Institutional Reform and Decision-Making Efficiency in the European Union

Schulz, Heiner; König, Thomas

doi:10.2307/2669273

Cited by 155 publications

(158 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…By contrast, König and Bräuninger (1998) found that the pace of decision-making appeared to be slowing down over time, not least since the European Parliament's leverage increased. This finding was supported in Schulz and König (2000) and by König and Bräuninger (2002). Sloot and Verschuren (1990), an earlier study in this tradition, found that the introduction of the cooperation procedure in the mid-1980s with the ratification of the Single European Act (SEA) had a positive effect on the swiftness of decision-making by increasing the use of qualified majority voting (QMV) instead of unanimity in the Council.…”

Section: Winning Coalitions and The Analysis Of Decision Efficiencysupporting

confidence: 56%

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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Section: Winning Coalitions and The Analysis Of Decision Efficiencysupporting

confidence: 56%

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

2018

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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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“…After an early study by Krislov et al (1986) providing descriptive statistics on 472 EU decisions made between 1958 and 1981, Heiner Schulz and I introduced a theoretical model to derive hypotheses on institutional and preference-related factors influencing decision-making speed, i.e. on the application of qualified majority voting in the Council, on the participation of the European Parliament as an additional veto player, on the relevance of EU core policy areas as well as on the type of applied policy instrument (König and Schulz, 1997;Schulz and König, 2000). Using a data set on 5183 Commission proposals, which were processed in the period between 1984 and 1995, we tested these factors by applying both parametric and non-parametric event history analysis.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%