Daniel Finke
Biographic Data
| ID | 4377637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Finke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Finke |
| SIGNATURE | FINKE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9028-8188 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 396 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The European Union’s foreign policy rhetoric at the United Nations General Assembly
How do European Union members balance national and common European Union positions when acting in international organisations? This article studies the rhetoric of national and European Union diplomats in the United Nations General Assembly, examining the influence of domestic and European Union-level factors on revealed foreign policy priorities. Analysing almost 40,000 speeches from 1993 to 2022, we identify a latent dimension that pits countri…
Multidimensional conflicts over disarmament and international security: Analyzing speeches in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly
In this article, we explore the rhetorical space structuring the debates in the United Nations General Assembly's (UNGA) Committee on Disarmament and International Security. To this end, we unfold states' speeches by combining three established methods. First, we estimate terms' relevance for latent topics structuring the debates with structural topic modeling. Second, we estimate topic-specific positions based on the Wordfish algorithm. Third, w…
Is Europe raising its voice? EU representation at the UN prior to and post-Lisbon
The ‘High Representative’ speaks on behalf of the European Union in international organizations since 2010. The motivation for this reform has been to strengthen the European Union's foreign policy representation. It can be expected that this empowerment of the High Representative has affected the content of official European Union speeches held at the United Nations. Did the reform lead to a more coherent and cohesive representation of European …
Voting Green in European Parliament elections: Issue Voting in an Electoral Context
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections produced remarkable gains for Green parties throughout the European Union (EU). We analyse in how far different national electoral contexts can explain the electoral success of Green parties in EU member states. On the theoretical side, we argue that an increased salience of EU environmental politics has led to ‘green issue voting’. However, the relevance of environmental issue preferences depends on th…
Party ideologies and UN debates
In this article, I analyze the importance of party ideologies for foreign policy priorities as revealed in the UN General Assembly (UNGA). In doing so, I contribute to an increasing number of studies on the relevance of the partisan theory of public policy for foreign policy making. On the theoretical side, I expect liberal governments to direct more diplomatic efforts towards global development cooperation, that is, the fight against poverty, di…
Think globally, act locally? Domestic constraints on foreign aid
Some democratic governments prefer a more ambitious and generous development policy than others. These governments hold stronger preferences for realizing the sustainable development goals defined by the UN, including the eradication of poverty, the right to education, the protection of human rights, and the safeguarding of the environment in developing countries. Yet, the extent to which democratic governments can realize their preferred develop…
Contested comitology? The overlooked importance of the EU Commission
A crucial task of the European Commission is the implementation of EU law, not least to safeguard the functioning of the common market. To this end, it proposes implementing measures, which are adopted via comitology procedures. Composed of representatives from all member states, the comitology committees are the watchdogs that limit the Commission’s political discretion in implementing EU law. Yet, these watchdogs appear very tame, adopting all …
A guardian in need of support: The enforcement of EU state aid rules
State aid poses a threat to undistorted competition in the common market and, therefore, is rigidly regulated. However, elected political leaders have an incentive to disobey European Union (EU) regulations and grant aid in order to boost their electoral support. The European Commission is responsible for monitoring and enforcing member states’ compliance with EU state aid regulation. The present article analyses the effect of domestic politics o…
Regime type and co-sponsorship in the UN General Assembly
The years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union were characterized by high hopes for an expansion of the liberal world order and for lasting peace. In the meantime, discord between western democracies, led by the US, and non-democratic states has been increasing. In the present article, I ask in how far these tensions have reached the working level of international cooperation in the United Nations (UN). Specifically, I present the f…
The long shadow of attitudes: Differential campaign effects and issue voting in EU referendums
Can voters be persuaded by referendum campaigns? This article develops a theoretical model that synthesises the existing literature on campaign effects and issue-voting by arguing that the strength of pre-existing attitudes conditions voter receptivity to campaign arguments, thereby also determining their eventual vote choice. Using original panel data for the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum, there is evidence that attitude strength matters for wh…
