Nikoleta Yordanova
Biographic Data
| ID | 4128461 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nikoleta Yordanova |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nikoleta |
| FAMILY NAME | Yordanova |
| SIGNATURE | YORDANOVA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9207-4597 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 283 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Just to be clear? Strategic vagueness of the European Parliament in EU policy negotiations
Vague legislative language can facilitate law adoption and implementation but reduce policy effectiveness and application uniformity. So, when do legislators employ it? Building on policymaking and responsiveness theories, we argue that legislators use vague language to overcome institutional conflict and public opinion constraints but avoid it when they seek to assert their positions in legislative output and policy outcomes. Empirically, we stu…
When the EU Council responds to public opinion: Negotiating European policy integration
While the Council of the European Union has long been deciding on EU policy insulated from public scrutiny, we argue that enhanced transparency and EU politicisation have strengthened the linkage between its positions and public opinion. We further expect the Council to be more responsive to public opinion in member states, in which citizens view EU policy action as salient and are relatively united in their stance on it. To assess these expectat…
Curb EU enthusiasm: How Politicisation Shapes Bureaucratic Responsiveness
International institutions are often challenged for being detached from the citizens. Focusing on the European Union, this article studies whether this is the case and, if so, when the European Commission responds to public opinion when pursuing policy integration. It argues that the Commission has legitimacy incentives encouraging it to be responsive but politicisation can suppress responsiveness by transmitting competing demands on the Commissi…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
Delegating legislative powers to the European Commission: The Threat of Non-Compliance With Tertiary Legislation in the Member States
When does the delegation of legislative powers to the executive endanger policy compliance? The European Union (EU) Lisbon Treaty introduced quasi-legislative tertiary legislation – delegated acts – which empowers the European Commission to amend secondary legislation. Formally, member states control delegated acts only ex post via a veto power in the Council, while they have both ex ante amendment powers and ex post veto over the alternative Com…
Constraining the European Commission to please the public: Responsiveness Through Delegation Choices
When and how does public opinion affect the delegation choices of legislatorsin the EU? We argue the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers limitthe discretion of the Commission in response to EU-wide scepticism andpoliticisation of EU policies. Public opposition to EU policies, theircontestation, and potential scrutiny motivate the EU legislators to minimisethe discrepancies between the adopted and implemented policies. They doso to av…
Agenda Control and Timing of Bill Initiation: A Temporal Perspective on Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Although democratic governance imposes temporal constraints, the timing of government policy making activities such as bill initiation is still poorly understood. This holds especially under coalition governments, in which government bills need to find approval by a partner party in parliament. We propose a dynamic temporal perspective in which ministers do not know whether they face a cooperative or competitive partner at the beginning of a term…
Circumventing coalition oversight in multiparty governments: Bill referral to parliamentary committees in the Finnish Eduskunta
Existing research largely agrees that to minimize ministerial drift, political parties in multiparty governments tend to use parliamentary committees to monitor each other. Particularly, they strive to chair parliamentary committees corresponding to ministerial departments to keep tabs on their ruling partners. Yet, policing ministerial activities through a chair-based monitoring system requires perfect correspondence of jurisdictions between min…
The logic of regulatory venue shopping: A firm’s perspective
Drawing on an original and unique survey data set of 243 medium- and big-sized firms operating in five sectors (energy, telecommunications, railways, airlines and postal services) and across 29 European countries, we analyse what incentivizes firms to interact with and influence multiple regulators. In so doing, we map the regulatory opportunity structure and scrutinize firms’ venue shopping logics. The study shows that firms can clearly identify…
Legislative Control over Executive Law‐making: Delegation of Quasi‐legislative Powers to the European Commission
Most EU legislation consists of executive acts of the European Commission. The Lisbon Treaty introduced a new type of EU executive legislation – delegated acts, which give the European Parliament formal powers of legislative scrutiny equal to those of the EU Council. Thus, the use of delegated acts could reinforce the institutional balance of power and help reduce the EU's democratic deficit. We studied the situations when the Parliament and the …
Swaying citizen support for EU membership: Evidence from a survey experiment of German voters
