In the Shadow of the Vote? Decision Making in the European Community

Golub, Jonathan E.

doi:10.1162/002081899551057

Cited by 182 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…In the period 1974 to 1995, approximately a thousand directives were adopted (Golub 1999). This equals on average about fifty directives per year.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mass production of law. routinization in the transposition of European directives: a sociological- institutionalist account

Berglund¹,

Gange²,

Waarden³

2006

Journal of European Public Policy

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This paper assesses the claim that there is a problem with delayed transposition of directives within the EU, using a new dataset on the transposition of directives in the fields of utilities and food safety regulation in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Spain and Greece. This dataset overcomes most of the problems that have plagued previous data. In 65 per cent of the cases transposition was delayed, and the average delay was seven months. There is thus indeed a problem with delayed transposition. In order to explain this problem, a sociological institutionalist approach is used. The findings point to the importance of administrative routinization. Whether or not transposition is accomplished with little delay depends on whether there are administrative departments with the explicit task to specialize in transposition, and whether they have had the time and resources to develop routines or standard operating procedures for doing so.

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“…In the period 1974 to 1995, approximately a thousand directives were adopted (Golub 1999). This equals on average about fifty directives per year.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mass production of law. routinization in the transposition of European directives: a sociological- institutionalist account

Berglund¹,

Gange²,

Waarden³

2006

Journal of European Public Policy

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“…With every new treaty since then (Maastricht Treaty 1993, Amsterdam Treaty 1999, Nice Treaty 2003, and Lisbon Treaty 2009, the EU brought more policy domains into the remit of qualified majority voting, making that the standard principle of present-day decision-making. Research demonstrates that this change in the decision rule had a clear positive effect on decision-making efficiency in the EU (Golub 1999;Schulz and König 2000;Golub and Steunenberg 2007). However, during the same time period, the EU's membership more than tripled, from 9 in 1980 to 28 in 2013.…”

Section: Longitudinal Analysismentioning

confidence: 96%

“…While the third component of institutional friction, preference heterogeneity, remained relatively constant, a development exogenous to our measure of institutional friction -the growing involvement of the European Parliament in EU policy-makingis known to have affected decision-making capacity in a negative direction as well (Golub 1999;Golub and Steunenberg 2007;Schulz and König 2000). We use the Maastricht Treaty as cut-off point in Table 5, but given the gradual nature of these changes, we also repeated the analysis with the other treaties as cut-off points.…”

Section: Longitudinal Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability and change in international policy-making: A punctuated equilibrium approach

2017

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International organizations (IOs) have developed into important policy venues beyond the state. Yet our understanding of the broader dynamics of IO policy-making is limited. This article offers the first comparative analysis of macro patterns in IO policy-making. Theoretically, we draw on punctuated equilibrium theory to develop hypotheses about stability and change in the orientation of IO policy agendas. Empirically, we examine novel data on the policy output of five generalpurpose IOs between 1980 and 2015, combining statistical analysis and comparative case illustrations. The analysis yields two central results. First, the policy agendas of all five IOs display patterns of punctuated equilibria, with longer periods of stability interrupted by shorter periods of dramatic change. Second, the level of institutional friction in decision-making contributes to variation in punctuations across IOs and within IOs over time. The results suggest four broader implications: (1) punctuated equilibrium theory applies to a broader empirical domain than previously thought; (2) patterns of change in IOs are more complex than conventionally expected; (3) institutional friction matters for IOs' responsiveness to societal demands and problem pressures; and (4) deeper integration of punctuated equilibrium theory into the study of IOs can pave the way for a promising IR research agenda.Rev Int Organ

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“…The issue of status quo bias has also been addressed in studies using more empirical materials. Golub (1998) and König and Bräuninger (1998), for example, both analyzed the 'swiftness' of decision-making in the history of the EU. Golub found, contra conceived wisdom, that the quickness of decision-making was quite reasonable in the early EU-for which 'Eurosclerosis' is usually diagnosed-compared to the 1980s and 1990s, and that it had not slowed down after the 1995 enlargement (Golub 2002).…”

Section: Winning Coalitions and The Analysis Of Decision Efficiencymentioning

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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In the Shadow of the Vote? Decision Making in the European Community

Cited by 182 publications

References 53 publications

Mass production of law. routinization in the transposition of European directives: a sociological- institutionalist account

Mass production of law. routinization in the transposition of European directives: a sociological- institutionalist account

Stability and change in international policy-making: A punctuated equilibrium approach

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

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