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Decision-making power in the European Unions

Council of Ministers: New Empirical Findings andSuggestions for a Research Agenda

Paper prepared for the 2005 MPSA Conference

7th-10th April

Chicago

Sara Hagemanns.hagemann@lse.ac.uk

Department of Government

London School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract

This paper sees coalition formation in the European Unions Council of Ministers as a

bargaining game between strategic, self-interested actors who conform into policy-connected coalitions based on the distribution of voting power. By testing this

hypothesis together with a set of variables which in the literature are often assumed to

affect the member states voting behaviour, it is found that only a countrys left/right

ideology, its voting power and whether or not it is holding the Presidency are of

significance for its propensity to oppose the majority at voting stages prior to the final

adoption. Only at the last voting stage does a countrys role as a contributor or

beneficiary to the EU budget also matter. These are controversial and important new

findings and appear when analysing a data set covering all legislation passed from

1999 to May 2004 and consisting of votes from all stages of the legislative process.

The results indicate that the member states voting behaviour change across the

various stages of the legislative process and that small and big member states usedifferent strategies to influence policy outcomes.

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Introduction

Research on legislative politics in the European Union has for several decades

focused on the inter-institutional bargaining between the European Parliament and the

Council of Ministers. Only recently have EU scholars turned their attention to theinternal dynamics of the two institutions and provided insights into the policy

processes within each body. Yet, whereas research on the EP is now an established

sub-field of the study of EU legislative politics, the study of Council decision-making

still suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical analysis as well as a common theoretical

framework.

The aim of this paper is to further our empirical knowledge of Council decision-

making by investigating a data set consisting of all votes taken in the Council from

1999 to May 2004 and covering all stages of the legislative process. The main

concern is to update our knowledge on which factors have an influence on the

member states voting behaviour and also to look into whether their voting behaviour

changes across the different stages of the legislative process. Furthermore, based on

recent theoretical insights from the literature, I present coalition formation in the

Council as a process where ideology, national political issues and other such factors

are thought to influence the direction of decision-making. However, as it is the

respective countries power that in the end makes the adoption or rejection of a policy

proposal possible, I suggest that this is what ultimately determines the coalition

building and voting outcomes. To be specific, I present legislative politics in the

Council as a bargaining game between strategic, self-interested actors who conform

into policy-connected coalitions based on the distribution of voting power1. This

hypothesis is tested on the data together with a number of other assumptions often

found in the literature.

Decision-making in the Council

The data used for the analysis in this paper included a few surprises, suggesting that

the current descriptions of Council decision-making may need to be updated. The

1 Will be defined below.

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following is therefore a short outline of existing knowledge, which is then elaborated

upon in the light of the findings from the 1999-2004 data.

The EU legislative process is formally started when the Commission issues a policy

proposal to the EP and the Council. The procedure for adopting the proposal depends

on the legal basis of the initiative, which the Commission determines in the

preparatory stages. When a policy proposal has been initiated and presented to the

Council it is usually first discussed in specialised working groups where officials from

the member states and the Commission meet. Gradually, proposals advance through

the preparatory bodies closer to the Council. The most senior of the preparatory

committees is the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) from where

proposals are sent to the Council as either A or B points. From previous

descriptions of Council decision-making (e.g. Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 1997;

Sherrington 2000) we have been told, that at this stage A points are normally agreed

upon already and therefore accepted without much discussion in the Council. The

more controversial agenda items are categorised as B points2.

When voting takes place, different rules apply depending on the policy area:

unanimity is applied to certain matters affecting the members fundamental

sovereignty, and a weighted qualified majority system (QMV) to others. The key

features of the QMV system is that all members have a seat but that their respective

number of votes vary, reflecting the differences in population shares (Leech

2002:439). Appendix 1 shows the distributions and thresholds for the QMV systems

throughout the EUs history.

However, the Council does not always vote in the formal sense of raising hands

(Westlake 1995:87). A proposal can be adopted with a single sentence from the

Chairperson when she knows that there is a sufficient majority or unanimity in the

Council. If the Council is not unanimous, the Chairperson still knows the member

states positions from the preceding talks in the preparatory bodies (Mattila 2004:30).

If she decides that enough member states have come to an agreement to meet the

threshold, the proposal is accepted and those opposing or abstaining can record their

views officially. Yet, one important difference between the unanimity and QMV

systems must be pointed out. When the decision rule is unanimity, abstentions are not

2 Van Schendelen (1998) finds that more than half of all decisions made by the Council are categorised

as A points.