Coordination inside government administrations: Lessons from the EU Commission
How can interdepartmental coordination in large political‐administrative systems be organized? This question has vexed scholars and practitioners for more than 100 years. Two perspectives—one that features hierarchical direction and one hallmarked by horizontal negotiation—dominate the scholarly debate. However, we know surprisingly little about how interdepartmental coordination is handled in practice. This article presents an empirical study in…
Reputation and Organizational Politics: Inside the EU Commission
This paper uses reputation theory to address a century-old puzzle: what guides the choice of coordination efforts in large politico-administrative systems? Max Weber, founder of the modern study of bureaucracy, famously considered a hierarchy superior to other organizational models. However, modern governments are not organized as one big hierarchy, but as a set of parallel hierarchies, typically 15-20 ministries. This raises a coordination chall…
At loggerheads over state aid: Why the Commission rejects aid and governments comply
State aid is of significant importance to EU economies. The Commission is responsible for monitoring that all aid instruments comply with EU law. The present article analyses two questions: Why does the Commission reject aid instruments? How do national governments respond to such rejections? I argue that national governments are more willing to risk conflict with the Commission if perceived corruption and Euroscepticism are high. The Commission …
Institutional conditions for effective parliamentary oversight of European Union politics
The implementation of European Union directives into national law frequently triggers extensive parliamentary activities, especially if they are complex, salient, and conflictive. These activities can cause delayed transposition. The literature suggests that early parliamentary involvement may speed up the subsequent transposition process. In this article, it is argued theoretically and empirically shown that this hope is only fulfilled where par…
T urf wars in government administration: I nterdepartmental cooperation in the E uropean C ommission
One challenge for government administration is to reap the benefits of specialization while minimizing its negative side effects. In this article, I study the factors that motivate departments to contribute to the joint formulation of public policies. I derive testable hypotheses that discriminate between two competing motivations for interdepartmental cooperation. If department managers are concerned for the quality of public policy, I expect co…
Crisis bargaining in the European Union: Formal rules or market pressure
To what extent did the European Monetary Union crisis alter the logic of European Union decision making? We analyze the relevance of asymmetric market pressures as compared to that of formal voting and agenda setting rules by applying three established bargaining models to the ‘EMU Positions’ data. Accounting for the interdependence between issues and agreements, we locate actors’ positions on three reform dimensions, namely the level of fiscal d…
Collateral damage: Do Gender Quotas Undermine Party Discipline
Quotas are the most disputed instrument to promote equal representation of women. Today, political parties in more than 90 democracies apply them. Essentially, gender quotas are a manipulation of the electoral rules. Scholars of legislative politics have created an impressive knowledge of the effect of electoral rules on political behaviour. So far, this literature remains unconnected to the literature on gender quotas. Our study contributes to c…
Coalition Politics and Parliamentary Oversight in the European Union
According to the literature, parliamentary scrutiny is either used by the opposition to control the government or by a coalition partner to control the leading minister. Yet, neither the opposition alone nor individual governing parties alone can muster a parliamentary majority to adopt recommendations, resolutions or statements. Therefore, we ask which parties coalesce in co-sponsoring such joint position papers on European Union policy proposal…
Underneath the culture of consensus: Transparency, credible commitments and voting in the Council of Ministers
The Council of Ministers rarely records negative individual votes, much less rejected proposals. The literature explains this high level of support by the Council’s ‘culture of consensus’ and the few negative votes are explained as signalling to the domestic audience. I introduce an alternative explanation for ministers’ explicit disagreement: during the negotiations preceding the final vote, ministers issue veto threats. To remain credible in th…
Bicameralism in the European Union: Parliamentary Scrutiny as a Tool for Reinforcing Party Unity
During recent years, the European Union has increasingly been portrayed as a bicameral political system in which political parties build bridges across the European Parliament (EP) and the Council. From this perspective, national parties’ representation in the Council should affect their members’ voting behaviour in the EP. Survey evidence reveals that most members of the EP (MEPs) frequently receive voting instructions from ‘their’ ministers. Ac…
The burden of authorship: How Agenda-Setting and Electoral Rules Shape Legislative Behaviour
