Setting the political agenda is a critical and usually powerful aspect of policy making. However, the ability to set the agenda, without any significant decision-making powers, can undermine this influence, leaving a technical agenda setter without substantive political influence. This research examines the difference between technical and political agenda setting through an analysis of the policy impact of the Commission of the European Union (EU). Using two newly developed databases on Commission policy priorities and all adopted EU legislation, as well as the Decision Making in the European Union (DEU II) dataset, we investigate the ability of the Commission to shape EU legislative outcomes to reflect its policy preferences between 2000 and 2011. Our analyses highlight the comparative weakness of the Commission’s policy influence, despite its formal monopoly of legislative initiation. In this way, we argue for a need to carefully differentiate between technical and political agenda setters when evaluating the policy influence of different political actors.

Building on the existing research on the European Commission's agenda-setting powers, this study examines the relationship between the policy priorities of the Commission and those of the other key policy actors in the European Union to determine the impact of other EU institutional actor preferences on the success of Commission priority initiatives. By using new and existing datasets to compare the European Commission's Work Programmes with European Council Summit Conclusions, the European Parliament's own initiative reports and Council Presidency Work Programmes, we are able to analyse the effect of policy priority congruence on the Commission's success and measure the autonomous policy influence of the Commission more accurately. Our results demonstrate that the Commission's priority initiatives are significantly more likely to result in legislative outcomes when they address policy topics already highlighted (whether fortuitously or as a result of Commission efforts) by the other key EU institutions. They also suggest that interpretations of the EU political system that ascribe the role of political executive to the Commission misconstrue its role.

No abstract

No abstract