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counted as no votes. This means that decisions can be made with few countries

actually voting for the proposal, if none of the countries actively opposes it. The

opposite is true for QMV, where the high threshold makes abstentions have the same

effect as no votes in practise.

Depending on the decision-making procedure the Council may be presented with a

proposal and its various amendments several times during the process that leads to its

final adoption or rejection. For example, in the Co-decision procedure, the Council

may adopt a common position before the proposal goes to the European Parliament

for a next reading after which it may return to the Council once again. The current

literature has not explained in detail what the implications of this form of sequential

bargaining may be for the internal dynamics in the Council, but I find it reasonable to

assume that the member states voting behaviour will change in accordance with the

exchange of information, vote trading and strategies that prevail throughout the

different stages of the negotiations. For example, it seems plausible that at the last

stage, where the member states decide whether to adopt or reject a proposal

altogether, only certain member states are willing to oppose the majority (Mattila

2004; Mattila and Lane 2001). The cost of opposing at this stage is considerably

higher and also the chance of media coverage may influence the governments, thus

making voting behaviour at this point different from the amendment voting at earlier

readings.

What we didnt know about decision-making in the Council

From the data it is apparent that particularly three issues need to be re-evaluated in the

current literatures description of Council decision-making. First, there is thedistinction between A and B agenda points. Although it is true that the intention

behind the A and B points has traditionally been to ease the workload at the

ministerial level and lower the need for bargaining and formal voting at the last stage

of the legislative process, the data shows a very rare use of the B point category

which has traditionally been for controversial agenda items only (please refer to Table

1). Particularly the last few years have had an extremely low amount of B points

with only 6.7% and 1.7% in 2003 and 2004, respectively. The lack of B points

could mean one out of two alternatives: 1) either it lends support to the consensus-

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oriented branch of the literature3

and indicates that the member states are actually able

to settle agreements without any disputes at the ministerial level; or 2) the difference

between A and B items is diminishing. I have addressed this issue elsewhere

(Hagemann 2005) and found that the low level of B items is most likely due to the

fact that open disputes are increasingly accepted under A points as well, essentially

making the B point category superfluous. Also, the fact that not all B items are

actually a basis for dispute supports the suspicion that the difference between A and

B points may be declining. In 2000 and 2001 there was only disagreement over

36% and 33% of the B points, respectively.

Table 1

YearNumberof acts

adopted

Bpoints

Disagreement*/Bpoints

1999 161 10

(6.2%) 70%

2000 169 25

(14.8%) 36%

2001 160 15

(9.3%) 33%

2002 163 17

(10.4%) 88%

2003 163 11

(6.7%) 82%

2004 115 2

(1.7%) 100%

* By disagreement it is meant that voting took place and

more than 2 countries opposed or abstained from voting

Only legislation adopted before May 1st

of this year is

included due to the enlargement

Secondly, a very important but largely unrecognised issue is how the AmsterdamTreaty may have changed decision-making withinthe Council. After the reform of the

Co-decision procedure in the Amsterdam Treaty, which came into effect in May 1999,

more legislation falls within the Co-decision procedure and can now be adopted

already in the first reading in the Council. In other words, it is currently possible to

see Co-decision legislation adopted at either the first reading in the Council, the

second reading in the EP, the second reading in the Council or in the Conciliation

3 For an overview see e.g. Heisenberg 2005.

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Committee4. Table 2 summarises the findings regarding the voting rules and the

amount of QMV legislation adopted at the Councils first reading.

Table 2

YearNumber of

actsadopted

B points Council Voting

Rule, Unanimity

CouncilVoting Rule,

QMV

QMV legislationadopted inCouncil 1st

reading

1999 161 10

(6.2%)85

(52.8%)76

(47.2%)41

(53.9%)

2000 169 25

(14.8%)80

(47.3%)89

(52.7%)52

(58.4%)

2001 160 15

(9.3%)58

(36.3%)102

(63.8%)32

(31.3%)

2002 163 17

(10.4%)66

(40.5%)97

(59.5%)35

(36.1%)

2003 163 11

(6.7%)103

(63.2%)60

(36.8%)35

(58.3%)

2004 115 2

(1.7%)87

(75.7%)28

(24.3%)19

(67.8%)

(%) are row percentages.