I study the effect of agenda-setting on voting behaviour in theEuropean Parliament. The straightforward expectation would be that members ofparliament are more likely to support their own group’s amendments. But what if national party leaders reject their group’s proposal. In this situation party leaders have strong incentives to reinforce party discipline because otherwise they stand to lose credibility in future negotiations. Hence, authorship …
Why do European political groups call the roll
Research on legislative behaviour in the European Parliament is heavily reliant on recorded votes. Previous theoretical work has uncovered competing selection mechanisms that might cause a vote to be recorded. It has been argued that European Political Groups call the roll because the voting mode affects MEPs’ voting decisions. However, the underlying causal mechanism, as well as the size and direction of this effect, remains a matter of dispute.…
Who let the dogs out? The effect of parliamentary scrutiny on compliance with EU law
Recently, it has been argued that the scrutiny of European law proposal by national parliaments contributes to speeding up the implementation of EU law. To test this argument, we study the effect of parliamentary scrutiny on Germany's compliance with all directives adopted between 1999 and 2012. The results are mixed: on the one hand, parliamentary scrutiny successfully transfers necessary deliberations from the implementation stage to the policy…
Legislative Governance in Times of International Terrorism
How do political parties with different policy-making interests and veto power respond to international terrorism—can coalition parties and bicameral legislatures overcome their policy-making tensions and form a unified front for adopting counterterrorist measures? This study examines German counterterrorist legislation before and after the attacks of 9/11 by using a dictionary-based computerized text analysis. Our findings demonstrate that in ti…
Beyond rules and resources: Parliamentary scrutiny of EU policy proposals
This article examines the factors that shape parties' motivation to invest time and other resources in scrutinizing European Union policy proposals. We distinguish between two different motivations to engage in scrutiny activities. First, parties use such mechanisms to influence the national position directly. Second, parties play a two-level game and use scrutiny to manipulate their negotiator's domestic constraints. Both arguments depend on a s…
Bargaining Power in the European Union: An Evaluation of Competing Game-Theoretic Models
This article evaluates, by drawing on Barry's distinction between ‘power’ and ‘luck’, the predictive accuracy of competing bargaining models. We explore whether models that take various facets of political power into account predict legislative outcomes more precisely than purely preference-based models like the Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Our empirical examination compares how well different formal models predict the outcome of 66 legislativ…
Domestic scrutiny ofEuropean Union politics: Between whistle blowing and opposition control
SomeEuropean law proposals are subject to scrutiny by national parliaments while others go unchecked. The analysis in this article indicates that the opposition scrutinisesEuropean Union law to gather information on the proceedings inside the Council of Ministers and theEuropean Parliament. Yet whereas strong opposition parties scrutinise highly politicised law proposals, weak opposition parties tend to scrutinise those proposals that are negotia…
Proposal stage coalition-building in the European Parliament
Almost all existing studies of conflict and coalitions inside the European Parliament (EP) rely on the statistical analysis of voting behaviour. Yet who proposes the alternatives put to vote? Which political groups jointly co-author legislative amendments? Which strategic considerations (if any) determine legislative coalition-building inside the EP? To answer these questions, this article analyses information on the proposer identity for all leg…
With a little help from the state: Interest intermediation in the domestic pre-negotiations of EU legislation
Theories of interest intermediation maintain that the formation of bargaining positions in the European Union follows a distinctive bargaining style. This article evaluates such claims empirically. It compares the predictive accuracy of Nash bargaining models which take the salient features of five types of interest intermediation into account. We show that the interaction between government agencies, interest groups and parties in the formation …
Reputation and Organizational Politics: Inside the EU Commission
This paper uses reputation theory to address a century-old puzzle: what guides the choice of coordination efforts in large politico-administrative systems? Max Weber, founder of the modern study of bureaucracy, famously considered a hierarchy superior to other organizational models. However, modern governments are not organized as one big hierarchy, but as a set of parallel hierarchies, typically 15-20 ministries. This raises a coordination chall…
Ignoring the Non-ignorables: Missingness and Missing Positions
Missing or incomplete data on actors’ positions can cause significant problems in political analysis. Research on missing values suggests the use of multiple imputation methods rather than case deletion, but few studies have yet considered the non-ignorable problem - positions that are hidden for strategic purposes. We examine this problem and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of (i) multiple imputation as implemented in AMELIA; (ii) a computa…
Why do European political groups call the roll
