Arndt Wonka

This article reviews a central strand of the literature on legislative decisionmaking in the European Union (EU):  procedural spatial models. These models have gained increasing prominence during the last decade of scholarship on the EU and have considerably enhanced our understanding of the EU legislative decision-making process. However, the literature has not been without criticism and has reached a stage of theoretical stagnation. The intention of this article is therefore twofold: First, it reviews the existing procedural spatial literature and critically discusses the lacking specification and justification of some of its assumptions. The manifold assumptions used in different models are based on actors’ preferences and the characteristics of the decision-making process, which are often at odds if not diametrically opposed to each other. In a second step, it will therefore be argued that it is necessary to reevaluate some of the central assumptions of procedural models. In particular, future research needs to study mechanisms of preference formation and decision-making, i.e. aggregation of preferences, within EU legislative bodies.

Established theoretical explanations of European integration deal in the first place with macro-developments in the European Union (EU), such as treaty bargaining and the extension of the regulatory scope of the EU. Their aim is to understand the development of the EU as a polity. However, since the EU has gained ever more regulative/legislative competences in its 50 year history it is necessary to complement macro-theories of European integration
with meso-theories on how everyday politics within the framework built by integration unfolds. In short, what is needed is a theory on EU policy-making.
Our chapter seeks to sketch a framework for understanding public policy-making in the EU.
In order to arrive at this goal this article builds on two strands of studies that so far largely
ignore each other: Studies of formal, legislative decision-making and studies on EU interest
intermediation. We argue that the former reminds us that ultimately binding legislative/
regulatory decisions are reached in formal processes, while the latter focuses on informal
processes taking place between various categories of actors in the formulation of policies.
By systematically putting together analytical and theoretical elements of both strands, we hope to achieve learning synergies that help us to improve our understanding of everyday politics in the EU. Taking account of the excellent work written on the governance of the EU, our aim is not to raise completely new questions and provide absolutely new answers, but to integrate existing work in a systematic way and discuss its theoretical and analytical concepts in a hopefully constructive way.