Only legislation adopted before May 1st of this year is included due to the enlargement

The possibility for adopting legislation already at the Councils first reading means

that the overall legislative process can no longer be described as a sequential

bargaining course, but may rather be dominated by simultaneous moves in the two

institutions in an effort to speed up the process. Certain changes have therefore also

occurred concerning both the internal organisation of the Council as well as in the

relationship with the EP.

With regard to the internal procedures in the Council, especially two issues are of

importance: the use of formal procedures for reaching agreements and the role of the

Chair. When comparing the data from this paper with earlier accounts of the use of

formal procedures in Council decision-making (for an overview see e.g. Heisenberg

2005) it becomes clear that, most likely due to time pressure, formal rules are

increasingly used for reaching agreements, effectively making decision-making more

efficient. A very interesting finding related hereto is that there has especially been a

significant increase in the member states use of formal statements immediately

following the adoption of a policy proposal. Formal statements have in the literature

4 For an explanation of the EUs inter-institutional legislative process see e.g.Hix 2005.

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traditionally been described as only being used for when a country has opposed or

abstained on a proposal and wishes to make its reasons for doing so public. Yet, the

data used in this paper indicates that these statements are not only used as a

supplement to the votes: They often show strong disagreements with the majority

even in cases where the opposing country does not show its dissatisfaction through

the votes. It therefore requires some explanation why member states may have

reasons not to oppose the majority by voting, but instead choose to make their

opposition clear in the formal statements. I will return to this matter in the analysis

below but here just note that, contrary to conventional wisdom in the field, since 2001

each year has experienced that more than 65% of legislation could not be agreed upon

by consensus when including both votes and formal statements (Hagemann 2005).

Beside of the increased use of formal statements and votes, the changes in the macro-

institutional rules introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty can be assumed to lead to

other changes in individual actors respective influence over policy outcomes (Farrell

and Heritier 2004:5). For example, there may be a need for adjustments of such

positions as the chairmanship. A skillful Chairperson in the Council (i.e. a

representative for the country currently holding the Presidency) could, for instance,

due to hard deadlines be left with a great potential for exploiting information

asymmetries, a skewed distribution of strong and weak preferences over a policy

proposal etc. This is due to the fact that, although a potential agency-drift is apparent,

other member states may prefer to rely on the Chairperson with regard to not only the

handling of the internal negotiations, but also with regard to the coordination and

bargaining with the EP5. Since the inter-institutional bargaining is no longer purely

characterised by sequential moves and there is a greater pressure from a shorter policy

process as well as hard deadlines for negotiations in each of the institutions, a higher

level of coordination across the two institutions is necessary. Here, the Chairperson

can take advantage of her national party organisation and strengthen the Councils

position vis--vis the EP by gathering information on the EP party groups

preferences through MEPs representing the same national party6. This may prove to

be a useful coordination mechanism indeed, and if one was to speculate one step

5 For simplicity, the Commission is disregarded for now, but could of course be taken into account as

well.6

One example where the role of the Chair and the EPs rapporteur was of great importance was in the2003 amendment of the Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste. Please refer to

http://europa.eu.int/abc/doc/off/bull/en/200312/p104044.htm

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further, the fact that both the EP and Council are made up of political parties (Hix

2002), makes it convincing that representatives in the Council seek to harmonise the

policy preferences of MEPs from governing parties with the preferences of a

sufficient majority in the Council7. Needless to say, further research on this topic is

required, yet, it should by now be clear that we cannot by default assume that the

Council is a unitary actor vis--vis the EP, as is so often supposed in the literature.

Hypotheses

Taking into consideration the above observations, decision-making in the Council is

best presented as a repeated bargaining game between self-interested, rational actors

(the member states) possessing perfect information about other players policy

preferences. The member states engage in negotiations over policy proposals initiated

by the Commission in order to pursue own policy goals. The incentive for the actors

to participate is a combination of the opportunity to influence politics beyond own

territorial and/or political boundaries and the wish to maintain control of domestic

politics and interferences by foreign EU governments. Coalitions can based on this

be assumed to form between actors with similar policy preferences (Axelrod 1970)

and in compliance with the formal rules for adopting legislation.

