Union Decision-making Research Articles

Beyond rules and resources: Parliamentary scrutiny of EU policy proposals

This article examines the factors that shape parties' motivation to invest time and other resources in scrutinizing European Union policy proposals. We distinguish between two different motivations to engage in scrutiny activities. First, parties use such mechanisms to influence the national position directly. Second, parties play a two-level game and use scrutiny to manipulate their negotiator's domestic constraints. Both arguments depend on a set of conditions, namely the government's relative strength in Brussels, the transparency of the European Union decision-making process as well as the government's relative strength and cohesion in the domestic arena. On the empirical side, we study scrutiny at the level of committees in the national parliaments of Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom over a 13-year period, during which 32 governments are covered. Our findings suggest that parties deploy scrutiny to shift the domestic constraint strategically, but only if such a shift can be communicated convincingly to the international bargaining partners. Moreover, our findings suggest that opposition parties employ such measures to influence the position of a weak government.

After Lisbon: National Parliaments in the European Union

The role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of European Union decision-making. Strengthening parliamentary scrutiny and participation rights at both the domestic and the European level is often seen as an effective measure to address the perceived ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU – the reason for affording them a prominent place in the newly introduced ‘Provisions on Democratic Principles’ of the Union (in particular Article 12 TEU). Whether this aim can be met, however, depends crucially on the degree and the manner in which national parliaments actually make use of their institutional rights. This volume therefore aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the activities of national parliaments in the post-Lisbon era. This includes the ‘classic’ scrutiny of EU legislation, but also parliamentary involvement in EU foreign policy, the use of new parliamentary participation rights of the Lisbon Treaty (Early Warning System), their role regarding the EU’s response to the eurozone crisis and the, so far under-researched, role of parliamentary administrators in scrutiny processes. This introduction provides the guiding theoretical framework for the contributions. Based on neo-institutionalist approaches, it discusses institutional capacities and political motivation as the two key explanatory factors in the analysis of parliamentary involvement in EU affairs.

EU Politicisation and National Parliaments: Visibility of Choices and Better Aligned Ministers?

Recently there have been calls for a politicisation of European Union (EU) decision-making. This study discusses how politicisation can be achieved and how it affects the way national parliaments fulfil their citizen- and government-related functions in EU decision-making. First, it is argued that politicisation requires legislative Commission proposals that polarise between centre-left and centre-right actors. By changing the incentive structure of national parties, such proposals help to overcome parties' reluctance to discuss European issues publicly and hence provide citizens with electoral alternatives in EU decision-making. Second, it is argued that the higher salience of polarising proposals also increases national parliaments' attention for, and hence control over, the processes on the European level. The plausibility of the arguments is evaluated empirically through a comparative case study of the discussions in Germany and Austria on probably one of the most politicised examples of day-to-day EU decision-making in recent years – the Services directive.

EU law revisions and legislative drift

European Union research has made great strides in understanding the dynamics of the European Union decision-making process. In contrast to this progress, the dynamics unfolding after the enactment of a European Union secondary legislative act has largely been ignored. Some of these acts remain in force in their original form for several years while others are revised soon after their enactment. What factors account for this variation? We empirically analyze the proposition that in the presence of ‘legislative drift,’ i.e. the intertemporal variation of decision-makers’ preferences, major revisions of European Union legislative acts are more likely to occur. Based on an analysis of the revision histories of 158 major European Union acts in the time period between 1958 and 2003, we find significant support for this hypothesis.

Is There a Real Model in Spain for Autonomous Communities to Participate in the Council of the European Union or Is It Only a Mirage?

Since December 2004 the Autonomous Communities have been able to form a part of the Spanish Delegation in the Council of European Union. Specifically, in the Conference on Affairs Related to the European Union (Conferencia para Asuntos Relacionados con la Unión Europea, CARUE). In December 2004, the CARUE adopted two agreements to regulate the participation of the Autonomous Communities in some of the Council formations and its preparatory bodies. This article analyses whether there really is a system of participation for the Spanish regions before the Council and preparatory bodies, or whether it is merely a mirage. To answer the above question, we should consider two areas: first, the participation process of the Autonomous Communities in the preparatory bodies—the Working Parties and the Permanent Representatives Committee; second, the Autonomous Communities direct representation on the Spanish Delegation in some configurations of the Council. The application of these agreements has been a little confusing and subject to change depending on the configurations of the Council. The initial starting point was that greater involvement of the Autonomous Communities in the European Union decision-making process would strengthen the internal cohesion of the State. However, the extent of that involvement, far from being consensual, appears as a difficulty. At present, despite some attempts to isolate European affairs from other controversial issues regarding the Spanish territorial model, it is mixed in practice. In fact, the current model, instead of contributing to the cohesion between administrations, is an additional source of dispute.

