The Vilnius conference aimed at bringing together representatives of the Social Sciences and Huma... more The Vilnius conference aimed at bringing together representatives of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) from all around Europe to improve the ways in which Human and Social Sciences may impact the new European research framework programme, Horizon 2020. We were delighted by the strong words of support by the Commissioner at the conference, quoted above. This report represents a comprehensive summary of all activities before and during the conference. Remarkable as it may have been, the Vilnius conference was only a moment in time during an on-going process of shaping Horizon 2020. Thus, the following executive summary sets the stage with a reflection on the political context of the conference, before describing aims and scopes of the event. Some general results and recommendations conclude this section as well as observations of what happened since.
This new book presents a wealth of new data documenting and analyzing the different positions tak... more This new book presents a wealth of new data documenting and analyzing the different positions taken by European governments in the development of the European constitution. Understanding how constitutional decisions are taken in the EU is of great societal and scientific relevance. This volume examines how these decisions have substantial effects on the sovereignty of nation states and on the lives of citizens, independent of the ratification of a constitution. Few efforts have been made to document constitution building in a systematic and comparative manner, including the different steps and stages of the process. This book examines European constitution building by tracing the two-level policy formation process from the draft proposal of the European Convention until the Intergovernmental Conference, which finally adopted the document on the constitution in June 2004. Following a tight comparative framework, it sheds light on reactions to the proposed constitution in the domestic arena of all the actors involved. The volume includes a chapter on each of the original 15 member states and the ten accession states, plus chapters on the European Commission and European Parliament. Building a clear understanding of the affects of constitutional decisions, the book will be of strong interest to scholars and researchers of European Union politics, comparative politics and policy making.
This article investigates the conditions for the choice between parliamentary and executive trans... more This article investigates the conditions for the choice between parliamentary and executive transposition measures for the implementation of EC directives in the various contexts of EU member states. Applying a transaction cost-approach we ask whether this choice is influenced by either domestic or EU-related factors and examine several reasons which explain the prominence of the administrative state in the implementation of EC directives. Our comprehensive dataset on all notified transposition measures in 15 member states for EC directives initiated by the Commission between 1986 and 2002 allows us to evaluate several hypotheses on these choices in various contexts showing that the prominence of the administrative state results from the ineffectiveness of the EU decision making process, while ineffective coalition government promotes parliamentary involvement. However, we also find some variation across a few countries and sectors suggesting that executive transposition is not the ...
The evaluation of formal models generates questions about the unit of analysis, the nature of the... more The evaluation of formal models generates questions about the unit of analysis, the nature of the policy space and the kind of criteria to be applied for comparative testing. Do we study decision-making at the proposal level or do we explore the policy space of a set of proposals across multiple sectors? Can we reduce the policy space of the unit of analysis and if so, how do we reduce it? And how do we test formal theories - should we use point predictions offering multiple criteria or do we have proceedings which control for robustness and the level of assumptions?
This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, ... more This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, which is discussed in the jurisprudential literature as another source of democratic deficit. Directives must be transposed into national law, but lengthy deadlines raise normative questions about the extent to which governments of today can politically and reliably commit domestic majorities of tomorrow. The potential for discontinuity is analysed using transposition data in 15 member states and preference indicators over the last 20 years. The findings reveal that parliaments are largely excluded from this process and that the preferences of the previous and the newly elected representatives often differ considerably, particularly in countries where public support for European integration has declined in recent years.