The importance of the formal rules for coalition formation has been a matter of great

dispute (e.g. Heisenberg). However, especially when considering the increase in the

use of voting and formal statements (Hagemann 2005) it is still reasonable to assume

that all policy outcomes are indeed agreed upon with the distribution of voting

weights in mind (see also Golub 1999). Yet, as voting weights do not accurately

reflect a countrys control of decision-making (e.g. Penrose 1946)8, I will here rely on

the insights from the voting power index literature and hypothesise that it is the

7Whether or not sufficient majority means a supermajority reached by consensus or only the

required qualified majority as reached by voting is irrelevant for the argument here.8 A classic example which illustrates the fact that voting weights are not comparable with voting power

is when Luxembourg, with its one vote in the first phase of the Councils history, turned out to have

absolutely no voting power over any decision taken by QMV despite the disproportional representation

of its population. Since the threshold required to reach a decision was 12 votes during this period, it

was mathematically impossible for Luxembourgs one vote to be decisive: no matter how the five other

countries voted, their combined total would never be equal to 11 (Brams and Affuso 1985; Leech

2003). Similar situations are still possible and make it necessary to turn to power indices, which

calculate each member states frequency of being pivotal in voting outcomes across all logicallypossible combinations of votes.

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respective countries votingpowerwhich ultimately determines coalition building and

voting outcomes. Voting power indices measure each countrys relative influence on

decision-making in terms of a priori power established by the formal voting rules and,

contrary to the distribution of voting weights which are given in absolute figures,

make it possible to directly compare those values across the member states.

Voting power can be thought to affect voting behaviour in one of two possible ways

(Mattila 2004:33). First, one could hypothesise that countries with more voting power

dominate voting situations, that they are able to manipulate the voting outcomes

towards their own preferred policy point and that they are more likely to be on the

winning side of any vote in the Council. As officials are mainly concerned with

getting proposals adopted and therefore pay a special attention to the preferences of

the larger member states9, those countries are also likely to have more influence in the

preparatory stages of any decision, and make this argument seem reasonable.

On the other hand, recent research has shown that large countries vote against the

majority more often than smaller countries at the last stage of the legislative

procedure (Mattila and Lane 2001; Mattila 2004). This may reflect strategic

differences in the approach to decision-making. Smaller countries may acknowledge

their limited resources and abilities to influence every decision made by the EU. Thus,

they restrict their attention to issues that they consider especially important, or they

may seek to influence legislation earlier in the process than the last voting situation.

Also, larger countries may be more likely to feel the need to voice their opinions more

forcefully if they disagree; their electorates could find it very difficult to have their

national interests overruled by EU decisions. In this situation, the government can

alleviate its difficult position by voicing its dissent publicly although its opposition

will not affect the final outcome (Mattila 2004:33).

In the empirical analysis I measure a set of variables affect on the likelihood of a

country opposing the majority. Two data sets are used for this purpose, one consisting

of the official votes from the last possible vote of 931 policy proposals and another set

consisting of 349 votes on a sample of the same policy proposals, but only including

voting situations prior to the final stage of the decision-making process. The total

9 Therefore, they may act according to the logic of backward induction.

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number of observations for each data set is 13.965 and 5.235, respectively. If the first

example above about voting powers affect on member states behaviour is true, none

of the large countries should be found to be likely to oppose the majority. If the latter

example is true, we can expect that only the large member states should oppose when

we focus on the last possible vote. Yet, when voting situations prior to the last votes

are analysed, small and big member states should be equally likely to be in

opposition. Hence, Hypothesis 1 and 2:

H1: A country with more voting power will oppose the majority more

frequently than a country with less voting power at the last

voting stage.

H2: Voting behaviour in the Council changes across the different stages of the

legislative process

Unlike research on voting in the European Parliament (e.g. Hix 1999) or on the

general inter-institutional decision-making in the EU (e.g. Tsebelis and Kreppel

1998), no unifying political space has been identified as the framework within which

the member states in the Council act. Though, adopted from the general EU studies, it

is broadly assumed that also internally in the Council at least two dimensions exist: a

left-right dimension as well as a dimension capturing how far European integration

should progress at the expense of the nation state (Hooghe and Marks 1999; Hix

1999; Marks and Steenbergen 2004). I assume that present EU politics are

predominantly fought along the left/right dimension due to the already very elaborate

cooperation of the member states and intermingling of national and EU political

matters. Also, as already mentioned, one should not disregard the fact that, besides of

being national representatives, the actors in the Council are also political parties with

policy goals along the traditional left/right axis. I therefore expect to find that the

rational governments form connected-winning coalitions in the way that centre-left

and centre-right governments conform into separate groups of potential alliances

including governments within these groups according to the necessary majority

requirement. Consequently, as the majority of governments in the period studied here

consist of centre-left or left wing governments, I expect that right-wing governments

will be found to oppose the majority more often than their left-wing counterparts.