Research on legislative behaviour in the European Parliament is heavily reliant on recorded votes. Previous theoretical work has uncovered competing selection mechanisms that might cause a vote to be recorded. It has been argued that European Political Groups call the roll because the voting mode affects MEPs’ voting decisions. However, the underlying causal mechanism, as well as the size and direction of this effect, remains a matter of dispute.…
Coordination inside government administrations: Lessons from the EU Commission
How can interdepartmental coordination in large political‐administrative systems be organized? This question has vexed scholars and practitioners for more than 100 years. Two perspectives—one that features hierarchical direction and one hallmarked by horizontal negotiation—dominate the scholarly debate. However, we know surprisingly little about how interdepartmental coordination is handled in practice. This article presents an empirical study in…
Crisis bargaining in the European Union: Formal rules or market pressure
To what extent did the European Monetary Union crisis alter the logic of European Union decision making? We analyze the relevance of asymmetric market pressures as compared to that of formal voting and agenda setting rules by applying three established bargaining models to the ‘EMU Positions’ data. Accounting for the interdependence between issues and agreements, we locate actors’ positions on three reform dimensions, namely the level of fiscal d…
Beyond rules and resources: Parliamentary scrutiny of EU policy proposals
This article examines the factors that shape parties' motivation to invest time and other resources in scrutinizing European Union policy proposals. We distinguish between two different motivations to engage in scrutiny activities. First, parties use such mechanisms to influence the national position directly. Second, parties play a two-level game and use scrutiny to manipulate their negotiator's domestic constraints. Both arguments depend on a s…
Domestic Politics and European Treaty Reform: Understanding the Dynamics of Governmental Position-Taking
This article analyses the extent to which governmental positions on European integration originate from domestic politics. In contrast to previous studies, I apply a longitudinal research design that allows for an empirical analysis of the domestic dynamics that govern position formation. I use advanced statistical measurement techniques to compare national positions across time. Member states’ economic characteristics define a corridor for gover…
T urf wars in government administration: I nterdepartmental cooperation in the E uropean C ommission
One challenge for government administration is to reap the benefits of specialization while minimizing its negative side effects. In this article, I study the factors that motivate departments to contribute to the joint formulation of public policies. I derive testable hypotheses that discriminate between two competing motivations for interdepartmental cooperation. If department managers are concerned for the quality of public policy, I expect co…
Voting Green in European Parliament elections: Issue Voting in an Electoral Context
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections produced remarkable gains for Green parties throughout the European Union (EU). We analyse in how far different national electoral contexts can explain the electoral success of Green parties in EU member states. On the theoretical side, we argue that an increased salience of EU environmental politics has led to ‘green issue voting’. However, the relevance of environmental issue preferences depends on th…
Why risk popular ratification failure? A comparative analysis of the choice of the ratification instrument in the 25 Member States of the EU
Challenges to Intergovernmentalism: An Empirical Analysis of EU Treaty Negotiations since Maastricht
During the last 15 years the nature and process of European treaty reforms changed significantly. The underlying reasons comprise enlargement, a shift of the reform agenda beyond economic coordination and procedural innovations, in particular the invocation of the Convention on the Future of Europe. Against this background, the present article revisits two classic propositions of liberal intergovernmentalism: (1) the power of the largest member s…
Party ideologies and UN debates
In this article, I analyze the importance of party ideologies for foreign policy priorities as revealed in the UN General Assembly (UNGA). In doing so, I contribute to an increasing number of studies on the relevance of the partisan theory of public policy for foreign policy making. On the theoretical side, I expect liberal governments to direct more diplomatic efforts towards global development cooperation, that is, the fight against poverty, di…
The EU's Decision Traps: Comparing Policies
The EU's Decision Traps: Comparing Policies Edited by Gerda Falkner Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, 288 pp., £53.00, ISBN 9780199596225 (hbk) This book is the result of a joint research proj
Regime type and co-sponsorship in the UN General Assembly
The years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union were characterized by high hopes for an expansion of the liberal world order and for lasting peace. In the meantime, discord between western democracies, led by the US, and non-democratic states has been increasing. In the present article, I ask in how far these tensions have reached the working level of international cooperation in the United Nations (UN). Specifically, I present the f…