This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making proc... more This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making process through a quantitative analysis of all Commission proposals initiated between 1984 and 1999. Using the positions of Member States, the analysis is innovative in two respects: the identification of the relative importance of institutions and preferences for the process of EU legislative decision making, and the empirical evaluation of the ongoing theoretical controversy between constructivists and spatial analysts about the converging or diverging effect of Member State positions. The findings reveal that the process of EU legislative integration is significantly slowing down, even though Council qualified majority voting facilitates decision making while parliamentary participation modestly increases the duration. Against the constructivist claims of convergence, the results show that the divergence of Member State positions significantly determines the duration of the legislative process, in particular in the key domains of EU integration: the larger the distance between the Member States' positions, the longer the EU decision-making process takes. This suggests that the accession of countries with diverging positions will slow down the EU's legislative process, but institutional reform of the Council's decision-making threshold is a promising solution for coping with this effect. The process of European Union decision making: Institutions and Member State positions Legislative research on European Union (EU) decision making has entered the stage of quantitative analysis, which can advance dialogue by evaluating where one competing approach applies, controlling for other approaches (Jupille et al. 2003: 29). After years of single proposition studies, 1 rich and systematic data analyses on the process of EU legislative decision making can help answer the most important questions of EU scholars that are raised in the debate not only between spatial analysts 2 (
Enlargement will have a significant impact on the voting procedures and their outcomes. The Paret... more Enlargement will have a significant impact on the voting procedures and their outcomes. The Pareto inefficiencies that may follow should be dealt with in a contractual setting. Furthermore, enlargement does not only concern decision rules, it also questions their constitutional framework. Enlargement provides the opportunity to conceive new forms of federalism, for instance through the constitutional liability of regions (JEL classification: C71, D71, Hll).
Zusammenfizssung: Die anstehende Erweiterung um die Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas hat grose Bloc... more Zusammenfizssung: Die anstehende Erweiterung um die Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas hat grose Blockade- und Umverteilungsbefurchtungen unter den funfzehn Mitgliedstaaten ausgelost, denen mit einer Institutionenreform entgegnet werden soll. Demgegenuber rief der 1995 erfolgte Beitritt Finnlands, Osterreichs und Schwedens keinerlei Befutchtungen und Anstrengungen zu einer Re form hervor. In diesem Beitrag soll den Grunden fur die unterschiedliche Erwartungshaltung ge genuber Beitritten nachgegangen werden. Zum Vergleich wird das Kernkonzept auf die Entschei dungsfindung in der europaischen Agrar- und Beschaftigungspolitik angewendet. Die Grose des Kerns ermoglicht Aussagen uber die Blockadegefahr, seine Lage lasst Ruckschlusse auf die Umver teilungsgefahr unter einstimmigen und mehrheitlichen Entscheidungsregeln zu. Es zeigt sich, dass die Erweiterung um Finnland, Osterreich und Schweden keine nachteiligen Effekte in der euro paischen Agrar- und Beschaftigungspolitik - weder fur d...
Ever since Jacques Delors's famous speech in front of the European Parliament in July 1988, the m... more Ever since Jacques Delors's famous speech in front of the European Parliament in July 1988, the myth of an 80%-influence of Europe on the legislatures of the member states was born. For Germany, two empirical studies reveal a much lower impact of Europeanisation on German legislation, but it remains an open question on how Europe affects the democratic principles of the German legislative process. Following Moravcsik (1997), the executive can exploit Europeanisation and increase governmental agenda-setting power which should raise the adoption rate of governmental proposals. This prompts the question on the reaction of parliament which may feel threatened by increased governmental power. Recent parliamentary research points to an inherent principal agent-problem of coali
Studying the member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules most power index ana... more Studying the member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules most power index analyses concentrate on the relative decisiveness of member states in the Council of Minister. However, this emphasis has two shortcomings: First, it ignores the interaction between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament which provides multi-cameral decision making for European legislation. Second, although relative decisiveness is applied to the measurement of the member states' (expected) distribution of legislative gains, it does not take into account the member states' expectation of the extent of gains depending on their absolute inclusiveness. In this article we present a model of member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules with regard to the two notions of power: actors' relative decisiveness and their absolute inclusiveness in decision making. We present an index to measure inclusiveness and we apply our concept to European multi-cameral procedures. Hereby, we give an account for the member states' recent reforms of legislative procedures. Kurzfassung Bei der Erklärung der institutionenpolitischen Wahl europäischer Gesetzgebungsverfahren stellen die meisten spieltheoretischen Machtindex-Analysen den intergouvernementalen Ministerrat in den Mittelpunkt. Diese Vereinfachung ist aus zweierlei Hinsicht unangemessen. Zum einen wird das interinstitutionelle Zusammenspiel zwischen der Kommission, dem Ministerrat und dem Europäischen Parlament vernachlässigt, welches die europäischen Gesetzgebungsverfahren als Mehrkammerverfahren definiert. Zum anderen reflektieren die relativen Durchsetzungspotentiale der Gesetzgebungsakteure lediglich die (erwartete) Verteilung legislativer Gewinne. Dagegen wird die Frage nach der Höhe der Gewinne ausgeblendet, welche von den Chancen der Akteure abhängt, daß ihre individuellen Vorstellungen in Entscheidungen berücksichtigt werden. Diese absolute Macht bezeichnen wir aus akteursspezifischer Sicht als Inklusivität. Im diesem Beitrag stellen wir ein Modell der konstitutionellen Wahl europäischer Gesetzgebungsverfahren vor, welches beide Machtaspekte formaler Entscheidungsvorgaben berücksichtigt: das relative Durchsetzungspotential und die absolute Inklusivität der Akteure. Wir führen einen Index zur Messung der Inklusivität ein und wenden unserer Konzept auf die europäischen Mehrkammerverfahren an. Schließlich beleuchten wir vergangene Reformen der europäischen Gesetzgebungsverfahren.
