IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fau/aucocz/au2012_125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Role of Political Affiliation across the European Institutions in the Dynamics of the EU Legislative Process

Author

Listed:
  • Radko Hokovský

    (Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies, Prague, Czech Republic)

  • Viera Knutelská

    (Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies, Prague, Czech Republic)

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of the impact of party political affiliation on the pace of the EU legislative process. It hypothesizes that the codecision process should be faster if the key actors from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council are closer on the left-right policy scale or share affiliation to the same political family. The hypotheses are tested on the data covering the period of five years, from May 2004 to June 2009. While closeness on the left-right policy scale did not prove to have any effect, the findings show that if all three main actors, or at least the EP rapporteur and responsible Commissioner, come from the same political family, the codecision-process is indeed faster. The paper thus aims to contribute to the study of importance of party political ties and left-right cleavages in the EU decision-making.

Suggested Citation

  • Radko Hokovský & Viera Knutelská, 2012. "Role of Political Affiliation across the European Institutions in the Dynamics of the EU Legislative Process," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 125-138, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:fau:aucocz:au2012_125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://auco.cuni.cz/mag/article/download/id/127/type/attachment
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Abdul Ghafar Noury & Simon Hix & Gérard Roland, 2007. "Democratic politics in the European Parliament," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7744, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. 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.
    4. Laver, Michael & Benoit, Kenneth & Garry, John, 2003. "Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 311-331, May.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    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. Svetličič Marjan & Cerjak Kira, 2015. "Small Countries’ EU Council Presidency and the Realisation of their National Interests: The Case of Slovenia," Croatian International Relations Review, Sciendo, vol. 21(74), pages 5-39, December.
    5. 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.
    6. Mühlböck, Monika and Berthold Rittberger, 2015. "The Council, the European Parliament, and the paradox of inter-institutional cooperation," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 19, January.
    7. 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.
    8. Suzuki, Sanae, 2014. "Chairship system and decision making by consensus in international agreements : the case of ASEAN," IDE Discussion Papers 471, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    9. Andreas Warntjen, 2008. "The Council Presidency," European Union Politics, , vol. 9(3), pages 315-338, September.
    10. Valerio Leone Sciabolazza, 2022. "Bargaining within the Council of the European Union: An Empirical Study on the Allocation of Funds of the European Budget," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 8(2), pages 227-258, July.
    11. Nyhuis Dominic & König Pascal, 2018. "Estimating the Conflict Dimensionality in the German Länder from Vote Advice Applications, 2014–2017," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 57-86, June.
    12. Petya Alexandrova & Marcello Carammia & Sebastian Princen & Arco Timmermans, 2014. "Measuring the European Council agenda: Introducing a new approach and dataset," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(1), pages 152-167, March.
    13. Marcello Carammia & Sebastiaan Princen & Arco Timmermans, 2016. "From Summitry to EU Government: An Agenda Formation Perspective on the European Council," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 809-825, July.
    14. Michelle Hollman & Zuzana Murdoch, 2018. "Lobbying cycles in Brussels: Evidence from the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(4), pages 597-616, December.
    15. Sabina Kajnč, 2009. "The Slovenian Presidency: Meeting Symbolic and Substantive Challenges," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(s1), pages 89-98, September.
    16. Mikko Mattila, 2012. "Resolving controversies with DEU data," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(3), pages 451-461, September.
    17. Armèn Hakhverdian, 2009. "Capturing Government Policy on the Left–Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956–2006," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 720-745, December.
    18. Simon Hug & Tobias Schulz, 2007. "Referendums in the EU’s constitution building process," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 177-218, June.
    19. 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.
    20. Tim Veen, 2011. "Positions and salience in European Union politics: Estimation and validation of a new dataset," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(2), pages 267-288, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    European decision-making; co-decision; left-right cleavage; party political affiliation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government

    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:fau:aucocz:au2012_125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icunicz.html .

    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: Lenka Stastna (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icunicz.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.