At loggerheads over state aid: Why the Commission rejects aid and governments comply
State aid is of significant importance to EU economies. The Commission is responsible for monitoring that all aid instruments comply with EU law. The present article analyses two questions: Why does the Commission reject aid instruments? How do national governments respond to such rejections? I argue that national governments are more willing to risk conflict with the Commission if perceived corruption and Euroscepticism are high. The Commission …
Underneath the culture of consensus: Transparency, credible commitments and voting in the Council of Ministers
The Council of Ministers rarely records negative individual votes, much less rejected proposals. The literature explains this high level of support by the Council’s ‘culture of consensus’ and the few negative votes are explained as signalling to the domestic audience. I introduce an alternative explanation for ministers’ explicit disagreement: during the negotiations preceding the final vote, ministers issue veto threats. To remain credible in th…
The burden of authorship: How Agenda-Setting and Electoral Rules Shape Legislative Behaviour
I study the effect of agenda-setting on voting behaviour in theEuropean Parliament. The straightforward expectation would be that members ofparliament are more likely to support their own group’s amendments. But what if national party leaders reject their group’s proposal. In this situation party leaders have strong incentives to reinforce party discipline because otherwise they stand to lose credibility in future negotiations. Hence, authorship …
Who let the dogs out? The effect of parliamentary scrutiny on compliance with EU law
Recently, it has been argued that the scrutiny of European law proposal by national parliaments contributes to speeding up the implementation of EU law. To test this argument, we study the effect of parliamentary scrutiny on Germany's compliance with all directives adopted between 1999 and 2012. The results are mixed: on the one hand, parliamentary scrutiny successfully transfers necessary deliberations from the implementation stage to the policy…
Estimating the Effect of Nonseparable Preferences in Eu Treaty Negotiations
This article derives theoretical expectations about the importance of nonseparable preferences at EU treaty negotiations. It argues that member states’ positions on the degree of integration depend on the expected reform of the decision rule and vice versa. This nonseparability effect varies across member states. Wealthier member states (net payers) would prefer a more majoritarian and efficient decision rule when confronted with a higher level o…
Collateral damage: Do Gender Quotas Undermine Party Discipline
Quotas are the most disputed instrument to promote equal representation of women. Today, political parties in more than 90 democracies apply them. Essentially, gender quotas are a manipulation of the electoral rules. Scholars of legislative politics have created an impressive knowledge of the effect of electoral rules on political behaviour. So far, this literature remains unconnected to the literature on gender quotas. Our study contributes to c…
Domestic-level Parliamentary Scrutiny and Voting Behaviour in the European Parliament
Inside the European Parliament political groups reveal levels of voting cohesion similar to that we observe in national parliaments. Faced with a conflict of interests between their national party and their European group, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) surprisingly often prioritize the latter principal over the former. In this article, I argue that domestic-level parliamentary scrutiny can have a tremendous impact on MEPs’ loyalties. …
Ignoring the Non-ignorables: Missingness and Missing Positions
Missing or incomplete data on actors’ positions can cause significant problems in political analysis. Research on missing values suggests the use of multiple imputation methods rather than case deletion, but few studies have yet considered the non-ignorable problem - positions that are hidden for strategic purposes. We examine this problem and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of (i) multiple imputation as implemented in AMELIA; (ii) a computa…
With a little help from the state: Interest intermediation in the domestic pre-negotiations of EU legislation
Theories of interest intermediation maintain that the formation of bargaining positions in the European Union follows a distinctive bargaining style. This article evaluates such claims empirically. It compares the predictive accuracy of Nash bargaining models which take the salient features of five types of interest intermediation into account. We show that the interaction between government agencies, interest groups and parties in the formation …
The Treaty Reform of the EU: Constitutional Agenda‐Setting, Intergovernmental Bargains and the Presidency's Crisis Management of Ratification Failure
This study empirically investigates the two options which were considered by the German presidency for finding a solution to the crisis of the EU's reform process. Our findings reveal that making concessions to the remaining eight ratification countries and renegotiating the text with all Member States were feasible solutions for reform
Why risk popular ratification failure? A comparative analysis of the choice of the ratification instrument in the 25 Member States of the EU
Domestic Politics and European Treaty Reform: Understanding the Dynamics of Governmental Position-Taking