Page 1. Franz Urban Pappi, Thomas König, David Knoke Entscheidungs-prozesse in der Arbeits-und So... more Page 1. Franz Urban Pappi, Thomas König, David Knoke Entscheidungs-prozesse in der Arbeits-und Sozialpolitik Der Zugang der Interessen-gruppen zum Regierungssystem über Politikfeldnetze. Ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich Campus Page 2. Page 3. ...
... 189 Luigi Curini and Francesco Zucchini 10 Domestic Veto Players, Commission Monitoring and t... more ... 189 Luigi Curini and Francesco Zucchini 10 Domestic Veto Players, Commission Monitoring and the Implementation of European Policy..... ... braeuninger@ uni-mannheim. de Luigi Curini University of Milan, Milan, Italy, luigi. curini@ unimi. ...
The Vilnius conference aimed at bringing together representatives of the Social Sciences and Huma... more The Vilnius conference aimed at bringing together representatives of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) from all around Europe to improve the ways in which Human and Social Sciences may impact the new European research framework programme, Horizon 2020. We were delighted by the strong words of support by the Commissioner at the conference, quoted above. This report represents a comprehensive summary of all activities before and during the conference. Remarkable as it may have been, the Vilnius conference was only a moment in time during an on-going process of shaping Horizon 2020. Thus, the following executive summary sets the stage with a reflection on the political context of the conference, before describing aims and scopes of the event. Some general results and recommendations conclude this section as well as observations of what happened since.
This new book presents a wealth of new data documenting and analyzing the different positions tak... more This new book presents a wealth of new data documenting and analyzing the different positions taken by European governments in the development of the European constitution. Understanding how constitutional decisions are taken in the EU is of great societal and scientific relevance. This volume examines how these decisions have substantial effects on the sovereignty of nation states and on the lives of citizens, independent of the ratification of a constitution. Few efforts have been made to document constitution building in a systematic and comparative manner, including the different steps and stages of the process. This book examines European constitution building by tracing the two-level policy formation process from the draft proposal of the European Convention until the Intergovernmental Conference, which finally adopted the document on the constitution in June 2004. Following a tight comparative framework, it sheds light on reactions to the proposed constitution in the domestic arena of all the actors involved. The volume includes a chapter on each of the original 15 member states and the ten accession states, plus chapters on the European Commission and European Parliament. Building a clear understanding of the affects of constitutional decisions, the book will be of strong interest to scholars and researchers of European Union politics, comparative politics and policy making.
This article investigates the conditions for the choice between parliamentary and executive trans... more This article investigates the conditions for the choice between parliamentary and executive transposition measures for the implementation of EC directives in the various contexts of EU member states. Applying a transaction cost-approach we ask whether this choice is influenced by either domestic or EU-related factors and examine several reasons which explain the prominence of the administrative state in the implementation of EC directives. Our comprehensive dataset on all notified transposition measures in 15 member states for EC directives initiated by the Commission between 1986 and 2002 allows us to evaluate several hypotheses on these choices in various contexts showing that the prominence of the administrative state results from the ineffectiveness of the EU decision making process, while ineffective coalition government promotes parliamentary involvement. However, we also find some variation across a few countries and sectors suggesting that executive transposition is not the ...
