Why do member states with veto power usually support policy change proposed by a Commission initiative when their own position is located closer to the status quo? Why do we frequently witness consensus in the Council and rarely observe a rejection of Commission initiatives even after additional...

Missing or incomplete data on actors’ positions can cause significant problems in political analysis. Research on missing values suggests the use of multiple imputation methods rather than case deletion, but few studies have yet considered the non-ignorable problem - positions that are...

What drove the preferences over institutional choices of EU Constitutional Convention delegates in the area of foreign policy? We examine delegate preferences and find strong evidence that partisan identity rather than government positions drove delegates' preferences for both the role of the...

This comparative case study tries to offer an empirical insight into the explanatory power of competing approaches on parliamentary influence in the cooperation procedure of the European Union. The theoretical debate on the impact of the cooperation procedure has received remarkable attention...

Although member states are obliged to transpose directives into domestic law in a conformable manner and receive considerable time for their transposition activities, we identify three levels of transposition outcomes for EU directives: conformable, partially conformable and non-conformable....

This study examines how the institutional provisions of the Nice Treaty and the constitutional reform of the European Union (EU) will affect agricultural decision-making in the enlarged EU. Although the agricultural sector is a core EU policy domain, we have little knowledge about the effects of...

This article introduces a novel approach for generating agenda-related estimates of the policy positions of political parties from party manifestos and expert surveys. We show that current party estimates provide for little variation across policy areas and over time. In response, we propose to...

When signing the new Treaty on European Union in Maastricht, the governmental leaders of the 12 member countries of the European Communities had accomplished a significant step towards economic and political union. Before taking effect the draft proposal had, however, to be ratified according to...

This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, which is discussed in the jurisprudential literature as another source of democratic deficit. Directives must be transposed into national law, but lengthy deadlines raise normative questions about...

Research on European legislative decision-making has entered a stage of quantitative analysis. The quantitative approach promises to advance the current dialogue by allowing for the evaluation of competing approaches across multiple policy domains and over time. At the same time, the...