Contestation and responsiveness in EU Council deliberations

Abstract

Decision-making in the Council of the European Union appears highly consensual at the voting stage. However, we focus on Council deliberations, where we find higher levels of contestation. What drives government opposition in the Council? Using a novel approach of studying the Council through video footage of its public deliberations (DICEU -Debates in the Council of the European Union), we demonstrate that contestation between governments is, at least in part, driven by their responsiveness to domestic public opinion. Analysing deliberations on legislative packages in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council between 2010 and 2015, we show that governments are responsive to public opinion when setting out their policy positions, but primarily when the policy issues are salient domestically. Our study thus contributes to our understanding of government responsiveness in the EU.

EU Actors under pressure: politicisation and depoliticisation as strategic responses

“…Our contributions show a variety of politicisation strategies in response to bottom-up pressure. Focusing on contestation in the Council, Hobolt and Wratil (2020) find that under domestic opposition, member state governments move away from the 'normal' consensus pattern, particularly when deciding on salient policies. Opposition enables member states to deviate from the consensual 'business as usual', thus empowering governments at the EU level; yet, it may equally reflect increased constraint imposed by domestic publics.…”

“…The contributions look at supranational actors, like the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (Blauberger & Martinsen, 2020;Moschella, Pinto, & Martocchia Diodati, 2020;Reh, Bressanelli, & Koop, 2020) as well as intergovernmental ones, like the Council of the EU (Hobolt & Wratil, 2020). Also, they zoom in on different decision-arenas, including law-making and inter-institutional relations (Bunea, 2020;Franchino & Mariotto, 2020), and explore a variety of governance challenges, including transparency and the rule of law (Hobolt & Wratil, 2020;Kelemen, 2020). Taking the EU's growing domestic relevance as analytical starting point, each contribution feeds into building an integrated actor-centred theoretical explanation of the conditions under which domestic pressures do (or do not) translate into EU-level responses.…”

“…Third, if EU-level actorsin particular non-majoritarian institutions like the Commission or the ECB, designed to be insulated from public opinion and domestic electoral cyclesrespond to bottom-up functional as well as political pressures, then they are 'responsive' and not just 'responsible'. Indeed, several contributions in this collection show that institutions react to the signals sent by public opinion, party political competition and electoral politics across the member states (Blauberger & Martinsen, 2020;Hobolt & Wratil, 2020;Moschella et al, 2020;Reh et al, 2020). Contributing to a nascent research agenda on this aspect of EU and international governance (Hagemann, Hobolt, & Wratil, 2017;Rauh, 2016;Schneider, 2018;Wratil, 2018), the collection reflects on the responsiveness of individual actors and on the implications for the EU polity more broadly.…”

Fence-sitters no more: Southern and Central Eastern European Member States’ role in the deadlock of the CEAS reform

“…While the CSP framework draws on Postfunctionalist explanations to explain opposition to EU level capacity-building and redistributive policymaking, it would be worthwhile investigating how mass publics influence EU level negotiations. This paper has demonstrated that voter preferences are not only a constraining factor for governments, but are often constitutive of their positions in EU negotiations, as recent studies on EU politicization management have demonstrated (Hobolt & Wratil, 2020;Schimmelfennig, 2020). The newly emerged populist governments bring new positions to these negotiations and have different incentives than moderate governments, which explains their different behaviour.…”

Trilogues in Council: disrupting the diplomatic culture?

“…So, while implicit forms of contestation continue to be the preferred recourse of member states, there has been an unmistakable rise in different forms of contestation over the last decade. It seems to vary across issues and member states, but a pattern of growing responsiveness of member states to domestic politics seems to underpin these differences (Hagemann et al, 2019;Hobolt & Wratil, 2020;Mühlbock & Tosun, 2018). These developments point to a weakening of the consensual culture in Councilalthough some scholars have more fundamentally questioned whether such a culture ever characterized Council decision-making (e.g., Naurin, 2015).…”