Stefanie Bailer

Nash versus Schelling? The importance of constraints in legislative bargaining

When the Council of Ministers had to decide on the so-called chocolate directive in 1999, its plan to allow vegetable fat in the production of candy products met with fierce opposition from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. These three member states objected to the usage of vegetable fats other than cocoa in chocolate. Although they advanced some consumer-friendly arguments, continental manufacturers also tried to avoid competition from the British chocolate industry and to protect some of their traditional trading partners in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. They particularly protested against the proposed derogations that would have allowed the United Kingdom and Ireland to continue the production of ‘household milk chocolate’, which contains a large amount of milk. While the Belgian government spoke of ‘a la carte harmonisation’ benefiting ‘the industries of only certain

What factors determine bargaining power and success in EU negotiations

Negotiations in the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers are highly secretive, so outsiders have limited knowledge of the factors that determine bargaining power there. However, previous research has shown that gains and losses in these negotiations are relatively equally shared amongst the EU members and that the influence of exogenous power resources such as votes are more important than endogenous resources such as bargaining skill (Bailer 2004). Based on findings of the current literature on bargaining success in EU negotiations, I suggest several areas for future research – in particular regarding the partisan preferences of EU governments and the way this influences their coalition formation behaviour. More attention should also be paid to the context of these negotiations, their differing meeting frequencies and the resulting reciprocity logics. However, more efforts to generate and analyse data on negotiation positions will be necessary in order to see what bargaining power can achieve in the Council.

Money Makes the EU Go Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in the Council of Ministers

Many examinations of the dimensions of conflict in the European Union Council of Ministers focus on the ideological roots of contestation in the EU. This article examines the extent to which structural attributes of the Member States explain the conflict within the Council of Ministers in general as well as in selected policy domains (agriculture, fisheries, environment, economic affairs). Drawing on the political economy literature of legislative decision-making, a multilevel analysis shows that country-level redistributive interests shape the interactions considerably and in some of the policy domains that are examined in more detail. The impact of ideological variables like the left-right positioning of the Member State governments remains inconsistent and marginal in this analysis.

Strategy in the climate change negotiations: do democracies negotiate differently?

Governments in international negotiations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations use different negotiation strategies to increase their impact, which can be hard or soft, that is, more or less adding conflict to a negotiation. However, little is known about the structural (e.g. economic size) and domestic (e.g. pressure from stakeholders) factors that determine their choice of strategies. Using an original data set created from interviews with 58 delegations who attended the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, it is shown that the variables of economic power, democratic status, and pressure from domestic stakeholders had an effect on whether these delegations used hard negotiation strategies. It was found that economically powerful states were likely to use such strategies; in contrast democracies tend to use fewer hard strategies if their economic status is accounted for. However, democracies can be pressured to use hard strategies when they are lobbied by their domestic interest groups (e.g. GHG emitter interests, environmental groups).

Oligarchization, formalization, adaptation? Linking Sociological Theory and EU Enlargement Research

This article reviews emergent literature on the effects of Eastern enlargement on EU decision-making. After recalling pre-enlargement hypotheses we inspect empirical findings on that issue. Whereas some authors stress a ‘business as usual’ reading of post-enlargement decision-making, others point out changes. In order to better understand the processes of post-enlargement governance we draw on three sociological group theories – oligarchization, formalization and adaptation – and assess their applicability to the case of the EU. While we present only preliminary evidence for each of these theories, our secondary literature analysis underlines that the complexity of enlargement demands a widening of the theoretical scope. In such a perspective enlargement research can contribute to more general debates about decision-making in the EU.

An Agent Dependent on the EU Member States? The Determinants of the European Commission’s Legislative Success in the European Union

Abstract For decades the European Commission’s possible legislative influence has interested scholars of EU studies, yet few empirical studies on the determinants of the Commission’s influence exist. This paper analyses quantitative data on 60 EU proposals to show to which degree rather endogenous resources of the Commission, external conditions determined by the EU member states or institutional constraints determine the Commission’s influence on EU legislation. Modeling the Commission as an agent having resources and strategic options, I demonstrate that the Commission’s ability to defend the content of its original proposals is to a large extent dependent on its principals, the member states. Endogenous resources of the Commission such as expertise and experience influence only to a small extent the legislative success of the Commission. Thus, this study allows gaining a deeper understanding on the factors influencing the European Commission’s influence on legislative affairs.

What Role for the Party Group Leader? A Latent Variable Approach to Leadership Effects on Party Group Cohesion in the European Parliament

Previous research has identified several structural and situational factors that affect party cohesion in parliamentary voting behaviour. The potential role of leadership has been neglected so far. The authors apply a latent variable approach to model leadership effects in roll call votes from the European Parliament (EP), 1979–2001. Other things being equal, their findings suggest that a small but significant 7 per cent share of the total variance in party group cohesion is due to the party group leaders. About 40 per cent of this leader component can be accounted for by their experience inside the European institutions, their career prospects, and their ideological positions.

Explaining the Strength of Civil Society: Evidence from Cross-sectional Data

A number of societal and institutional factors enhance the development of a vibrant civil society, such as a country’s socioeconomic traditions and societal structure, political institutions, or foreign influence. But the question of which one of these factors contributes most to a vibrant civil society still remains unanswered. Using ordinary least square techniques, this article statistically tests the competing factors with a large-N design that includes 42 countries. Our dependent variable is the new Civil Society Index, composed of a structural and a value dimension of civil society. The results show that a country’s quality of political institutions and a high degree of religious fragmentation have the strongest impact on the development of a vibrant civil society. In order to examine the causal relationship, we reassess our findings by conducting two case studies on Chile and Russia. The case studies corroborate the causal direction from the quality of political institutions to a stronger civil society.

Party animals, career changers and other pathways into parliament

Abstract Research on parliamentary careers has paid little attention to variations in pre-parliamentary career patterns and their value in explaining legislators’ parliamentary success. Using sequence and cluster analysis, this article identifies typical career tracks taken by Party Animals, Local Heroes, Late Bloomers, Land Legislators, High-Flyers and Career Changers based on a comprehensive dataset of German parliamentarians’ biographies (1998–2014). The analysis confirms the role of the party as the primary career facilitator before and within parliament. Nonetheless both Career Changers and High-Flyers climb the greasy pole all the way to the national parliament without much service to the party. The former type, however, suffers from a lack of networks and experience, which is reflected in the limited career success within parliament. This article demonstrates that the use of sequence analysis on career paths offers a promising approach in distinguishing and explaining the opportunities, choices and obstacles MPs face in parliament.

To use the whip or not: Whether and when party group leaders use disciplinary measures to achieve voting unity:

Party group leaders seemingly use a variety of disciplinary measures to achieve unified voting behavior in party groups. However, there is little systematic knowledge about the nature of such disciplinary measures and the interaction between leaders and group members remains a black box. Most studies of party voting concentrate on institutional variables such as electoral systems and take disciplinary measures as a given. This study presents a new way to measure party discipline, based on data from semi-structured interviews with 76 party group leaders and experts from five European parliaments. The discipline index provided here is the first to consider in a systematic way the means available to reprimand or reward party group members. In a second step, the study shows that disciplinary measures can compensate for a leader’s lack of control over candidate selection processes, and relate to group composition or size.