The United Kingdom’s 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) raised concerns that other countries would follow suit. This article examines how arguments about EU membership related to economic, cultural, political, and security and peace issues could influence how citizens would vote in EU membership referendums. Our two-wave survey experiment on a random sample of the German population and difference-in-differences analysi…
When legislators choose not to decide: Abstentions in the European Parliament
Why do legislators choose to vote ‘Abstain’ instead of ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’? Is it because they shy away from taking sides when facing competing demands? We address this question by studying roll-call vote data on the sixth European Parliament. In line with our principal–agent approach, we find that Members of the European Parliament are prone to strategically abstain when torn between different positions of their national party, their transnational pa…
Alliance with the Enemy: Why the CDU and the Greens Formed Their First Coalition in a Large German Federal State
This article seeks to explain the 2013 coalition between the CDU and the Greens in the German federal state of Hesse. It applies traditional office-seeking and policy-seeking coalition formation theories to the case alongside a new explanation underscoring the influence of past behaviour on coalition partnership; namely, the negative impact of a pre-electoral commitment breach on future coalition formation. The results show that pure office-seeki…
Tracing the selection bias in roll call votes: Party group cohesion in the European Parliament
Legislative politics scholars rely heavily on roll call vote (RCV) data. However, it has been claimed that strategic motives behind RCV requests lead to overestimating party group cohesion and, thus, biased findings on legislative behaviour. To explore this claim, we distinguish between two types of bias, a ‘behavioural bias’ and a ‘selection bias’. A recent rule change in the European Parliament, making RCVs mandatory on all final legislative vo…
Signalling ‘compliance: The link between notified EU directive implementation and infringement cases
Research on member states’ compliance with European Union legislation often focuses on the timing of self-reported implementation measures. It is generally assumed that the earlier a member state adopts an implementation measure the more compliant it is. This is problematic because early measures may only partially address the goals of a European Union directive. We study whether and when reporting national legislation to signal directive impleme…
The European Parliament: In need of a theory
The legislative organization of the European Parliament (EP) has far-reaching implications for its ability to solve the democratic deficit problem of the European Union (EU). Recognizing that, this article reviews the literature on the EP organization with a view to consolidating existing knowledge and identifying outstanding research gaps. It calls for a new generation of research to go beyond the congressional theoretical literature and develop…
Inter-institutional Rules and Division of Power in the European Parliament: Allocation of Consultation and Co-decision Reports
Studies on the European Parliament have largely overlooked the impact of the inter-institutional context on its internal organisation. This paper argues that the stronger legislative powers of the Parliament vis-a-vis the Council of Ministers under the co-decision than under the consultation procedure affect the intra-parliamentary allocation of different types of legislative report. The analysis of the period 2004-07 shows that legislators from …
The Rationale behind Committee Assignment in the European Parliament: Distributive, Informational and Partisan Perspectives
Although most of the legislative tasks of the European Parliament (EP) are performed in its committees, it is controversial how representative they are of the overall plenary. Distributive, informational and partisan theories suggest respectively that the committee assignments system is designed to (1) serve special interests outside the EP, (2) bring informational benefits to the plenary or (3) promote partisan interests. These propositions are …
The Rationale behind Committee Assignment in the European Parliament: Distributive, Informational and Partisan Perspectives
Although most of the legislative tasks of the European Parliament (EP) are performed in its committees, it is controversial how representative they are of the overall plenary. Distributive, informational and partisan theories suggest respectively that the committee assignments system is designed to (1) serve special interests outside the EP, (2) bring informational benefits to the plenary or (3) promote partisan interests. These propositions are …
Tracing the selection bias in roll call votes: Party group cohesion in the European Parliament
Legislative politics scholars rely heavily on roll call vote (RCV) data. However, it has been claimed that strategic motives behind RCV requests lead to overestimating party group cohesion and, thus, biased findings on legislative behaviour. To explore this claim, we distinguish between two types of bias, a ‘behavioural bias’ and a ‘selection bias’. A recent rule change in the European Parliament, making RCVs mandatory on all final legislative vo…
Inter-institutional Rules and Division of Power in the European Parliament: Allocation of Consultation and Co-decision Reports
