Institutional constraints, legislative activism and policy change: The case of the European Union

Abstract

This article presents a study of how institutional constraints affect legislative activism and how legislative activism in turn affects policy change through an analysis of the European Union's legislative process. The argument revolves around the key role of the European Commission in advancing policy change, and emphasises that the Commission can successfully push for increased policy change by increasing its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space widens. Using a novel panel dataset covering eight policy sectors from the period 1984–2012, the article shows that the number of legislative proposals significantly affects the extent of regulatory reform in the EU. The rise in the number of legislative proposals, in turn, is affected by the extent of gridlock between the EU's legislative bodies. These findings show that the Commission steps up its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space allows for greater policy change.

Negotiating implementation of EU fiscal governance

“…A large part of this literature is primarily focused on explaining policy gridlock and policy change across several legislative systems. The basic concepts of the pivot theory, namely the gridlock interval and the pivot actor, have been applied also to the EU political system (Citi and Justesen 2016;Crombez and Hix 2015;Junge, König, and Luig 2015). The gridlock interval indicates the set of policies that cannot be changed under a given decisionmaking rule.…”

“…In view of its agendasetting power, the Commission may advance policy recommendations that departs from the status quo. Specifically, it may make proposals that are attractive to the pivotal members and preferred to the status quo (Citi and Justesen 2016). These policy recommendations are less likely to be amended by the Council when the Commission proposes a policy located inside the gridlock interval.…”