IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v20y2019i3p511-531.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public deliberations in the Council of the European Union: Introducing and validating DICEU

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Wratil

    (Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany)

  • Sara B Hobolt

Abstract

The Council of the European Union is the European Union’s most powerful legislative body. Yet, we still have limited information about Council politics because of the lack of suitable data. This paper validates a new approach to studying Council politics entitled DICEU – Debates in the Council of the European Union . This approach is the first to leverage the public videos of Council deliberations as a data source. We demonstrate the face, convergent, and predictive validity of DICEU data. Governments’ ideal points scaled from these videos yield meaningful and well-known conflict dimensions. Moreover, governments’ positions during Council negotiations correlate highly with expert assessments and predict subsequent votes on legislative acts. We conclude that DICEU data provide a promising new approach to studying Council politics and multilevel governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Wratil & Sara B Hobolt, 2019. "Public deliberations in the Council of the European Union: Introducing and validating DICEU," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 511-531, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:20:y:2019:i:3:p:511-531
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116519839152
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116519839152
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116519839152?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. Stéphanie Novak, 2013. "The Silence of Ministers: Consensus and Blame Avoidance in the Council of the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(6), pages 1091-1107, November.
    2. Grimmer, Justin, 2010. "A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 1-35, January.
    3. Christina Zimmer & Gerald Schneider & Michael Dobbins, 2005. "The Contested Council: Conflict Dimensions of an Intergovernmental EU Institution," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53, pages 403-422, June.
    4. Stefanie Bailer & Mikko Mattila & Gerald Schneider, 2015. "Money Makes the EU Go Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in the Council of Ministers," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 437-456, May.
    5. Proksch, Sven-Oliver & Wratil, Christopher & Wäckerle, Jens, 2019. "Testing the Validity of Automatic Speech Recognition for Political Text Analysis," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 339-359, July.
    6. Sara Hagemann, 2007. "Applying Ideal Point Estimation Methods to the Council of Ministers," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(2), pages 279-296, June.
    7. Fabio Wasserfallen & Dirk Leuffen & Zdenek Kudrna & Hanno Degner, 2019. "Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 3-23, March.
    8. Robert Thomson, 2008. "The Council Presidency in the European Union: Responsibility with Power," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46, pages 593-617, June.
    9. Quinn, Kevin M., 2004. "Bayesian Factor Analysis for Mixed Ordinal and Continuous Responses," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 338-353.
    10. Sara Hagemann & Stefanie Bailer & Alexander Herzog, 2019. "Signals to Their Parliaments? Governments’ Use of Votes and Policy Statements in the EU Council," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 634-650, May.
    11. Robert Thomson, 2008. "The Council Presidency in the European Union: Responsibility with Power," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 593-617, June.
    12. Martin, Andrew D. & Quinn, Kevin M., 2002. "Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 134-153, April.
    13. Margaret E. Roberts & Brandon M. Stewart & Dustin Tingley & Christopher Lucas & Jetson Leder‐Luis & Shana Kushner Gadarian & Bethany Albertson & David G. Rand, 2014. "Structural Topic Models for Open‐Ended Survey Responses," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(4), pages 1064-1082, October.
    14. de Vries, Erik & Schoonvelde, Martijn & Schumacher, Gijs, 2018. "No Longer Lost in Translation: Evidence that Google Translate Works for Comparative Bag-of-Words Text Applications," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 417-430, October.
    15. Jonathan B. Slapin & Sven‐Oliver Proksch, 2008. "A Scaling Model for Estimating Time‐Series Party Positions from Texts," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 705-722, July.
    16. Lauderdale, Benjamin E. & Herzog, Alexander, 2016. "Measuring Political Positions from Legislative Speech," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 374-394, July.
    17. Christina Zimmer & Gerald Schneider & Michael Dobbins, 2005. "The Contested Council: Conflict Dimensions of an Intergovernmental EU Institution," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(2), pages 403-422, June.
