Representing the compromise: How institutions serve government support coalitions in European Union policy making

Abstract

This article presents an original model of policy making by multiparty coalitions at the international level. Specifically, it analyses how domestic institutions serve parties in enforcing policy compromises onto national ministers negotiating legislation in the European Union (EU). In contrast to existing research on coalition politics, the model accounts for the benefits of not only legislative but also executive institutions and incorporates opposition parties as pivotal actors under minority governments. Ministers propose policy positions at the EU level that represent domestic coalition compromises when cabinet participation, executive coordination and parliamentary oversight of EU affairs make it cheap for coalition partners to challenge the minister's position and when ideological divisiveness increases the incentive to do so. Statistical analyses of 1,694 policy positions taken by ministers from 22 member states in the Council of the EU provide strong empirical evidence for the model. The results support the claim of executive dominance in EU policy making but also highlight that, where institutions are strong, ministers represent domestic coalition compromises rather than their own positions.

Contestation and responsiveness in EU Council deliberations

“…While this finding is in line with our theoretical expectations, since projects like the FTT, tax issues, or the banking union are clearly targeted at more tightly regulating economic activities, it is important evidence for the idea that party politics matters in the Council (e.g. Hagemann and Høyland 2008), and parties are engaging in mandate fulfilment at the EU level (Franchino and Wratil 2019). In contrast, the evidence for economic explanations of governments' preferences is more mixed: governments with higher unemployment at home are more approving of the state of negotiations (at least in Models 1 and 2), but the EU budget position and inflation do not matter significantly.…”

Committee strength in parliamentary democracies: A new index

“…There is increasing interest in how coalitions in parliamentary democracies use legislative committees to police government ministers (Hallerberg 2000;Kim & Loewenberg 2005;Martin & Vanberg 2011, 2020Carroll & Cox 2012;Franchino & Wratil 2019). Empirical work in this area requires high-quality institutional data, and recently indicators of committee policing strength have been proposed (Martin & Vanberg 2011, 2020André et al 2016).…”