Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520942317 for Allocating political attention i... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520942317 for Allocating political attention in the EU's foreign and security policy: The effect of supranational agenda-setters by Frank M Häge in European Union Politics
Supplemental material, sj-zip-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520934865 for Top-down or bottom-up? The selec... more Supplemental material, sj-zip-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520934865 for Top-down or bottom-up? The selection of shadow rapporteurs in the European Parliament by Frank M Häge and Nils Ringe in European Union Politics
Supplemental Material, PPQ702058_ed_appendix_(1) for Political conflict in Bismarck's Germany... more Supplemental Material, PPQ702058_ed_appendix_(1) for Political conflict in Bismarck's Germany: An analysis of parliamentary voting, 1867–1890 by Frank M. Häge in Party Politics
Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assemb... more Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), is often used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most of these measures ignore, however, that particular covoting patterns may appear simply by chance (Häge 2011) and that these patterns of agreement (or the absence thereof) are only observable if decisions are reached through roll-call votes. As the relative frequency of roll-call votes changes considerably over time in most international organizations, currently used similarity and affinity measures offer a misleading picture. Based on a complete data set of UNGA resolution decisions, we demonstrate how taking different forms of chance agreement and the relative prevalence of consensus decisions into account affects conclusions about the effect of the similarity of member states’ foreign policy positions on foreign aid allocation
Many of the decisions made in the Council of the European Union are based on qualified majority v... more Many of the decisions made in the Council of the European Union are based on qualified majority voting, in which EU legislation can be passed if a certain threshold of support is met among member states. Frank Hage assesses the potential implications of the changes to qualified majority voting rules under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in November 2014. He notes that while the precise impact of the changes remains to be seen, they will have important ramifications for the overall legitimacy of the EU’s legislative process.
When government ministers meet in the Council of the European Union, what determines the level of... more When government ministers meet in the Council of the European Union, what determines the level of attention they direct toward particular policy areas and issues? Based on recent research, Frank Hage illustrates how the Council has focused on different policy areas over time. He writes that one of the most striking trends to emerge from the data is the reactive nature of the Council with respect to managing the financial and migration crises, with both issues receiving relatively little attention until after each crisis began.
Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of th... more Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of the European Union are still made by consensus. Frank Hage outlines a model which can potentially explain this phenomenon. He argues that the high numbers of decisions made by consensus are in fact an unintended by-product of coalition building within the Council: states band together to form blocking coalitions, with eventual decisions reflecting a compromise between these coalitions (and therefore a consensus between all states). This explains why decisions made by consensus are still extremely common, despite the EU enlargements which have taken place since the mid-1990s.
The Presidency plays a crucial role in the management and organization of the Council of the Euro... more The Presidency plays a crucial role in the management and organization of the Council of the European Union’s work and the institution’s interactions with third parties. Formally, the Presidency just chairs the meetings of Council bodies; but over time, member states have endowed it with a range of procedural prerogatives to structure the Council’s agenda and broker agreements, which post holders can potentially use to advance their own private interests. The potential for abuse of these powers raises two related questions: first, why would member states grant these powers to the Presidency, and second, is the Presidency actually able to use these powers to advance its own priorities and policy preferences? In response to the first question, functionalist theories suggest that member states delegate powers to the Presidency to reduce transaction costs and solve collective action. According to Tallberg, member states grant the Presidency procedural prerogatives and provide it with ad...
Supranational bureaucracies are often promoted as a solution to collective action problems. In th... more Supranational bureaucracies are often promoted as a solution to collective action problems. In the European Union context, investing the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy with new agenda-setting powers was expected to improve the coherence, continuity and efficiency of foreign policy-making. Relying on novel fine-grained and comprehensive data about the content and duration of working party meetings, the study maps and analyses the allocation of political attention to different foreign policy issues between 2001 and 2014. The results show that the empowerment of the High Representative by the Lisbon Treaty had little immediate effect on the Council’s foreign policy agenda. However, the study also indicates that this result might be due to a lack of capability and ambition rather than weak institutional prerogatives.
Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective poli... more Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective policy positions and in defending them in inter-institutional negotiations. This study sheds light on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of shadow rapporteur selection. Qualitative insights from practitioner interviews and a quantitative analysis of shadow rapporteur data from the 7th European Parliament (2009–2014) indicate that the appointment process is primarily one of bottom-up self-selection by group members based on their policy interests. The party group leadership, in the form of group coordinators, plays an important coordinating role when there is competition for a shadow rapporteurship. However, the role of group coordinators is more akin to a third-party arbiter of competing demands than a mechanism of top-down control by the leadership, as suggested by principal-agent theory.
Specialisation and delegation of policy leadership within committees is the norm rather than the ... more Specialisation and delegation of policy leadership within committees is the norm rather than the exception in legislatures around the world. Yet, little research has studied the sub‐groups of lawmakers who serve as policy leaders on particular bills. This article uses conceptual and methodological tools from social network analysis to investigate the groups’ composition and relational structure. It tests the proposition that limited human resources lead lawmakers from small parties to more frequently engage with a greater number of colleagues from other parties across a wider range of policy areas. This may have important relational benefits that have the potential to outweigh the structural disadvantages of small party size. The article examines whether small party lawmakers participate more, are more central and have greater potential for brokerage in policy‐making networks, or if the constraints associated with small party size and/or particular ideological leanings prevent their...
Little firm knowledge exists about the allocation of the Council's political attention across... more Little firm knowledge exists about the allocation of the Council's political attention across policy areas and over time. This article presents a new dataset of the date, duration, and policy coding of more than 70,000 meetings of Council working parties, covering all areas of the Council's policy activities between 1995 and 2014. In terms of both scope and resolution, the data allow for the generation of unprecedented insights into what issues occupy the Council's agenda, how that varies between and within policy areas, and how that changes over time. After discussing conceptual issues and explaining the construction of the dataset, the article demonstrates its usefulness and versatility through analyses of the Council's political attention at various levels of aggregation.
This study presents reliable cross‐sectoral data on the relative involvement of working parties, ... more This study presents reliable cross‐sectoral data on the relative involvement of working parties, senior committees and ministers in legislative decision‐making of the Council of the European Union. In general, the results challenge the received wisdom that ministers are hardly involved in legislative decision‐making. However, the findings also indicate that the involvement of different Council levels varies considerably across policy sectors. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the debate about the democratic legitimacy of Council decision‐making.
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520942317 for Allocating political attention i... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520942317 for Allocating political attention in the EU's foreign and security policy: The effect of supranational agenda-setters by Frank M Häge in European Union Politics
Supplemental material, sj-zip-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520934865 for Top-down or bottom-up? The selec... more Supplemental material, sj-zip-1-eup-10.1177_1465116520934865 for Top-down or bottom-up? The selection of shadow rapporteurs in the European Parliament by Frank M Häge and Nils Ringe in European Union Politics
Supplemental Material, PPQ702058_ed_appendix_(1) for Political conflict in Bismarck's Germany... more Supplemental Material, PPQ702058_ed_appendix_(1) for Political conflict in Bismarck's Germany: An analysis of parliamentary voting, 1867–1890 by Frank M. Häge in Party Politics
Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assemb... more Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), is often used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most of these measures ignore, however, that particular covoting patterns may appear simply by chance (Häge 2011) and that these patterns of agreement (or the absence thereof) are only observable if decisions are reached through roll-call votes. As the relative frequency of roll-call votes changes considerably over time in most international organizations, currently used similarity and affinity measures offer a misleading picture. Based on a complete data set of UNGA resolution decisions, we demonstrate how taking different forms of chance agreement and the relative prevalence of consensus decisions into account affects conclusions about the effect of the similarity of member states’ foreign policy positions on foreign aid allocation
Many of the decisions made in the Council of the European Union are based on qualified majority v... more Many of the decisions made in the Council of the European Union are based on qualified majority voting, in which EU legislation can be passed if a certain threshold of support is met among member states. Frank Hage assesses the potential implications of the changes to qualified majority voting rules under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in November 2014. He notes that while the precise impact of the changes remains to be seen, they will have important ramifications for the overall legitimacy of the EU’s legislative process.
When government ministers meet in the Council of the European Union, what determines the level of... more When government ministers meet in the Council of the European Union, what determines the level of attention they direct toward particular policy areas and issues? Based on recent research, Frank Hage illustrates how the Council has focused on different policy areas over time. He writes that one of the most striking trends to emerge from the data is the reactive nature of the Council with respect to managing the financial and migration crises, with both issues receiving relatively little attention until after each crisis began.
Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of th... more Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of the European Union are still made by consensus. Frank Hage outlines a model which can potentially explain this phenomenon. He argues that the high numbers of decisions made by consensus are in fact an unintended by-product of coalition building within the Council: states band together to form blocking coalitions, with eventual decisions reflecting a compromise between these coalitions (and therefore a consensus between all states). This explains why decisions made by consensus are still extremely common, despite the EU enlargements which have taken place since the mid-1990s.
The Presidency plays a crucial role in the management and organization of the Council of the Euro... more The Presidency plays a crucial role in the management and organization of the Council of the European Union’s work and the institution’s interactions with third parties. Formally, the Presidency just chairs the meetings of Council bodies; but over time, member states have endowed it with a range of procedural prerogatives to structure the Council’s agenda and broker agreements, which post holders can potentially use to advance their own private interests. The potential for abuse of these powers raises two related questions: first, why would member states grant these powers to the Presidency, and second, is the Presidency actually able to use these powers to advance its own priorities and policy preferences? In response to the first question, functionalist theories suggest that member states delegate powers to the Presidency to reduce transaction costs and solve collective action. According to Tallberg, member states grant the Presidency procedural prerogatives and provide it with ad...
Supranational bureaucracies are often promoted as a solution to collective action problems. In th... more Supranational bureaucracies are often promoted as a solution to collective action problems. In the European Union context, investing the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy with new agenda-setting powers was expected to improve the coherence, continuity and efficiency of foreign policy-making. Relying on novel fine-grained and comprehensive data about the content and duration of working party meetings, the study maps and analyses the allocation of political attention to different foreign policy issues between 2001 and 2014. The results show that the empowerment of the High Representative by the Lisbon Treaty had little immediate effect on the Council’s foreign policy agenda. However, the study also indicates that this result might be due to a lack of capability and ambition rather than weak institutional prerogatives.
Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective poli... more Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective policy positions and in defending them in inter-institutional negotiations. This study sheds light on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of shadow rapporteur selection. Qualitative insights from practitioner interviews and a quantitative analysis of shadow rapporteur data from the 7th European Parliament (2009–2014) indicate that the appointment process is primarily one of bottom-up self-selection by group members based on their policy interests. The party group leadership, in the form of group coordinators, plays an important coordinating role when there is competition for a shadow rapporteurship. However, the role of group coordinators is more akin to a third-party arbiter of competing demands than a mechanism of top-down control by the leadership, as suggested by principal-agent theory.
Specialisation and delegation of policy leadership within committees is the norm rather than the ... more Specialisation and delegation of policy leadership within committees is the norm rather than the exception in legislatures around the world. Yet, little research has studied the sub‐groups of lawmakers who serve as policy leaders on particular bills. This article uses conceptual and methodological tools from social network analysis to investigate the groups’ composition and relational structure. It tests the proposition that limited human resources lead lawmakers from small parties to more frequently engage with a greater number of colleagues from other parties across a wider range of policy areas. This may have important relational benefits that have the potential to outweigh the structural disadvantages of small party size. The article examines whether small party lawmakers participate more, are more central and have greater potential for brokerage in policy‐making networks, or if the constraints associated with small party size and/or particular ideological leanings prevent their...
Little firm knowledge exists about the allocation of the Council's political attention across... more Little firm knowledge exists about the allocation of the Council's political attention across policy areas and over time. This article presents a new dataset of the date, duration, and policy coding of more than 70,000 meetings of Council working parties, covering all areas of the Council's policy activities between 1995 and 2014. In terms of both scope and resolution, the data allow for the generation of unprecedented insights into what issues occupy the Council's agenda, how that varies between and within policy areas, and how that changes over time. After discussing conceptual issues and explaining the construction of the dataset, the article demonstrates its usefulness and versatility through analyses of the Council's political attention at various levels of aggregation.
This study presents reliable cross‐sectoral data on the relative involvement of working parties, ... more This study presents reliable cross‐sectoral data on the relative involvement of working parties, senior committees and ministers in legislative decision‐making of the Council of the European Union. In general, the results challenge the received wisdom that ministers are hardly involved in legislative decision‐making. However, the findings also indicate that the involvement of different Council levels varies considerably across policy sectors. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the debate about the democratic legitimacy of Council decision‐making.
Uploads
Papers by Frank Häge