Thus, Hypothesis 3:

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H3: A right-wing member state is more likely to oppose the majority than a

left-wing member state.

An effect of the left-right ideology variable can be assumed to be detected both when

analysing the last possible vote and when analysing votes from earlier stages of the

legislative process.

Variables

For the purpose of the empirical test, the above three hypotheses are operationalised

in the following way: the first hypothesis considering the member states voting power

is calculated on the basis of the normalised Banzhaf Index (Banzhaf 1965) by using

the POWERSLAVE (2002) programme. Please refer to Appendix 2 for an

explanation of the normalised Banzhaf Index. The second hypothesis regarding the

changes in voting behaviour across the different stages of the legislative process can

be concluded upon by comparing the results from the two data sets. The third variable

locating the incumbent governments positions on the left-right ideology dimension is

measured with an index variable that ranges from 0 to 1. The variable consists of each

governments policy position as found in Gabel and Huber (2000) and has been

divided into 6 months units because of the Presidency-variable mentioned below.

The government that is furthest to the right has the value of 1 and the government that

is furthest to the left has the value of 0.

In the literature, other factors than the voting weights and voting power are often

highlighted as having an important effect on voting behaviour and coalition formation

in the Council. I have included these variables in the analysis in order to explore the

broader picture of what truly makes up Council voting behaviour10

. The variables are

the following11

:

1. The first additional variable is the governments position on the above mentioned

more/less integration scale calculated similarly to the left/right variable and as

10 For detailed literature reviews, which, among other things, examine each of these variables, please

see Zimmer et al (2004) and Selck (2004).11

It should be noted that, although the empirical findings are quite different from the ones presented inthis paper, some of the variables are also to be found in Mattila (2004) (See

http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/mmattila/contest/) and and Heisenberg (2005).

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found in Marks and Steenbergen (2004). A high score indicates an attitude

favourable to European integration and a low score indicates Euro-scepticism. I

predict that the more/less integration variable does not have an effect when

analysing votes from earlier readings nor when confining the analysis to the last

possible votes.I find it convincing that the EU system has indeed developed into a

political system of its own (Hix 1999:5), largely substituting the traditional

intergovernmentalist view of an integration/status quo divide with a left/right

cleavage as known from national political systems.

2. It is quite possible that an interaction effect exists between the two variables

capturing the policy dimensions described above. For example, Euro-sceptical

left-wing governments may behave differently to Euro-sceptical right-wing

governments (Mattila 2004:41). Therefore, a variable is included to see if there is

a significant impact of this combination on governments voting behaviour (see

also Hooghe and Marks 1999). Similar as to the left/right variable, I predict that

the interaction variable left/right ideology x support for integration affects

whether or not a government will oppose the majority at all stages of the decision-

making process.

3. Whether or not an EU member falls into the category of receiver or

contributor to the EU budget is also often argued to affect the likelihood of

being either in opposition or in favour of a proposal. Certain theorists even argue

that EU politics in general is about the wealthier member states pay-offs of

poorer nations by means of subsidies (e.g. Carruba 1997; Hosli 1996). I

acknowledge this phenomenon in EU politics, yet perhaps not to a similar extent

as some of the previous studies of Council decision-making, and do not expect

this phenomenon to be apparent in the analysis, at least not at the last voting stage.

The pay-offs and vote trading will basically have taken place before the votes on

redistributive issues are voted upon. Therefore, I predict that whether or not a

government is a contributor or beneficiary to the EU budget does not have an

effect on the likelihood of opposing the majority at the last voting stage nor in

voting situations at earlier readings.

4. A variable measuring whether there is an effect of holding the Presidency is also

included. The literature concerning this matter is mostly descriptive (Tallberg

2003) and it has in many cases proven difficult to establish exactly what the

consequences and opportunities are for a country holding this position, as was also

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reflected in the above discussion of the role of the chairperson. Here, we will at

least be able to establish what the consequences are for the likelihood of opposing

the majority. The variable is included as a dummy variable and I predict that

whether or not a country is holding the Presidency affects its likelihood of

opposing the majority when analysing voting situations prior to the final vote as

well as when only taking into account the last possible vote. I find it likely that

countries in general wish to send a signal of consensus when they are holding the

Presidency and therefore deliberately do not oppose the majority. Also, although it

has not yet been definitively established whether or not the Presidency directly

allocates a country with gate-keeping or agenda-setting powers or demands the

role of an honest broker, it seems likely that the Presidency position in general

disencourages any given member state from going against the Councils common

will.

