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We formulate and test a comprehensive model of participation by ministers in sessions of the Council of the EU. Ministers often delegate the task of representing their governments at Council sessions to deputies or civil servants. However, EU members differ significantly in how frequently that occurs. Using new data on ministers' participation in all 793 Council sessions in 2004-2014, we find (1) that ministers choose to participate more frequently when the salience of the meeting agenda is higher and (2) when they represent countries with more advanced politicaladministrative systems. The participation rates decrease (3) when national governments face upcoming legislative elections. Ministerial participation dramatically increases (4) for a country when it holds the Council presidency. Contrary to our expectations, participation is not associated with public support for the EU. In addition, we find that average ministerial participation rate decreased significantly between EP6 and EP7, from around 76% to around 64%.

This article provides new insights into size variation of national delegations to plenary meetings of international organizations. Plenary meetings represent a symbol of national sovereignty and equality which is, however, often sidelined by structural opportunities and internal incentives which states have in practice. This article addresses the puzzle of whether the size of national delegations varies and what factors can explain possible geographical patterns. Drawing upon opportunity structure-incentive approach and using a newly created dataset covering 14 major agencies of the United Nations family, I suggest that it is mainly the structural factors what affects the size of national delegations, especially the power distribution. The findings also indicate that complex negotiations in large IOs motivate states to increase their delegation size, while regional cooperation allows them to delegate less representatives and rely on regional partners. Domestic incentives, on the contrary, seem to play little role, except for anticipated financial benefits from membership in the particular IOs.

The UN General Assembly is the central forum of world politics. While it formally allows the member states to delegate up to five representatives, the size of the national delegations is generally larger and significantly increases over time. In this paper, I explore the size of the national delegations to the General Assembly from 1993 to 2016. Generally, the major powers (USA, Russia) send the biggest delegations. Surprisingly, China sends significantly smaller delegations than it used to before 2008. Big delegations are also sent by some small (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland) or developing countries (Nigeria, Bangladesh). My analysis shows that national capacities and issue‐specific motivations drive up the delegation size. Although the issue‐specific explanations are relatively rare in UN‐related research (due to the general‐purpose nature of the organisation), I argue that human rights, international security, economic development, and UN governance are the agendas for which states care about the General Assembly.