Parties in the Council?

Hagemann, Sara; Høyland, Bjørn

doi:10.1080/13501760802407714

Cited by 95 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…There is a rich literature on government responsiveness; if, when and how government policies respond to changes in public opinion (see e.g. Wlezien 1995;Erikson et al 2002;Hobolt and Klemmensen 2008;Soroka and Wlezien 2010 (Mattila 2009;Thomson et al 2006) or that the left-right ideology of governments matters to their behavior in the Council (Hagemann 2008;Hagemann and Høyland 2008;Mattila 2009). The general assumption in this work is that as governments are largely insulated from electoral pressures when they legislate in the Council, constituency demands do not play a significant role.…”

Section: Government Responsiveness In International Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence From Council Voting

Hagemann

Hobolt

Wratil

2016

Comparative Political Studies

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* * * * 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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Section: Government Responsiveness In International Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence From Council Voting

Hagemann

Hobolt

Wratil

2016

Comparative Political Studies

Self Cite

126

142

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“…However, countries' preferences and the implied preference-based power indices vary over issues and also over time, since they are influenced by domestic and international political developments. To overcome this difficulty, Hagemann (2007Hagemann ( , 2008 and Hagemann and Høyland (2008) suggest using Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation (Clinton et al, 2004;Bafumi et al, 2005) based on the logistic item-response model (IRM), which allows 1 The following terminology will be used throughout the paper: Preference-free and theoretical power indices are used interchangeably. Empirical power indices (or preference-based power indices) are used to refer to power indices, where preferences are taken into account through the formation of a priori coalitions (voting blocs) or through the assumption that only connected coalitions (among single actors or voting blocs) will form.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical vs. empirical power indices: Do preferences matter?

Badinger

Mühlböck

Nindl

et al. 2014

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…Recent institutional changes have more explicitly connected results of the EP elections to the political profile of the European Commission and with this, contribute to politicization of the EU's legislative process. The Council, the ultimate decision-maker on EU legislation, is inevitably part of this process, as was established already a while ago (Hagemann and Høyland 2008), even more so with the broadening scope of the co-decision procedure and qualified majority voting introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. The changes to the decision-making rule for the Council, officially applicable since November 2014, may also further this trend.…”

Section: Actor Preferences and Alignments In The Council Of The Eumentioning

confidence: 99%

Vote Probabilities, Thresholds and Actor Preferences: Decision Capacity and the Council of the European Union

2018

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This paper studies how voting rules affect the ease with which decisions are made, basing the analysis on the key premise that ideology makes some coalitions more likely to form than others. Our study focuses on the Council of the European Union (EU), where member states hold different voting weights and ideological positions are strongly linked to the affiliation of actors to political parties. Accordingly, to explore the influence of ideology on the probability of coalition formation, and to thus formulate a 'decision probability', we incorporate ideological positions in the analysis of efficiency of the voting system. For the case of the EU, we particularly consider the transition from the triple-majority voting system of the Nice Treaty to the double-majority system incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty. The standard assumption that member states vote independently and affirmatively with a probability of 0.5 leads to a more pessimistic view of the Council's decisionmaking capacity than does the premise that member state votes are biased towards voting with the Council majority. The latter assumption is supported by voting data and anecdotal evidence on the 'consensus-seeking' culture in the Council. Hence, * Madeleine O. Hosli

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Parties in the Council?

Cited by 95 publications

References 31 publications

Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence From Council Voting

Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence From Council Voting

Theoretical vs. empirical power indices: Do preferences matter?

Vote Probabilities, Thresholds and Actor Preferences: Decision Capacity and the Council of the European Union

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