    18. Mckibben, Heather Elko, 2016. "To Link or Not to Link? Agenda Change in International Bargaining," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 371-393, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:nad:wpaper:20220080 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Diaf, Sami & Döpke, Jörg & Fritsche, Ulrich & Rockenbach, Ida, 2022. "Sharks and minnows in a shoal of words: Measuring latent ideological positions based on text mining techniques," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. James P Cross & AustÄ— VaznonytÄ—, 2020. "Can we do what we say we will do? Issue salience, government effectiveness, and the legislative efficiency of Council Presidencies," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(4), pages 657-679, December.
    4. Austė Vaznonytė, 2020. "The rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU – Still an agenda-setter?," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 497-518, September.
    5. Brigitte Pircher & Mike Farjam, 2021. "Oppositional voting in the Council of the EU between 2010 and 2019: Evidence for differentiated politicisation," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 472-494, September.
    6. Baranski, Andrzej & Haas, Nicholas, 2023. "The timing of communication and retaliation in bargaining: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    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. Mónica D. Oliveira & Inês Mataloto & Panos Kanavos, 2019. "Multi-criteria decision analysis for health technology assessment: addressing methodological challenges to improve the state of the art," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(6), pages 891-918, August.
    2. Brigitte Pircher & Mike Farjam, 2021. "Oppositional voting in the Council of the EU between 2010 and 2019: Evidence for differentiated politicisation," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 472-494, September.
    3. Silvana Târlea & Stefanie Bailer & Hanno Degner & Lisa M Dellmuth & Dirk Leuffen & Magnus Lundgren & Jonas Tallberg & Fabio Wasserfallen, 2019. "Explaining governmental preferences on Economic and Monetary Union Reform," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 24-44, March.
    4. Philippe van Gruisen, 2019. "The Trio Presidency and the Efficiency of Council Decision‐Making: An Empirical Study," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 692-709, July.
    5. Mikko Mattila, 2012. "Resolving controversies with DEU data," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(3), pages 451-461, September.
    6. Běla Plechanovová, 2011. "The EU Council enlarged: North-South-East or core-periphery?," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(1), pages 87-106, March.
    7. Tanja A. Börzel & Philipp Broniecki & Miriam Hartlapp & Lukas Obholzer, 2023. "Contesting Europe: Eurosceptic Dissent and Integration Polarization in the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 1100-1118, July.
    8. Tim Veen, 2011. "The dimensionality and nature of conflict in European Union politics: On the characteristics of intergovernmental decision-making," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(1), pages 65-86, March.
    9. Stefanie Bailer & Mikko Mattila & Gerald Schneider, 2015. "Money Makes the EU Go Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in the Council of Ministers," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 437-456, May.
    10. Karl-Oskar Lindgren & Thomas Persson, 2008. "The Structure of Conflict over EU Chemicals Policy," European Union Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 31-58, March.
    11. Austė Vaznonytė, 2020. "The rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU – Still an agenda-setter?," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 497-518, September.
    12. Christoph Mikulaschek, 2023. "The responsive public: How European Union decisions shape public opinion on salient policies," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 645-665, December.
    13. Manuele Citi & Mads Dagnis Jensen, 2022. "The Effects of Supranational Delegation on Policy Development," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 337-354, March.
    14. Muhlbock, Monika & Tosun, Jale, 2015. "Deciding over controversial issues: Voting behavior in the Council and the European Parliament on genetically modified organisms," GMCC-15: Seventh GMCC, November 17-20, 2015, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 211480, International Conference on Coexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM based Agricultural Supply Chains (GMCC).
    15. Hausladen, Carina I. & Schubert, Marcel H. & Ash, Elliott, 2020. "Text classification of ideological direction in judicial opinions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    16. Kira Killermann, 2016. "Loose Ties or Strong Bonds? The Effect of a Commissioner's Nationality and Partisanship on Voting in the Council," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1367-1383, November.
    17. Wessel Wijtvliet & Arthur Dyevre, 2021. "Judicial ideology in economic cases: Evidence from the General Court of the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(1), pages 25-45, March.
    18. Thomas Lehner & Fabio Wasserfallen, 2019. "Political conflict in the reform of the Eurozone," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 45-64, March.
    19. Deniz Aksoy, 2010. "Who gets what, when, and how revisited: Voting and proposal powers in the allocation of the EU budget," European Union Politics, , vol. 11(2), pages 171-194, June.
    20. Vladimír Bilčík, 2017. "The Slovak EU Council Presidency: In Defence of Post-Brexit EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55, pages 64-72, September.

    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:20:y:2019:i:3:p:511-531. 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.