Regions and Subsidiarity in the European Union: A Look at the Role of the Spanish and other Regional Parliaments in the Monitoring of Compliance with the Principle of Subsidiarity

European regions have had a limited involvement in the European Union decision-making process, despite having an important role in the implementation of EU acts. The principle of subsidiarity, as established in the Treaty of Lisbon, has acquired an important regional dimension, which results in the possibility of the regional parliaments playing a role in the law-making process in the European Union for the first time. However, the internal mechanism set up in Spain narrows the possible scope of involvement of the regional parliaments, subordinating it to the national Parliament's will and even placing the regional governments in a similar position as the legislatures.

Lobbying the European Commission: Open or Secret?

1 It is already widely recognized not only that there is little popular involvement in the European Union's decision-making, but also that there is scant public knowledge of “who” its decision-make...

Promoting Openness by “Patching” European Directives: Internet-Based Campaigning during the EU Telecoms Package Reform

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how activists, rooted in the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, interfere in European Union decision-making in order to advocate principles of freedom, openness, transparency, access to information, participation, creativity, and sharing. The analysis is based on a case study of a French activist group's campaign against the strengthening of copyright enforcement measures and for Net neutrality in the reform of the Telecoms Package—a set of five directives regulating the European Union's telecommunications sector. I discuss how free and open source principles sustain their action repertoire and claims during the campaign in the light of recent literature regarding Internet activism and the FLOSS movement.

Too big to run? Analysing the impact of enlargement on the speed of EU decision-making

The article analyses how enlargements affect the speed of European Union (EU) decision-making. In line with rationalist theories of group choice, we argue that enlargements increase the costs of organizing decisions, i.e. transaction costs. Increasing transaction costs, in turn, slow down EU law-making. We test this theory by estimating Cox regression models that incorporate time-varying covariates on all directives, regulations and decisions submitted by the European Commission between 1976 and 2006. In contrast to previous analyses, we show that an increase in group size indeed slows down EU law-making.

The EU Constitutional Process: A Failure of Political Representation?

This paper proposes to assess the representative quality of European Union decision-making by way of a micro-approach which traces the effectiveness of the mechanisms of representation that connect the European peoples to the decision-making process. In particular, it proposes to distinguish systematically between ‘upstream’ controls that delimit the mandate of political representatives and ‘downstream’ controls that allow political representatives to justify their decisions through deliberation. This approach is applied to the various phases of the making of the EU Constitutional Treaty and its dramatic failure due to the negative referendum verdicts in France and the Netherlands. Thus it is demonstrated that the EU Constitutional process has suffered from a lack of mechanisms for aligning politicians with public opinion. In particular, ‘upstream’ controls fell short in the very conception of the process in the 2001 Laeken Declaration and in the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Conference. On the other hand, ‘downstream’ controls remained under-activated in the European Convention and came too late in the ratification phase. Thus the Laeken process emerges as a process involving drifting political elites that, once brought face to face with their democratic principals again, failed to convincingly justify their actions. As the superimposition of the various phases had the overall effect of blurring all lines of political control and accountability over the process, it was eventually to the people to pull the emergency brake to prevent its outcome from taking effect.

SEASON IN THE SUN

FOR EUROPEAN chemical companies that specialize in crop protection, the year started out well and promises to continue that way. However, just as farmers do, chemical makers are keeping an eye on the clouds on the horizon. The cloud now is new legislation going through the European Union decision-making procedure. It is intended to replace Directive 91/414/EEC, which was drafted in the 1980s for agrochemical control. The package was first proposed by the European Commission in July 2006. The commission incorporated amendments suggested in a first legislative reading, and the legislation is now ready for a second reading by the European Parliament later this year or early next year. It is common for industry trade groups to lobby against laws that tighten controls over their sectors. But this time, there is a profound change in the philosophy shaping the legislation, says Friedhelm Schmider, director general of the Brussels-based European Crop Protection Association. Until now, safety ...

Temporal Change and the Process of European Union Decision-Making

Temporal Change and the Process of European Union Decision-Making

Survival Analysis and European Union Decision-making

Practitioners as well as scholars of European integration have for decades debated why it takes so long for the European Union (EU) to adopt legislation and how to improve decision-making efficiency. Four studies have investigated decision-making speed using survival analysis, a particularly appropriate quantitative technique. In this paper I show that all four studies suffer from serious methodological problems that render their conclusions unreliable. I then outline where work in this area should focus, and take an initial step in this direction by fitting a methodologically more appropriate survival model to my 2002 EU decision-making data set (Golub, 2002). Substantively, the results indicate that throughout the EU's history, for the most important types of legislation, qualified majority voting (QMV) and EU enlargement have increased decision-making speed, whereas empowerment of the European Parliament and extreme preference heterogeneity amongst decision-makers have decreased it. Theoretically, formal approaches — spatial models and especially coalition theory — do a better job of explaining these results than do perspectives that privilege informal norms.

