* * * * Are governments responsive to public preferences when legislating in international organizations? This paper demonstrates that governments respond to domestic public opinion even when acting at the international level. Specifically, we examine conflict in the European Union's primary legislative body, the Council of the European Union (EU). We argue that domestic electoral incentives compel governments to react to public opinion. Analyzing a unique dataset on all legislative decisions adopted in the Council since 1999, we show that governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that extend the level and scope of EU authority when their domestic electorates are skeptical about the EU. We also find that governments are more responsive when the issue of European integration is salient in domestic party politics. Our findings demonstrate that governments can use the international stage to signal their responsiveness to public concerns and that such signals resonate in the domestic political debate.Key words: responsiveness, legislative behavior, Council, public opinion, European Union * The order of authors is determined alphabetically. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from TheLeverhulme Trust (RF-2013-345) Our findings demonstrate that governments' opposition to legislative proposals is indeed shaped by public opinion on European integration wherever these proposals extend the level and scope of European integration. We also find that governments are more likely to signal their positions in the Council when the issue gains importance in domestic party competition and that these signals resonate in the national public sphere. Our findings thus contribute not only to our understanding of policy-making in the EU, but may also have broader significance as IOs increasingly face pressures to deepen cooperation and increase transparency and accountability to domestic audiences. Moreover, our study enhances our understanding of democratic responsiveness by highlighting that governments use the international stage to signal to voters at home that they care about their views. Government Responsiveness in International OrganizationsThe relationship between public preferences and government policy is at the heart of theories of Hence, as there are few benefits (the policy will be passed by the majority in any case) and several costs, it is not surprising that opposition is still relative rare, accounting for less than 2 H1: Governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that affect the authority of the EU when domestic public opinion is negatively disposed towards the EU than when public opinion is positively disposed towards the EU.The extent to which governments wish to use opposition votes as a signal to their publics is also shaped by domestic political competition. We expect that governments' responsiveness is higher when the issue of European integration is salient in the domestic context. Since signal responsiveness aims at communicating positions (and shifts in pos...

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This research note addresses an increasingly popular topic in the EU literature, namely the measurement of policy preferences in the Council of Ministers. It aims to provide conclusions on three issues: (1) what data are in fact available from the Council, (2) how preferences are measured in other legislatures, and (3) whether these methods would be suitable for analyses of Council members' preference positions given the available data. Applying the popular scaling method NOMINATE and a Bayesian MCMC model to a data set consisting of all legislation adopted by the Council in 1999—2004, it is found that, although the two methods show similar voting patterns at the general level, the failure to report standard errors by NOMINATE in particular proves to be a severe problem when trying to identify individual governments' policy location. Conversely, the Bayesian approach provides a convincing method for analyses of Council decision records and is easily extended to include more advanced empirical information than merely the governments' decisions to support or oppose a proposal

The literature on legislative decision-making and bargaining in the EU has reached a common conclusion that the European Parliament (Parliament) and the Council of the European Union (Council) are on an equal footing in the main legislative procedure, the co-decision procedure. We present theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that this is not the case. First, our analysis of the formal rules reveals that the Council has conditional agenda-setting power due to a change in the majority thresholds for adopting legislation from the first to the second reading in the Parliament. This change has important implications for the internal dynamics of the Parliament and its institutional powers "vis-à-vis" the Council. Testing these analytical considerations of the formal decision rules against voting data on all co-decision legislation adopted in the two institutions between 1999 and 2004, our empirical findings show that: first, from 1999 to 2004 coalition formation in the Council fell predominantly along the traditional left-right political dimensions when negotiating co-decision proposals. Second, when disagreement over legislation is recorded in the Council, a strong divide can also be found in the Parliament. Third, when the Parliament is divided along party political lines, it is less likely to be able to meet the absolute majority requirement for amending the proposal adopted by the Council. Lastly, Parliament amendments are most likely to be adopted when a decision by voting is requested by a party group associated with the main ideological contingency in the Council. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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