of the Commission and the Council), and policy documents and speeches by the main actors in the decision-making process, including relevant member states and non-governmental organizations.

Resilient Institutions: The Impact of Rule Change on Policy Outputs in European Union Decision-Making Processes

The evolution of the inter-institutional balance of powers has been a constant feature of the European integration process. Therefore, this thematic issue reopens these theoretical and empirical discussions by looking at an underexploited angle of research, namely the impact of rule change on policy outputs. We offer a discussion on how to theorise rule change, actors’ behaviour, and their impact on policy outputs. We also examine the links between theory and methods, noting the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for the study of institutional and policy change. We draw on the contributions of this thematic issue to delineate further paths to push forward the current frontiers in EU decision-making research.

Socio-economic Governance in the EU

This paper focuses on the complexity of socio-economic governance in the European Union. We define socio-economic governance as the process of governing societies in a situation where no single actor can claim absolute dominance thus socio-economic governance is the outcome of the interaction between European Union institutions (European Union decision-makers) and member states (national policy-makers). Since the onset of the global financial crisis and the euro crisis a decade ago, social issues have become substantially prominent in EU governance and policy debate. Furthermore, the Covid-19 crisis brought again social issues to the fore. There is no dedicated social governance framework in the European Union but there are several mechanisms (strategies, initiatives and regulations) through which social governance is practiced. At the same time, the framework for European economic governance has substantially been strengthened as a consequence of the global financial crisis and the euro crisis and can be characterised by a matured but incomplete framework. On the one hand, this paper aims to collect and investigate all governance tools related to economic and social issues in the European Union, and on the other hand, this research examines the impacts of those governance tools on member states.

Thinking about Brexit with Cristina Lafont

In this comment on Cristina Lafont’s new book Democracy without Shortcuts, I apply some of her ideas to the Brexit case in order to show that her identification of problematic shortcuts has significant analytical potential when it comes to understanding contemporary challenges to democracy. I argue that the push for Brexit can be viewed as a response to ‘expertocratic’ shortcuts in European Union decision-making, while David Cameron’s attempt to resolve the conflict once and for all by referendum constituted a ‘proceduralist’ shortcut. I conclude by asking whether Lafont’s suggestion to ‘constitutionalize’ discourses and decisions could also imply seeking a meta-deliberative assessment of democratic institutions.

From bioethanol containing fuels towards a fuel economy that includes methanol derived from renewable sources and the impact on European Union decision-making on transition pathways

Decision-making on the optimum transition pathway to an energy economy that meets agreed carbon reduction goals in the European Union (EU) by 2050 is challenging, because of the size of the infrastructural legacy, technological uncertainties, affordability and assumptions on future energy demand. This task is even more complicated in transportation because of additional issues, such as minimum travel range at acceptable impact on payload and ensuring hazzle-free long-distance driving in case of regionally varying fuel economies. Biofuels were the first viable option for a large-scale partly renewable fuel economy. E10 and B7 fuels have been successfully and remarkably smoothly introduced, owing to the fact that these are liquid and can be used in conventional combustion engines with little impact on full-tank travel range. In contrast, the decision-making process on biofuels in the EU has been particularly turbulent, with an initially favourable assessment changing into controversial. Here the compatibility between the fuel economies of member states and avoidance of disruptive social effects are considered as essential pre-requisite of a viable transition pathway. Rebalancing three different aspects of the social dimension of sustainability is used to demonstrate that a succession of infrastructures based on liquid fuels, with biofuels as an interlock towards an economy that includes methanol-based eFuel, has the potential to bring continuity, reduce dependence on anticipated technological advances and improve cost management. Awareness of this underexposed prospect of biofuel may positively affect the assessment on its role in a low-carbon fuel economy, potentially influencing the current decision-making process on biofuels.

Stuck in the Logic of Oslo: Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This article addresses the crucial question of why European policies in the IsraeliPalestinian arena have remained contradictory and partly counterproductive. It suggests that European policies are stuck in the (no longer pertinent) logic of the Oslo process to achieve a two-state solution. The reasons for this stasis include the peculiarities of the European Union's decision-making process, lack of consensus within the international community on any alternative framework, and Europe's prioritization of stability in its "neighborhood."

Crises and Responsiveness: Analysing German Preference Formation During the Eurozone Crisis

Do crises increase governmental responsiveness to citizens’ policy demands in the European Union? Building on the responsiveness literature, we challenge the claim that well-organized business interests determine governmental preferences in times of crisis. We argue instead, that vote-seeking governments rather account for citizens’ policy demands, given particularly high levels of saliency and public attention prevalent during crises. To test our theory, we analyse the formation of German governmental preferences on Economic and Monetary Union reforms during the Eurozone Crisis. We use novel data from the ‘EMUChoices’ project, public opinion polls as well as newspaper articles and trace the development of the German government’s positioning on reforms such as the new Eurozone bailout fund or the tightening of fiscal governance rules. Our analyses show that the German government, despite intensive lobbying efforts by banks and industry associations, responded rather closely to the demands of the public. On a normative ground, this finding highlights that input legitimacy in European Union decision-making is stronger than oftentimes assumed, at least at the level of governmental preference formation in times of crises.

What is the Autonomy of eu Law, and Why Does that Matter?