Girl Power, Mainstreaming and Critical Mass: Women's Leadership and Policy Paradigm Shift in Germany's Red-Green Coalition, 1998–20021

SUMMARY Women's increased presence in German government since 1998 testifies to generational change, as well as to the completion of a gender-specific “long march through the institutions.” Securing more than 30% of the Bundestag seats, female lawmakers also reached critical mass in the Red-Green Cabinet, a coalition of the Social Democratic and Green Parties formed in 1998. This study of ministerial feminism, 1998–2002, shows that women are making a difference in Germany; these leaders have initiated paradigm shifts “bigger than the sum of the parts” insofar as national equality policies are reinforced at the European Union level, thanks to gender mainstreaming. Bolstered by new anti-discrimination articles in the Amsterdam Treaty, these women have undertaken strategic reforms in areas of gender and justice; research and technology; family and career; health, welfare and consumer protection; sustainable development, foreign aid, migration and human rights. Women have profited from supranational integration, in part because European Union decision-making builds on an inclusive concept of “power with,” in contrast to the traditional national exercise of “power over.”

Mapping Out Political Europe: Coalition Patterns in EU Decision-Making

This article evaluates member states’ and supranational institutions’ preference patterns in European Union decision-making. We present a research design that encompasses data on the policy profiles of the 15 member states, the Commission, and the European Parliament for 70 European legal acts that were negotiated just before the May 2004 enlargement. We apply principal-component analysis which results in reduction of the different policy issues into a three-dimensional solution. The Commission and the European Parliament are much more favorable toward increased integration than the Council members are. Thus, there appears to be a “north versus south” coalition pattern rather than a “Franco-German axis.” The positions of Ireland and Belgium indicate that the member states’ status as net contributors or net receivers of European Union subsidies are important. Our findings do not support the pro-less integrationist argument nor the left-right dimension that reconciles economic and sociopolitical issues.

Doing Knowledge Transfer: Engaging Management and Labor with Research on Employee Health and Safety

In workplace health interventions, engaging management and union decision makers is considered important for the success of the project, yet little research has described the process of making this happen. A case study of a knowledge-transfer process is presented to describe the practices and processes adopted by a knowledge broker who engaged workplace parties in discussions on research on physical and psychosocial factors important for employee health. The process included one-on-one interactions between the knowledge broker and individuals to explain the research, to build trust and credibility, and to explore the applicability of the research to their work (sense making). It also included facilitated group sessions, where the groups explored how the research could solve problems within the workplace (social construction of knowledge). The workplace context offered multiple opportunities that helped and hindered the flow of research. Nevertheless, this intense, sustained, knowledge-transfer intervention noted conceptual, structural, and political knowledge use.

Silencing Dissent to Win Consent: National Training Reform in the Accord Years

How doubt and dissent were handled within the union movement under the Accord is the central question addressed by this paper. It looks at examples of how individuals and individual unions who raised opposition to the prevailing line were treated, the interaction between unions, and the internal culture within the Australian Metal Workers' Union (AMWU) the most prominent union behind the Accord and training reform. A culture that inhibited discussion, questions, doubt and criticism is revealed. The costs to the labour movement in the years since the electoral defeat of the ALP are considered and are linked to a winding down of rank and file and delegate involvement in union decision-making and an increasingly passive and discontented membership. New methods of organising need to take into account the key question of internal democracy in revitalising the labour movement.

The Role of Interest Groups in the European Union Decision-Making Process

Most of the economic models that analyse the behaviour of interest groups in the policy making process uphold the idea that there are many organized groups that compete, with the aim of achieving their individual goals. The adoption of decisions is the result of a complex system of strategic interactions, and since different groups have different resources at their disposal this makes it easier for one or more groups to influence whether or not a policy is adopted. This research demonstrates that an institutional system such as the European Union (EU) should be able to protect us from the potential manipulation, which accompanies these channels of influence.

The Impact of Europeanisation on Regional Governance: A Study of Catalonia and Scotland

This article examines the role of political elites in the Europeanisation of regional governance, arguing that domestic conceptions of governance shape the way in which elites view their participation in European Union (EU) decision-making. It compares and contrasts the experiences of Scotland and Catalonia, two ‘regions’ that have recently obtained greater political autonomy. The article begins by examining how European integration encouraged the decentralisation of power, providing contextual information on the devolution process and the current status of domestic constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom and Spain. It then examines how political elites are seeking greater participatory rights within the EU, evaluating the effectiveness of domestic and European channels of influence. Despite lacking formalised points of access to the EU policy process, the article argues that Catalan and Scottish elites have been successful in placing issues on the EU agenda and sustaining the debate on regional participation in EU decision-making. While the gradual formation of institutionalised channels of co-operation could lead to greater influence in the EU policy process over the long term, it would be more appropriate in the short-term to focus on the agenda-setting powers of regional elites.

Managing Tomorrow's High Performance Unions

Preface Basic Union Functions The Union Environment Management for Union Leaders High-Performance Unions--Attributes of Excellence Communication--The Essence of Excellence High-Performance Union Decision-Makers High-Performance Union Planners and Organizers High-Performance Union Directors and Controllers Glossary Bibliography Index