Studies on the European Parliament have largely overlooked the impact of the inter-institutional context on its internal organisation. This paper argues that the stronger legislative powers of the Parliament vis-a-vis the Council of Ministers under the co-decision than under the consultation procedure affect the intra-parliamentary allocation of different types of legislative report. The analysis of the period 2004-07 shows that legislators from …
The European Parliament: In need of a theory
The legislative organization of the European Parliament (EP) has far-reaching implications for its ability to solve the democratic deficit problem of the European Union (EU). Recognizing that, this article reviews the literature on the EP organization with a view to consolidating existing knowledge and identifying outstanding research gaps. It calls for a new generation of research to go beyond the congressional theoretical literature and develop…
When legislators choose not to decide: Abstentions in the European Parliament
Why do legislators choose to vote ‘Abstain’ instead of ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’? Is it because they shy away from taking sides when facing competing demands? We address this question by studying roll-call vote data on the sixth European Parliament. In line with our principal–agent approach, we find that Members of the European Parliament are prone to strategically abstain when torn between different positions of their national party, their transnational pa…
Signalling ‘compliance: The link between notified EU directive implementation and infringement cases
Research on member states’ compliance with European Union legislation often focuses on the timing of self-reported implementation measures. It is generally assumed that the earlier a member state adopts an implementation measure the more compliant it is. This is problematic because early measures may only partially address the goals of a European Union directive. We study whether and when reporting national legislation to signal directive impleme…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
Swaying citizen support for EU membership: Evidence from a survey experiment of German voters
The United Kingdom’s 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) raised concerns that other countries would follow suit. This article examines how arguments about EU membership related to economic, cultural, political, and security and peace issues could influence how citizens would vote in EU membership referendums. Our two-wave survey experiment on a random sample of the German population and difference-in-differences analysi…
Agenda Control and Timing of Bill Initiation: A Temporal Perspective on Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Although democratic governance imposes temporal constraints, the timing of government policy making activities such as bill initiation is still poorly understood. This holds especially under coalition governments, in which government bills need to find approval by a partner party in parliament. We propose a dynamic temporal perspective in which ministers do not know whether they face a cooperative or competitive partner at the beginning of a term…
Constraining the European Commission to please the public: Responsiveness Through Delegation Choices
When and how does public opinion affect the delegation choices of legislatorsin the EU? We argue the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers limitthe discretion of the Commission in response to EU-wide scepticism andpoliticisation of EU policies. Public opposition to EU policies, theircontestation, and potential scrutiny motivate the EU legislators to minimisethe discrepancies between the adopted and implemented policies. They doso to av…
Legislative Control over Executive Law‐making: Delegation of Quasi‐legislative Powers to the European Commission
Most EU legislation consists of executive acts of the European Commission. The Lisbon Treaty introduced a new type of EU executive legislation – delegated acts, which give the European Parliament formal powers of legislative scrutiny equal to those of the EU Council. Thus, the use of delegated acts could reinforce the institutional balance of power and help reduce the EU's democratic deficit. We studied the situations when the Parliament and the …
The logic of regulatory venue shopping: A firm’s perspective
Drawing on an original and unique survey data set of 243 medium- and big-sized firms operating in five sectors (energy, telecommunications, railways, airlines and postal services) and across 29 European countries, we analyse what incentivizes firms to interact with and influence multiple regulators. In so doing, we map the regulatory opportunity structure and scrutinize firms’ venue shopping logics. The study shows that firms can clearly identify…
Curb EU enthusiasm: How Politicisation Shapes Bureaucratic Responsiveness
International institutions are often challenged for being detached from the citizens. Focusing on the European Union, this article studies whether this is the case and, if so, when the European Commission responds to public opinion when pursuing policy integration. It argues that the Commission has legitimacy incentives encouraging it to be responsive but politicisation can suppress responsiveness by transmitting competing demands on the Commissi…
Circumventing coalition oversight in multiparty governments: Bill referral to parliamentary committees in the Finnish Eduskunta