The evaluation of formal models generates questions about the unit of analysis, the nature of the... more The evaluation of formal models generates questions about the unit of analysis, the nature of the policy space and the kind of criteria to be applied for comparative testing. Do we study decision-making at the proposal level or do we explore the policy space of a set of proposals across multiple sectors? Can we reduce the policy space of the unit of analysis and if so, how do we reduce it? And how do we test formal theories - should we use point predictions offering multiple criteria or do we have proceedings which control for robustness and the level of assumptions?
This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, ... more This study evaluates discontinuity induced by the two-stage law-making process of EU directives, which is discussed in the jurisprudential literature as another source of democratic deficit. Directives must be transposed into national law, but lengthy deadlines raise normative questions about the extent to which governments of today can politically and reliably commit domestic majorities of tomorrow. The potential for discontinuity is analysed using transposition data in 15 member states and preference indicators over the last 20 years. The findings reveal that parliaments are largely excluded from this process and that the preferences of the previous and the newly elected representatives often differ considerably, particularly in countries where public support for European integration has declined in recent years.
This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making proc... more This article examines different views of the European Union (EU) legislative decision-making process through a quantitative analysis of all Commission proposals initiated between 1984 and 1999. Using the positions of Member States, the analysis is innovative in two respects: the identification of the relative importance of institutions and preferences for the process of EU legislative decision making, and the empirical evaluation of the ongoing theoretical controversy between constructivists and spatial analysts about the converging or diverging effect of Member State positions. The findings reveal that the process of EU legislative integration is significantly slowing down, even though Council qualified majority voting facilitates decision making while parliamentary participation modestly increases the duration. Against the constructivist claims of convergence, the results show that the divergence of Member State positions significantly determines the duration of the legislative process, in particular in the key domains of EU integration: the larger the distance between the Member States' positions, the longer the EU decision-making process takes. This suggests that the accession of countries with diverging positions will slow down the EU's legislative process, but institutional reform of the Council's decision-making threshold is a promising solution for coping with this effect. The process of European Union decision making: Institutions and Member State positions Legislative research on European Union (EU) decision making has entered the stage of quantitative analysis, which can advance dialogue by evaluating where one competing approach applies, controlling for other approaches (Jupille et al. 2003: 29). After years of single proposition studies, 1 rich and systematic data analyses on the process of EU legislative decision making can help answer the most important questions of EU scholars that are raised in the debate not only between spatial analysts 2 (
Enlargement will have a significant impact on the voting procedures and their outcomes. The Paret... more Enlargement will have a significant impact on the voting procedures and their outcomes. The Pareto inefficiencies that may follow should be dealt with in a contractual setting. Furthermore, enlargement does not only concern decision rules, it also questions their constitutional framework. Enlargement provides the opportunity to conceive new forms of federalism, for instance through the constitutional liability of regions (JEL classification: C71, D71, Hll).
Zusammenfizssung: Die anstehende Erweiterung um die Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas hat grose Bloc... more Zusammenfizssung: Die anstehende Erweiterung um die Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas hat grose Blockade- und Umverteilungsbefurchtungen unter den funfzehn Mitgliedstaaten ausgelost, denen mit einer Institutionenreform entgegnet werden soll. Demgegenuber rief der 1995 erfolgte Beitritt Finnlands, Osterreichs und Schwedens keinerlei Befutchtungen und Anstrengungen zu einer Re form hervor. In diesem Beitrag soll den Grunden fur die unterschiedliche Erwartungshaltung ge genuber Beitritten nachgegangen werden. Zum Vergleich wird das Kernkonzept auf die Entschei dungsfindung in der europaischen Agrar- und Beschaftigungspolitik angewendet. Die Grose des Kerns ermoglicht Aussagen uber die Blockadegefahr, seine Lage lasst Ruckschlusse auf die Umver teilungsgefahr unter einstimmigen und mehrheitlichen Entscheidungsregeln zu. Es zeigt sich, dass die Erweiterung um Finnland, Osterreich und Schweden keine nachteiligen Effekte in der euro paischen Agrar- und Beschaftigungspolitik - weder fur d...
