IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v15y2014i2p171-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

EU law revisions and legislative drift

Author

Listed:
  • Enrico Borghetto
  • Lars Mäder

Abstract

European Union research has made great strides in understanding the dynamics of the European Union decision-making process. In contrast to this progress, the dynamics unfolding after the enactment of a European Union secondary legislative act has largely been ignored. Some of these acts remain in force in their original form for several years while others are revised soon after their enactment. What factors account for this variation? We empirically analyze the proposition that in the presence of ‘legislative drift,’ i.e. the intertemporal variation of decision-makers’ preferences, major revisions of European Union legislative acts are more likely to occur. Based on an analysis of the revision histories of 158 major European Union acts in the time period between 1958 and 2003, we find significant support for this hypothesis.

Suggested Citation

  • Enrico Borghetto & Lars Mäder, 2014. "EU law revisions and legislative drift," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 171-191, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:15:y:2014:i:2:p:171-191
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116513513345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116513513345
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116513513345?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crombez, Christophe, 1996. "Legislative Procedures in the European Community," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 199-228, April.
    2. Sara Hagemann, 2007. "Applying Ideal Point Estimation Methods to the Council of Ministers," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(2), pages 279-296, June.
    3. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 1975. "The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 875-901, December.
    4. Christopher R. Berry & Barry C. Burden & William G. Howell, 2010. "After Enactment: The Lives and Deaths of Federal Programs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 1-17, January.
    5. Jonathan Golub & Bernard Steunenberg, 2007. "How Time Affects EU Decision-Making," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(4), pages 555-566, December.
    6. Keele, Luke, 2010. "Proportionally Difficult: Testing for Nonproportional Hazards in Cox Models," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 189-205, April.
    7. Riker, William H., 1980. "Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 432-446, June.
    8. Abdul Ghafar Noury & Simon Hix & Gérard Roland, 2005. "Power to parties: cohesion and competition in the European Parliament 1979-2001," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7752, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    9. Golub, Jonathan, 1999. "In the Shadow of the Vote? Decision Making in the European Community," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(4), pages 733-764, October.
    10. Forrest Maltzman & Charles R. Shipan, 2008. "Change, Continuity, and the Evolution of the Law," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 252-267, April.
    11. Moe, Terry M, 1990. "Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(0), pages 213-253.
    12. Hix, Simon & Noury, Abdul & Roland, Gã‰Rard, 2005. "Power to the Parties: Cohesion and Competition in the European Parliament, 1979–2001," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 209-234, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heike Klüver & Iñaki Sagarzazu, 2013. "Ideological congruency and decision-making speed: The effect of partisanship across European Union institutions," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 388-407, September.
    2. Sara Hagemann & Bjørn Høyland, 2010. "Bicameral Politics in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48, pages 811-833, September.
    3. Holger Döring, 2007. "The Composition of the College of Commissioners," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(2), pages 207-228, June.
    4. Thomas König & Bernd Luig, 2012. "Party ideology and legislative agendas: Estimating contextual policy positions for the study of EU decision-making," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(4), pages 604-625, December.
    5. Döring, Holger, 2006. "The Composition of the College of Commissioners: Patterns of Delegation," MPIfG Discussion Paper 06/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Sara Hagemann & Bjørn Høyland, 2010. "Bicameral Politics in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 811-833, September.
    7. Anne Rasmussen & Dimiter Toshkov, 2013. "The effect of stakeholder involvement on legislative duration: Consultation of external actors and legislative duration in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 366-387, September.
    8. Edoardo Bressanelli & Christel Koop & Christine Reh, 2016. "The impact of informalisation: Early agreements and voting cohesion in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(1), pages 91-113, March.
    9. Thomas Doleys, 2009. "Incomplete Contracting, Commission Discretion and the Origins of EU Merger Control," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47, pages 483-506, June.
    10. Fraccaroli, Nicolò & Giovannini, Alessandro & Jamet, Jean-François & Persson, Eric, 2022. "Ideology and monetary policy. The role of political parties’ stances in the European Central Bank’s parliamentary hearings," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    11. Wagner, Wolfgang & Herranz-Surrallés, Anna & Kaarbo, Juliet & Ostermann, Falk, 2017. "Politicization, party politics and military missions deployment votes in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2017-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    12. Natasha Kossovsky & Kathleen M. Carley, 2020. "The collapse of the second Yatsenyuk government: roll call vote and dynamic network analysis," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 123-143, March.
    13. Darko Cherepnalkoski & Andreas Karpf & Igor Mozetič & Miha Grčar, 2016. "Cohesion and Coalition Formation in the European Parliament: Roll-Call Votes and Twitter Activities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-27, November.
    14. Bruce Desmarais, 2012. "Lessons in disguise: multivariate predictive mistakes in collective choice models," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 719-737, June.
    15. Adam William Chalmers, 2014. "In over their heads: Public consultation, administrative capacity and legislative duration in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(4), pages 595-613, December.
    16. Christian B. Jensen & Jonathan Slapin & Thomas König, 2007. "Who Calls for a Common EU Foreign Policy?," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(3), pages 387-410, September.
    17. Manuele Citi, 2015. "European Union budget politics: Explaining stability and change in spending allocations," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(2), pages 260-280, June.
    18. Lars P. Feld & Stefan Voigt, 2004. "Making Judges Independent – Some Proposals Regarding the Judiciary," CESifo Working Paper Series 1260, CESifo.
    19. Bjorn Hoyland, 2006. "Allocation of Codecision Reports in the Fifth European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 7(1), pages 30-50, March.
    20. David M Willumsen, 2018. "The Council’s REACH? National governments’ influence in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(4), pages 663-683, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:15:y:2014:i:2:p:171-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.