Existing research largely agrees that to minimize ministerial drift, political parties in multiparty governments tend to use parliamentary committees to monitor each other. Particularly, they strive to chair parliamentary committees corresponding to ministerial departments to keep tabs on their ruling partners. Yet, policing ministerial activities through a chair-based monitoring system requires perfect correspondence of jurisdictions between min…
Alliance with the Enemy: Why the CDU and the Greens Formed Their First Coalition in a Large German Federal State
This article seeks to explain the 2013 coalition between the CDU and the Greens in the German federal state of Hesse. It applies traditional office-seeking and policy-seeking coalition formation theories to the case alongside a new explanation underscoring the influence of past behaviour on coalition partnership; namely, the negative impact of a pre-electoral commitment breach on future coalition formation. The results show that pure office-seeki…
Delegating legislative powers to the European Commission: The Threat of Non-Compliance With Tertiary Legislation in the Member States
When does the delegation of legislative powers to the executive endanger policy compliance? The European Union (EU) Lisbon Treaty introduced quasi-legislative tertiary legislation – delegated acts – which empowers the European Commission to amend secondary legislation. Formally, member states control delegated acts only ex post via a veto power in the Council, while they have both ex ante amendment powers and ex post veto over the alternative Com…
The Rationale behind Committee Assignment in the European Parliament: Distributive, Informational and Partisan Perspectives
Although most of the legislative tasks of the European Parliament (EP) are performed in its committees, it is controversial how representative they are of the overall plenary. Distributive, informational and partisan theories suggest respectively that the committee assignments system is designed to (1) serve special interests outside the EP, (2) bring informational benefits to the plenary or (3) promote partisan interests. These propositions are …
Inter-institutional Rules and Division of Power in the European Parliament: Allocation of Consultation and Co-decision Reports
Studies on the European Parliament have largely overlooked the impact of the inter-institutional context on its internal organisation. This paper argues that the stronger legislative powers of the Parliament vis-a-vis the Council of Ministers under the co-decision than under the consultation procedure affect the intra-parliamentary allocation of different types of legislative report. The analysis of the period 2004-07 shows that legislators from …
The European Parliament: In need of a theory
The legislative organization of the European Parliament (EP) has far-reaching implications for its ability to solve the democratic deficit problem of the European Union (EU). Recognizing that, this article reviews the literature on the EP organization with a view to consolidating existing knowledge and identifying outstanding research gaps. It calls for a new generation of research to go beyond the congressional theoretical literature and develop…
Tracing the selection bias in roll call votes: Party group cohesion in the European Parliament
Legislative politics scholars rely heavily on roll call vote (RCV) data. However, it has been claimed that strategic motives behind RCV requests lead to overestimating party group cohesion and, thus, biased findings on legislative behaviour. To explore this claim, we distinguish between two types of bias, a ‘behavioural bias’ and a ‘selection bias’. A recent rule change in the European Parliament, making RCVs mandatory on all final legislative vo…
Signalling ‘compliance: The link between notified EU directive implementation and infringement cases
Research on member states’ compliance with European Union legislation often focuses on the timing of self-reported implementation measures. It is generally assumed that the earlier a member state adopts an implementation measure the more compliant it is. This is problematic because early measures may only partially address the goals of a European Union directive. We study whether and when reporting national legislation to signal directive impleme…
Alliance with the Enemy: Why the CDU and the Greens Formed Their First Coalition in a Large German Federal State
This article seeks to explain the 2013 coalition between the CDU and the Greens in the German federal state of Hesse. It applies traditional office-seeking and policy-seeking coalition formation theories to the case alongside a new explanation underscoring the influence of past behaviour on coalition partnership; namely, the negative impact of a pre-electoral commitment breach on future coalition formation. The results show that pure office-seeki…
When legislators choose not to decide: Abstentions in the European Parliament
Why do legislators choose to vote ‘Abstain’ instead of ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’? Is it because they shy away from taking sides when facing competing demands? We address this question by studying roll-call vote data on the sixth European Parliament. In line with our principal–agent approach, we find that Members of the European Parliament are prone to strategically abstain when torn between different positions of their national party, their transnational pa…
Legislative Control over Executive Law‐making: Delegation of Quasi‐legislative Powers to the European Commission
