The paper identifies the main problems, which are encountered in the statistical analysis of the patterns of decision-making of the EU Council. Compared to most legislative bodies in democratic political systems, in the EU Council decision-making we only see a scarce occurrence of contested...

A priori voting power analysis can provide an effective tool for assessment of decision-making rules, which is particularly needed in procedures using weighted voting. The Council of the EU is such a case and the decision-making rule for this main decision-making body is a long-lasting problem...

This article aims to evaluate the emerging patterns of decision-making in the European Union after the first Eastern enlargement through an analysis of voting positions in the Council of Ministers. By applying three methods (cluster analysis, factor analysis and Bayesian item-response...

The IGC 2000 had the objective to prepare the European Union for the enlargement. The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the Nice solution of the Council's decision-making rules from the perspective of the decision on the number of candidate countries which should join the EU in 2004, as...