This article analyses the role of the Commission in the European Union (EU). We present a game-theoretical model of two EU processes - Commission appointment and the adoption of legislation - and apply this model to the appointment of recent Commissions and their legislative programmes....

This paper studies the democratic deficit in the European Union (EU). It examines what constitutes a democratic deficit, analyzes whether there is one in the EU, and offers suggestions for a solution. I focus on the output of the legislative process and study whether policies deviate from those...

This article presents spatial models of policy-making in the European Union and focuses on interest group lobbying. It analyzes the two principal legislative procedures: consultation and codecision. Lobbying is modeled as a game of strategic information transmission from an informed lobbyist to...

The Treaty of Lisbon reformed the budgetary process in the European Union. We present a game-theoretical analysis and an empirical evaluation of the new annual budgetary procedure. We find that the procedure operates much like the ordinary legislative procedure, and puts the European Parliament...

This article uses the Domestic Structures and European Integration (DOSEI) data set of actors’ preferences on 65 issues in the 2003-4 Intergovernmental Conference to extract the underlying preferences of the governments, the Commission and the European Parliament on the main dimensions of...

This article analyzes the literature on procedural models of European Union politics. We present an overview of the main models of the legislative procedures, with a focus on their relevance to European Union politics and the literature today. We discuss early controversies in the literature and...