This article argues that the autonomy of eu law conveys a set of rules and principles but also constitutes a principle of eu law on its own terms. Its features suggest a distinctive existential character, in light of its internal and external reach but, particularly, a quality of extremity that has come to define its implications. Reflecting on the nature of autonomy matters because of the closing down of space for compromise it produces and what is uncovered about the nature of eu primary law in consequence. The effects of autonomy have principally concerned the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice, but the wider focus on autonomy of “Union decision-making” as a “core principle” of Brexit negotiations, for the eu part, reactivates a more generalised understanding of what the principle commands. That process also tests the extent to which an understanding of autonomy as an existential principle should be sustained.

Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data

The collection of articles in this special issue provides a comprehensive analysis of European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis. We investigate national preference formation and interstate bargaining related to major reforms of the Economic and Monetary Union. The analyses rely on the new ‘EMU Positions’ dataset. This dataset includes information about the preferences and saliences of all 28 EU member states and key EU institutions, regarding 47 contested issues negotiated between 2010 and 2015. In this introductory article, we first articulate the motivation behind this special issue and outline its collective contribution. We then briefly summarise each article within this collection; the articles analyse agenda setting, preference formation, coalition building, bargaining dynamics, and bargaining success. Finally, we present and discuss the ‘EMU Positions’ dataset.

Simultaneous and sequential voting under general decision rules

In an economic theory of voting, voters have positive or negative costs of voting in favor of a proposal and positive or negative benefits from an accepted proposal. When votes have equal weight then simultaneous voting mostly has a unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium which is independent of benefits. Voting with respect to (arbitrarily small) costs alone, however, often results in voting against the ‘true majority’ . If voting is sequential as in the roll call votes of the US Senate then, in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium, the ‘true majority’ prevails. It is shown that the result for sequential voting holds also with different weights of voters (shareholders), with multiple necessary majorities (European Union decision-making), or even more general rules. Simultaneous voting in the general model has more differentiated results.

Political and stakeholder’s ties in European Union agencies

ABSTRACTSome scholars consider that European Union agencies (EAs) were created as independent bodies in order to enhance the credibility of the European Union decision-making process. Scholars have typically focused on analysing the relationship that these agencies have with politicians. However, relatively little attention has been paid to their relationship with stakeholders. This study examines the professional trajectory of EA board members, identifying their career ties with politicians and stakeholders. Using an original dataset on the career trajectories of 338 top officials in 33 EAs, the findings provide evidence that the type of appointing body matters: on the one hand, the European Parliament is more likely – than the Commission – to appoint individuals having career ties to politicians; on the other hand, multiple veto players are less likely to designate board members linked to political players. Additionally, the findings suggest that agencies performing regulatory tasks seem to be more inclined to have lower levels of de facto independence from politicians.

Ties that bind, can also strangle: the Brexit threat and the hardships of reforming the EU

ABSTRACTThis article links insights from research on European Union (EU) decision-making and on differentiated integration to the recent negotiations about the future United Kingdom (UK)–EU relationship. We argue that since a Brexit would overturn well-established statics of EU decision-making, EU member states reacted differently to the British demands. States that feared a weakening of their position after a Brexit were more willing to grant concessions to the UK. This largely applies to most northern member states. In contrast, most other member states appeared more reluctant to meet the British expectations. First, these states hoped to improve their standing inside the EU after a Brexit. Second, reflecting deeper structural tensions, the British demands would have entailed higher prices for these member states. Anticipating heterogeneity between the other member states, and thus the stability enhancing mechanisms of the joint decision trap, the UK downscaled its demands before the European Council of February 2016. In consequence, the negotiations on the terms of Britain’s EU membership did not result in a grand overhaul of the EU, but rather in symbolic concessions aimed at pleasing British domestic politics without severely harming other member states’ interests.

European Parliamentary Oversight Behind Closed Doors

The lack of transparency in European Union (EU) decision-making and integration has been a long-standing concern in academic and public debate. Perhaps paradoxically, parliamentary oversight of executive power in the EU is also increasingly taking place behind closed doors. This closed oversight results from internal rule-making and interinstitutional agreements established by the European Parliament and executive actors without a public debate and is primarily aimed at safeguarding EU official secrets. This paper examines the role of the European Parliament in oversight in the context of EU executive secrecy. The paper argues that, although the European Parliament asserts its prerogatives for gaining access to EU official secrets, its current practice of closed oversight does not facilitate public deliberation. The European Parliament is yet to make serious efforts to develop its public deliberation function and, in doing so, to also bring attention to possible extensive secrecy practices.

The politics of global value chains: import-dependent firms and EU–Asia trade agreements

ABSTRACTIn 2006, the European Commission released its Global Europe Communication, in which it announced a shift from a multilateral to a bilateral trade strategy. One of the key pillars of this new strategy was to strengthen the bilateral trade relations with key Asian countries. In contrast to existing analyses that focus on European Union (EU) decision-makers’ agency, we propose an explanation for this notable shift in the EU's trade policy that stresses the political role of import-dependent firms. In light of the increasing integration of such firms into global value chains, the article argues that a plausible case can be made, both theoretically and empirically, that import-dependent firms had a clear stake in the signing of preferential trade agreements between the EU and Asian countries and that their lobbying efforts significantly affected the EU's decision to start negotiations on such agreements with South Korea, India and Vietnam.