This article analyses the extent to which governmental positions on European integration originate from domestic politics. In contrast to previous studies, I apply a longitudinal research design that allows for an empirical analysis of the domestic dynamics that govern position formation. I use advanced statistical measurement techniques to compare national positions across time. Member states’ economic characteristics define a corridor for gover…
Challenges to Intergovernmentalism: An Empirical Analysis of EU Treaty Negotiations since Maastricht
During the last 15 years the nature and process of European treaty reforms changed significantly. The underlying reasons comprise enlargement, a shift of the reform agenda beyond economic coordination and procedural innovations, in particular the invocation of the Convention on the Future of Europe. Against this background, the present article revisits two classic propositions of liberal intergovernmentalism: (1) the power of the largest member s…
Estimating the Effect of Nonseparable Preferences in Eu Treaty Negotiations
This article derives theoretical expectations about the importance of nonseparable preferences at EU treaty negotiations. It argues that member states’ positions on the degree of integration depend on the expected reform of the decision rule and vice versa. This nonseparability effect varies across member states. Wealthier member states (net payers) would prefer a more majoritarian and efficient decision rule when confronted with a higher level o…
Bargaining Power in the European Union: An Evaluation of Competing Game-Theoretic Models
This article evaluates, by drawing on Barry's distinction between ‘power’ and ‘luck’, the predictive accuracy of competing bargaining models. We explore whether models that take various facets of political power into account predict legislative outcomes more precisely than purely preference-based models like the Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Our empirical examination compares how well different formal models predict the outcome of 66 legislativ…
Proposal stage coalition-building in the European Parliament
Almost all existing studies of conflict and coalitions inside the European Parliament (EP) rely on the statistical analysis of voting behaviour. Yet who proposes the alternatives put to vote? Which political groups jointly co-author legislative amendments? Which strategic considerations (if any) determine legislative coalition-building inside the EP? To answer these questions, this article analyses information on the proposer identity for all leg…
The EU's Decision Traps: Comparing Policies
The EU's Decision Traps: Comparing Policies Edited by Gerda Falkner Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, 288 pp., £53.00, ISBN 9780199596225 (hbk) This book is the result of a joint research proj
Reforming International Institutions: The Domestic Origins and Conditional Logic of Governmental Reform Preferences
Governmental preferences are crucial to our understanding of European and international treaty reforms. Nevertheless, current research fails to explain why and under what circumstances governments prefer certain proposals for institutional reform. The present article analyzes the conditional nature of governmental reform preferences over different dimensions of institutional design. In doing so, it integrates endogenous and exogenous explanations…
The merits of adding complexity: Non-separable preferences in spatial models of European Union politics
This paper challenges the assumption of separable preferences that has been applied throughout the existing empirical research on European Union (EU) legislative politics. Yet our analysis reveals that non-separable preferences are in fact a widespread phenomenon in EU politics. In many cases actors’ spending preferences are conditional upon the expected policy outcome, but not vice versa. In order to appropriately model such non-reciprocity, we …
Domestic scrutiny ofEuropean Union politics: Between whistle blowing and opposition control
SomeEuropean law proposals are subject to scrutiny by national parliaments while others go unchecked. The analysis in this article indicates that the opposition scrutinisesEuropean Union law to gather information on the proceedings inside the Council of Ministers and theEuropean Parliament. Yet whereas strong opposition parties scrutinise highly politicised law proposals, weak opposition parties tend to scrutinise those proposals that are negotia…
Domestic-level Parliamentary Scrutiny and Voting Behaviour in the European Parliament
Inside the European Parliament political groups reveal levels of voting cohesion similar to that we observe in national parliaments. Faced with a conflict of interests between their national party and their European group, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) surprisingly often prioritize the latter principal over the former. In this article, I argue that domestic-level parliamentary scrutiny can have a tremendous impact on MEPs’ loyalties. …
Party politics and the power to report: Informational Efficiency in Bicameralism
The system of single rapporteurships was introduced at times when the European Parliament was trying hard to establish its powers vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers. Over the years, party politics has become increasingly important for European Union legislation. This historical development triggers the question to what extent the powers of the rapporteur depend on her partisan ties to the Council of Ministers. In order to answer this question we …
Why do European political groups call the roll
