The European Union (EU) is assumed to suffer from a democratic deficit. It is often posited that in the EU there is only a weak and indirect connection between public preferences and policy change. This article investigates empirically whether any relationship exists between public support for...

Recent methodological advances (evolutionary factor analysis, discourse networks, etc.) have re-invigorated interest in the study of policy frames and discourses. In this paper we study the changing policy frames surrounding Dutch soft drugs policy. The Dutch case is especially interesting not...

The effect of administrative discretion on the implementation of EU directives at the national level remains hotly contested in the academic literature. In this paper we offer a formal model which predicts that the effect of discretion on the timing of formal implementation is contingent on the...

The increased use of early agreements in the EU co-decision procedure raises the concern that intra and inter-institutional political debate is sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. We investigate the effect of early agreements (trilogues) on the time it takes for legislation to be negotiated...

This paper explores the relationship between administrative co-ordination of EU affairs at the national level and compliance with EU law. First, we develop two hypotheses about the impact of co-ordination. We expect that the strength of the co-ordination structure (level of centralisation and...

Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe....

Despite the increased use of stakeholder consultations, little is known about their impact on the legislative process. We examine how consultation of external actors during policy preparation affects decision-making duration and efficiency. We test our predictions on EU legislative...