Ever since Jacques Delors's famous speech in front of the European Parliament in July 1988, the m... more Ever since Jacques Delors's famous speech in front of the European Parliament in July 1988, the myth of an 80%-influence of Europe on the legislatures of the member states was born. For Germany, two empirical studies reveal a much lower impact of Europeanisation on German legislation, but it remains an open question on how Europe affects the democratic principles of the German legislative process. Following Moravcsik (1997), the executive can exploit Europeanisation and increase governmental agenda-setting power which should raise the adoption rate of governmental proposals. This prompts the question on the reaction of parliament which may feel threatened by increased governmental power. Recent parliamentary research points to an inherent principal agent-problem of coali
Studying the member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules most power index ana... more Studying the member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules most power index analyses concentrate on the relative decisiveness of member states in the Council of Minister. However, this emphasis has two shortcomings: First, it ignores the interaction between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament which provides multi-cameral decision making for European legislation. Second, although relative decisiveness is applied to the measurement of the member states' (expected) distribution of legislative gains, it does not take into account the member states' expectation of the extent of gains depending on their absolute inclusiveness. In this article we present a model of member states' constitutional choice of European decision rules with regard to the two notions of power: actors' relative decisiveness and their absolute inclusiveness in decision making. We present an index to measure inclusiveness and we apply our concept to European multi-cameral procedures. Hereby, we give an account for the member states' recent reforms of legislative procedures. Kurzfassung Bei der Erklärung der institutionenpolitischen Wahl europäischer Gesetzgebungsverfahren stellen die meisten spieltheoretischen Machtindex-Analysen den intergouvernementalen Ministerrat in den Mittelpunkt. Diese Vereinfachung ist aus zweierlei Hinsicht unangemessen. Zum einen wird das interinstitutionelle Zusammenspiel zwischen der Kommission, dem Ministerrat und dem Europäischen Parlament vernachlässigt, welches die europäischen Gesetzgebungsverfahren als Mehrkammerverfahren definiert. Zum anderen reflektieren die relativen Durchsetzungspotentiale der Gesetzgebungsakteure lediglich die (erwartete) Verteilung legislativer Gewinne. Dagegen wird die Frage nach der Höhe der Gewinne ausgeblendet, welche von den Chancen der Akteure abhängt, daß ihre individuellen Vorstellungen in Entscheidungen berücksichtigt werden. Diese absolute Macht bezeichnen wir aus akteursspezifischer Sicht als Inklusivität. Im diesem Beitrag stellen wir ein Modell der konstitutionellen Wahl europäischer Gesetzgebungsverfahren vor, welches beide Machtaspekte formaler Entscheidungsvorgaben berücksichtigt: das relative Durchsetzungspotential und die absolute Inklusivität der Akteure. Wir führen einen Index zur Messung der Inklusivität ein und wenden unserer Konzept auf die europäischen Mehrkammerverfahren an. Schließlich beleuchten wir vergangene Reformen der europäischen Gesetzgebungsverfahren.
Page 1. Franz Urban Pappi, Thomas König, David Knoke Entscheidungs-prozesse in der Arbeits-und So... more Page 1. Franz Urban Pappi, Thomas König, David Knoke Entscheidungs-prozesse in der Arbeits-und Sozialpolitik Der Zugang der Interessen-gruppen zum Regierungssystem über Politikfeldnetze. Ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich Campus Page 2. Page 3. ...
... 189 Luigi Curini and Francesco Zucchini 10 Domestic Veto Players, Commission Monitoring and t... more ... 189 Luigi Curini and Francesco Zucchini 10 Domestic Veto Players, Commission Monitoring and the Implementation of European Policy..... ... braeuninger@ uni-mannheim. de Luigi Curini University of Milan, Milan, Italy, luigi. curini@ unimi. ...
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