5. A variable measuring the potential effect of the 2000 enlargement negotiations is

included as a control variable. This variable is meant to capture the unusual low

level of disagreements and QMV votes in 200012

, which are most likely connected

to the important Copenhagen agreement leading to the 2004 enlargement. Failing

to control for this could produce strongly misleading results.

6. As a last control variable I have included the number of decisions taken by the

Council. This is calculated as the natural logarithm of the total number of votes

taken in each half-year period and is used to control for the possibility that

whether or not a country is likely to be in opposition is affected by the total

number of decisions made (Mattila 2004:41). I predict that the number of

decisions taken by the Council does not have an effect on whether or not a country

will oppose the majority. The preparatory bodies should prevent any such effect.

In Table 3 I have summarised my predictions regarding which variables affect

whether or not a country will oppose the majority in the Council when analysing the

last possible vote and votes from previous voting situations, respectively.

12 Especially the last half year of 2000 shows a very low level of formal votes and statements.

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Table 3: Predictions of variables effect on

frequency of opposing the majority

+ indicates a positive effect is expected.

indicates a negative effect is expected.

Data

As already mentioned, two data sets are used in the empirical test. Both of the data

sets cover the instances where the Council acts as a legislator. The first data set

includes all legislation adopted between 1999 and 2004 and has a total of 931 pieces

of legislation. It consists of the last possible votes on each proposal, that is, the

decisions where it is determined whether a final proposal is adopted or rejected. The

second data set consists of a sample of the votes from the same data set as above, but

only includes the votes from earlier readings. Yet, the number of acts prior to the final

vote includes only 349 pieces of legislation, and is therefore considerably smaller

than the first data set. This is partly due to the fact that not all of the legislation falls

within the Co-decision procedure and therefore does not include several readings. It is

also partly due to the fact that, out of the Co-decision legislation, 214 acts were

already adopted after the first reading and therefore had no previous voting situations.

However, the total number of observations in this data set still amounts to 5235 (15 x

349) and is indeed suitable for an analysis of voting behaviour across the different

stages of the legislative process.

Variable Last vote only Votes from

earlierstages

left/right ideology

Governments support

for integration

Left/right ideology x

support for integration

Presidency

Contributor/Beneficiary

Voting power

+

No effect

+

-

No effect

+

+

No effect

+

-

No effect

No effect

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As already explained above, the use of formal statements immediately following the

adoption of an act may actually be a way to voice a countrys opposition against a

proposal, while there may be reasons for not doing so by voting. I have therefore also

coded information on those countries who have stated they wished to oppose or have

given strong negative comments on a policy proposal such that a comparison can be

made between these official statements and the member states use of voting (for a

discussion of this see also Carruba et al. 2004).

2.4 Findings

Table 4 and 5 below show the frequency of oppositions, abstentions and use of formal

statements per country. It is apparent that the largest member states abstain or oppose

the majority more often than the smallest member states at all stages of the legislative

process (column 3 in both tables). However, compared to their share of opposing the

majority through voting, it seems as if the smaller member states to a greater extent

show their dissatisfaction through the use of formal statements than the big member

states do. At the last voting stage, the four smallest members oppose the majority in

the formal statements with an average of 15 times, whereas they only chose to do so

6.5 times by voting. The four largest member states, on the other hand, oppose or

abstain the majority through voting by an average of 30.5 times, whereas they on

average make formal statements 31.75 times. Therefore, when looking at the total of

abstentions, oppositions and formal statements instead of only the number of

abstentions and oppositions, the gap between large and small countries is not as

profound, although indeed still considerable.

At the stages prior to the final adoption (Table 5) the perhaps most remarkable finding

is that although the number of legislation has made a considerable drop from 931 to349, the frequency of opposing, abstaining or making formal statements have not

decreased to a similar extent. The three largest countries still chose to oppose or

abstain from voting in 17, 11 and 24 cases, respectively. Also, in this table we see a

similar tendency as in Table 4, where the larger member states have a greater share of

the number of times they are in opposition or abstain, yet again, the use of formal

statements does not have the same dramatic decrease: both small- and medium sized

countries often make their opposition explicit through the use of formal statements.