Research on legislative behaviour in the European Parliament is heavily reliant on recorded votes. Previous theoretical work has uncovered competing selection mechanisms that might cause a vote to be recorded. It has been argued that European Political Groups call the roll because the voting mode affects MEPs’ voting decisions. However, the underlying causal mechanism, as well as the size and direction of this effect, remains a matter of dispute.…
Who let the dogs out? The effect of parliamentary scrutiny on compliance with EU law
Recently, it has been argued that the scrutiny of European law proposal by national parliaments contributes to speeding up the implementation of EU law. To test this argument, we study the effect of parliamentary scrutiny on Germany's compliance with all directives adopted between 1999 and 2012. The results are mixed: on the one hand, parliamentary scrutiny successfully transfers necessary deliberations from the implementation stage to the policy…
Legislative Governance in Times of International Terrorism
How do political parties with different policy-making interests and veto power respond to international terrorism—can coalition parties and bicameral legislatures overcome their policy-making tensions and form a unified front for adopting counterterrorist measures? This study examines German counterterrorist legislation before and after the attacks of 9/11 by using a dictionary-based computerized text analysis. Our findings demonstrate that in ti…
Beyond rules and resources: Parliamentary scrutiny of EU policy proposals
This article examines the factors that shape parties' motivation to invest time and other resources in scrutinizing European Union policy proposals. We distinguish between two different motivations to engage in scrutiny activities. First, parties use such mechanisms to influence the national position directly. Second, parties play a two-level game and use scrutiny to manipulate their negotiator's domestic constraints. Both arguments depend on a s…
Bicameralism in the European Union: Parliamentary Scrutiny as a Tool for Reinforcing Party Unity
During recent years, the European Union has increasingly been portrayed as a bicameral political system in which political parties build bridges across the European Parliament (EP) and the Council. From this perspective, national parties’ representation in the Council should affect their members’ voting behaviour in the EP. Survey evidence reveals that most members of the EP (MEPs) frequently receive voting instructions from ‘their’ ministers. Ac…
The burden of authorship: How Agenda-Setting and Electoral Rules Shape Legislative Behaviour
I study the effect of agenda-setting on voting behaviour in theEuropean Parliament. The straightforward expectation would be that members ofparliament are more likely to support their own group’s amendments. But what if national party leaders reject their group’s proposal. In this situation party leaders have strong incentives to reinforce party discipline because otherwise they stand to lose credibility in future negotiations. Hence, authorship …
Underneath the culture of consensus: Transparency, credible commitments and voting in the Council of Ministers
The Council of Ministers rarely records negative individual votes, much less rejected proposals. The literature explains this high level of support by the Council’s ‘culture of consensus’ and the few negative votes are explained as signalling to the domestic audience. I introduce an alternative explanation for ministers’ explicit disagreement: during the negotiations preceding the final vote, ministers issue veto threats. To remain credible in th…
Coalition Politics and Parliamentary Oversight in the European Union
According to the literature, parliamentary scrutiny is either used by the opposition to control the government or by a coalition partner to control the leading minister. Yet, neither the opposition alone nor individual governing parties alone can muster a parliamentary majority to adopt recommendations, resolutions or statements. Therefore, we ask which parties coalesce in co-sponsoring such joint position papers on European Union policy proposal…
Institutional conditions for effective parliamentary oversight of European Union politics
The implementation of European Union directives into national law frequently triggers extensive parliamentary activities, especially if they are complex, salient, and conflictive. These activities can cause delayed transposition. The literature suggests that early parliamentary involvement may speed up the subsequent transposition process. In this article, it is argued theoretically and empirically shown that this hope is only fulfilled where par…
T urf wars in government administration: I nterdepartmental cooperation in the E uropean C ommission
One challenge for government administration is to reap the benefits of specialization while minimizing its negative side effects. In this article, I study the factors that motivate departments to contribute to the joint formulation of public policies. I derive testable hypotheses that discriminate between two competing motivations for interdepartmental cooperation. If department managers are concerned for the quality of public policy, I expect co…
Political science (38 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (35 works) · Economics (29 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (29 works) · Politics (29 works) · Political economy (22 works) · European union (20 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (19 works) · Public Administration (18 works)