The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter

Abstract

The European Parliament under the current cooperation procedure has an important power: it can make proposals that, if accepted by the Commission of the European Communities, are easier for the Council of Ministers to accept than to modify, since only qualified majority is required for acceptance, whereas full unanimity for modification. The importance of this power, which I call the power of the conditional agenda setter, has not been recognized in previous scholarly work. For structural reasons explained in the text, this power is likely to increase in the future. I conclude by arguing that the conditional delegation of power to international actors (the European Parliament, Commission, and the Court of Justice) is a frequent phenomenon in European institutions. This delegation presents three important advantages: it makes possible the selection of one among many possible equilibria, it accelerates European integration, and it diffuses responsibility for politically unpopular measures.

Trans-national diffusion patterns and the future of far right party research: Independence vs. interdependence

“…Several studies indicate the spread of communist attitudes and support, both within and between socio-political contexts, as early as the 1920s [6,39,26]. Furthermore, studies have been published on inter-party cooperation in Scandinavia [2,36], policy coordination between Christian democratic parties [35], the developmental cooperation in the postcommunist world upon its transition away from Communism [77], the competition between right-wing parties for issue ownership of Euroscepticism [65], the cooperation between social democratic parties [42], trans-national cooperation between European green parties [18], general cooperation in the European Parliament [4,41,72], the transnational cooperation between extreme right parties and movements in Eastern Europe [45], and even the cooperation between post-communist and nationalist parties in Eastern Europe [33]. Most recently, scholars come to assume that FRPs play an important (causal) role in the right turn of European politics [54].…”

Rational Choice and EU Politics

“…The first of these debates concerned the power of the European Parliament under the cooperation procedure. In an influential article, Tsebelis (1994) argued that this provision gave the Parliament 'conditional agenda-setting' power, insofar as the Parliament would now enjoy the ability to make specific proposals that would be easier for the Council to adopt than to amend. Other scholars disputed Tsebelis's model, arguing that the EP's proposed amendments would have no special status without the approval of the Commission, which therefore remained the principal agenda setter.…”

“…Foundational works in the RCI canon include Scharpf (1988), Garrett (1992), Tsebelis (1994) and Garrett and Tsebelis (1996). For useful reviews of institutionalism in EU studies, see e.g.…”

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

“…Defined as the ratio of the number of winning coalitions to the total number of all conceivable coalitions, the Coleman measure equals the probability of a decision in favor of a change in the status quo, provided that all coalitions are equally probable. 2 This assumption is equivalent to the binomial model of voting in which each vote has an equal probability of being for or against 1 See, for example, Tsebelis (1994Tsebelis ( , 1995, Steunenberg (1994), Crombez (1996), Tsebelis (1996, 1999), Moser (1996Moser ( , 1997, Laruelle (1997), Hubschmid and Moser (1997), Thomson and Hosli (2006), and Napel and Widgrén (2006). 2 By 'coalition' we mean the set of members voting affirmatively, i.e.…”