IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v9y2021i3p40-51.html

Why Defend Something I Don’t Agree with? Conflicts within the Commission and Legislative Amendments in Trilogues

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Laloux

    (Institute of Political Science Louvain-Europe, UCLouvain, Belgium)

  • Lara Panning

    (Department of Political Science, University of Bamberg, Germany)

Abstract

This article aims to examine the effect of intra-institutional conflicts in the European Commission on the extent of changes made to legislative proposals in trilogue negotiations. We develop and test three hypotheses related to how conflicts within the Commission, namely that intra-institutional disagreements during policy formulation (h1), and potential conflicts with previous (h2) or subsequent (h3) colleges of commissioners, increase the number of amendments to the Commission’s proposal adopted in trilogues. To test our hypotheses, we use a new dataset measuring the number of changes between Commission proposals and adopted legislation for 216 legislative acts negotiated between 2012 and 2019 by means of text-mining techniques. It is important to note that we control for differences between the Commission’s proposals and the co-legislators’ positions in order to distinguish between an effect on preferences anticipation and on the negotiations proper. Our results indicate that intra-institutional conflicts affect the Commission’s anticipation of the co-legislators’ positions. The effect on its behaviour in trilogues, that is, after the legislative proposal has been tabled, is less clear. Regarding the latter, only the number of Directorates-General involved is significantly linked with the number of amendments tabled. These findings suggest that while intra-institutional disagreements affect the Commission’s role in trilogues, the range of preferences is more important than the intensity of conflicts.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Laloux & Lara Panning, 2021. "Why Defend Something I Don’t Agree with? Conflicts within the Commission and Legislative Amendments in Trilogues," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 40-51.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:40-51
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i3.4154
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4154
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4154?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. Rauh, Christian, 2019. "EU politicization and policy initiatives of the European Commission: the case of consumer policy," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 344-365.
    2. Baissa, Daniel K. & Rainey, Carlisle, 2020. "When BLUE is not best: non-normal errors and the linear model," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 136-148, January.
    3. König, Thomas & Lindberg, Bjorn & Lechner, Sandra & Pohlmeier, Winfried, 2007. "Bicameral Conflict Resolution in the European Union: An Empirical Analysis of Conciliation Committee Bargains," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(2), pages 281-312, April.
    4. Desmond Dinan, 2016. "Governance and Institutions: A More Political Commission," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54, pages 101-116, September.
    5. Myrto Tsakatika, 2005. "Claims to Legitimacy: The European Commission between Continuity and Change," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 193-220, March.
    6. Jens Blom‐Hansen & Roman Senninger, 2021. "The Commission in EU Policy Preparation," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 625-642, May.
    7. Robert Thomson & Madeleine Hosli, 2006. "Who Has Power in the EU? The Commission, Council and Parliament in Legislative Decision‐making," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 391-417, June.
    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. Thomas Laloux & Lara Panning, 2021. "Why Defend Something I Don’t Agree with? Conflicts within the Commission and Legislative Amendments in Trilogues," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 40-51.
    2. Pamela Pansardi & Pier Domenico Tortola, 2022. "A “More Political” Commission? Reassessing EC Politicization through Language," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 1047-1068, July.
    3. Buket Oztas & Amie Kreppel, 2022. "Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission's Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 408-426, March.
    4. Radu-Mihai Triculescu & Leonce Röth & Christoph Ivanusch & Klaus H. Goetz, 2026. "Presidents, commissioners, and time pressure: A mixed-methods analysis of migration communication by the European Commission," European Union Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 88-112, March.
    5. Christophe Crombez & Martijn Huysmans & Wim Van Gestel, 2017. "Choosing an informative agenda setter: The appointment of the Commission in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 145-167, June.
    6. Thomas König & Dirk Junge, 2009. "Why Don’t Veto Players Use Their Power?," European Union Politics, , vol. 10(4), pages 507-534, December.
    7. Muireann O'Dwyer, 2022. "Gender and Crises in European Economic Governance: Is this Time Different?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 152-169, January.
    8. 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).
    9. Rory Costello & Robert Thomson, 2011. "The nexus of bicameralism: Rapporteurs’ impact on decision outcomes in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 337-357, September.
    10. Concetta Cardillo & Orlando Cimino & Marcello De Rosa & Martina Francescone, 2023. "The Evolution of Multifunctional Agriculture in Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-19, July.
    11. James P Cross, 2013. "Everyone’s a winner (almost): Bargaining success in the Council of Ministers of the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(1), pages 70-94, March.
    12. Christine Hackenesch & Julian Bergmann & Jan Orbie, 2021. "Development Policy under Fire? The Politicization of European External Relations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 3-19, January.
    13. Bernhard Zeilinger, 2021. "Die Wirkmächtigkeit des Europäischen Semesters und ihre Auswirkung auf die Interessensvertretung durch Arbeitnehmer:innenverbände," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 231, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    14. Hasselbalch, Jacob Adam, 2017. "Innovation assessment: governing through periods of disruptive technological change," SocArXiv 3rj94, Center for Open Science.
    15. Magnus Lundgren & Stefanie Bailer & Lisa M Dellmuth & Jonas Tallberg & Silvana Târlea, 2019. "Bargaining success in the reform of the Eurozone," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 65-88, March.
    16. Víctor Mercader & Esthela Galván-Vela & Rafael Ravina-Ripoll & Cristina Raluca Gh. Popescu, 2021. "A Focus on Ethical Value under the Vision of Leadership, Teamwork, Effective Communication and Productivity," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-32, November.
    17. Carl Vikberg, 2020. "Explaining interest group access to the European Commission’s expert groups," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 312-332, June.
    18. Leonard August Schuette, 2021. "Forging Unity: European Commission Leadership in the Brexit Negotiations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1142-1159, September.
    19. Roberta Rocca & Katharina Lawall & Manos Tsakiris & Laura Cram, 2024. "Communicating Europe: a computational analysis of the evolution of the European Commission’s communication on Twitter," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 1223-1274, October.
    20. Agostino Stavolo, 2026. "Speaking as a woman: the political communication of Ursula von der Leyen," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 2093-2119, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cog:poango:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:40-51. 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: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    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.