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 compares legislative dynamics under all procedures in which the Council of Ministers votes by qualified majority (QMV). We make five major points. First, the EU governments have sought to reduce the democratic deficit by increasing the powers of the European Parliament since 1987,...

Previous studies have proposed competing theories to explain European intergovernmental conference (IGC) outcomes, but they fail to test these theories against one another. I examine the literature on IGC bargaining and derive several testable hypotheses. Using data on member state preferences...

Within the last several years, new data have become available to test the various theoretical models of EU decision-making, and, in doing so, to assess actor influence. This article examines the extent to which the recent DEU and DEUII datasets provide sufficient information to distinguish...