Most EU legislation consists of executive acts of the European Commission. The Lisbon Treaty introduced a new type of EU executive legislation – delegated acts, which give the European Parliament formal powers of legislative scrutiny equal to those of the EU Council. Thus, the use of delegated acts could reinforce the institutional balance of power and help reduce the EU's democratic deficit. We studied the situations when the Parliament and the …
Swaying citizen support for EU membership: Evidence from a survey experiment of German voters
The United Kingdom’s 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) raised concerns that other countries would follow suit. This article examines how arguments about EU membership related to economic, cultural, political, and security and peace issues could influence how citizens would vote in EU membership referendums. Our two-wave survey experiment on a random sample of the German population and difference-in-differences analysi…
The logic of regulatory venue shopping: A firm’s perspective
Drawing on an original and unique survey data set of 243 medium- and big-sized firms operating in five sectors (energy, telecommunications, railways, airlines and postal services) and across 29 European countries, we analyse what incentivizes firms to interact with and influence multiple regulators. In so doing, we map the regulatory opportunity structure and scrutinize firms’ venue shopping logics. The study shows that firms can clearly identify…
Agenda Control and Timing of Bill Initiation: A Temporal Perspective on Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
Although democratic governance imposes temporal constraints, the timing of government policy making activities such as bill initiation is still poorly understood. This holds especially under coalition governments, in which government bills need to find approval by a partner party in parliament. We propose a dynamic temporal perspective in which ministers do not know whether they face a cooperative or competitive partner at the beginning of a term…
Circumventing coalition oversight in multiparty governments: Bill referral to parliamentary committees in the Finnish Eduskunta
Existing research largely agrees that to minimize ministerial drift, political parties in multiparty governments tend to use parliamentary committees to monitor each other. Particularly, they strive to chair parliamentary committees corresponding to ministerial departments to keep tabs on their ruling partners. Yet, policing ministerial activities through a chair-based monitoring system requires perfect correspondence of jurisdictions between min…
Delegating legislative powers to the European Commission: The Threat of Non-Compliance With Tertiary Legislation in the Member States
When does the delegation of legislative powers to the executive endanger policy compliance? The European Union (EU) Lisbon Treaty introduced quasi-legislative tertiary legislation – delegated acts – which empowers the European Commission to amend secondary legislation. Formally, member states control delegated acts only ex post via a veto power in the Council, while they have both ex ante amendment powers and ex post veto over the alternative Com…
Constraining the European Commission to please the public: Responsiveness Through Delegation Choices
When and how does public opinion affect the delegation choices of legislatorsin the EU? We argue the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers limitthe discretion of the Commission in response to EU-wide scepticism andpoliticisation of EU policies. Public opposition to EU policies, theircontestation, and potential scrutiny motivate the EU legislators to minimisethe discrepancies between the adopted and implemented policies. They doso to av…
When the EU Council responds to public opinion: Negotiating European policy integration
While the Council of the European Union has long been deciding on EU policy insulated from public scrutiny, we argue that enhanced transparency and EU politicisation have strengthened the linkage between its positions and public opinion. We further expect the Council to be more responsive to public opinion in member states, in which citizens view EU policy action as salient and are relatively united in their stance on it. To assess these expectat…
Curb EU enthusiasm: How Politicisation Shapes Bureaucratic Responsiveness
International institutions are often challenged for being detached from the citizens. Focusing on the European Union, this article studies whether this is the case and, if so, when the European Commission responds to public opinion when pursuing policy integration. It argues that the Commission has legitimacy incentives encouraging it to be responsive but politicisation can suppress responsiveness by transmitting competing demands on the Commissi…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
Just to be clear? Strategic vagueness of the European Parliament in EU policy negotiations
Vague legislative language can facilitate law adoption and implementation but reduce policy effectiveness and application uniformity. So, when do legislators employ it? Building on policymaking and responsiveness theories, we argue that legislators use vague language to overcome institutional conflict and public opinion constraints but avoid it when they seek to assert their positions in legislative output and policy outcomes. Empirically, we stu…
Law (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Economics (13 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (9 works) · European union (9 works)