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Table 4: Last stage

Country In favour

Oppose

or

abstain

Formal

Statements

Opp.,

abst. and

statements

in total

Germany 864 41 16 57

France 892 32 7 39

UK 846 27 18 45

Italy 873 22 26 48

Spain 884 22 19 41

Netherlands 890 19 17 36

Greece 904 15 12 27

Belgium 891 9 14 23

Portugal 892 11 38 49

Sweden 885 9 27 36

Austria 891 5 9 14

Denmark 884 11 32 43

Finland 912 4 15 19

Ireland 907 8 7 15

Luxembourg 912 3 6 9

Table 5: Stages prior to final adoption.

Country In favour

Oppose

orabstain

Formal

statements

Opp.,

abst. and

statementsin total

Germany 300 17 19 36

France 318 11 11 22

UK 295 21 33 54

Italy 307 22 14 36

Spain 308 14 17 31

Netherlands 330 8 11 19

Greece 327 11 18 29

Belgium 337 4 8 12

Portugal 332 9 19 28

Sweden 337 4 26 30Austria 342 4 3 7

Denmark 330 11 31 42

Finland 337 2 14 16

Ireland 338 6 5 11

Luxembourg 340 2 7 9

In sum, the two tables show that 1) when taking into account the number of legislation

analysed, a higher percentage of disagreement is apparent at readings prior to the final

adoption of a policy proposal than at the last voting stage; and 2) although the largest

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member states has the biggest share of opposition, abstention and formal statements,

there seems to be a difference in the strategies for how small and large member states

show their discontent. Small member states do so through formal statements more

than through voting, whereas the big member states use both voting and formal

statements.

Table 6 and 7 take us a step further and present the regression results of which of the

variables have an effect on the decision to oppose the majority. The dependent

variable is therefore the frequency of opposing the majority, that is, the sum of

abstentions, formal statements and votes cast against the majority in the Council

regardless of whether the latter is in favour of or suggests to reject the individual

policy proposals13

. The results are generated by using a random-effects Poisson

regression model which is most suitable for this kind of event count variables14

.

Table 6: Poisson regression last stage votes only

Random-effect Poisson regression Number of obs = 13965Log likelihood = -162.53

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

neg | Coef. Std. Err.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------left/right ideology .824** .143Governments support for integration -.010 .007

Left/right ideology x

support for integration 1.012 * .301

Presidency .009* .002

Contributor/Beneficiary -.182* .069

Voting power .587** . 061Number of decisions .473 .411

2000 enlargement negotiations .873 .614

Constant -2.923 1.865

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* indicates p

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Table 7: Poisson regression Votes prior to final adoption

Random-effect Poisson regression Number of obs = 5235

Log likelihood = -101.73

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

neg | Coef. Std. Err.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

left/right ideology .607** .071

Governments support for integration -.004 .003

Left/right ideology x

support for integration .713* .221

Presidency .172* .044

Contributor/Beneficiary -.228 .117

Voting power 1.028* .424

Number of decisions .473 .372

2000 enlargement negotiations .389 .209Constant -2.017 1.728

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* indicates p

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Table 7, holding everything else constant. Interestingly, the variable measuring

governments position on more/less integration did not prove significant in any of the

tables, which, together with the result from the interaction variable, means that

preferences on the integration dimension does not affect governments voting

behaviour in a simple, linear way. The interaction term shows that the effect of the

variable measuring support for integration is contingent on the governments position

on the left-right dimension.15

As expected, countries that hold the EU Presidency oppose the majority less

frequently than other member states. The effect of this variable is 1.19 (= 172.

e ) for

votes prior to the final adoption and 1.00 (= 009.

e ) for the final votes, which indicates

that further research is needed to address questions such as 1) whether or not the

member state holding the Presidency do enjoy significant agenda-setting powers, and

therefore does not find it necessary to oppose the majority, or 2) whether the result

presented here reflects a wish to send a signal of political consensus, and hence makes

the country restrain itself and not vote according to its true preferences.

The Contributor/Beneficiary variable, which is at times particularly dominant in the

literature, changes from being significant at the .05 level in Table 6 to having no

noteworthy effect at all in Table 7. This could perhaps indicate that bargaining over

redistributive politics is only a matter of dispute when there is attention from the

media or the minority is facing a situation without further amendment possibilities.

In sum, and in order to make these findings more comprehensible, we can characterise

the country which will be most likely to be found in opposition to the majority as a

right-wing government possessing a large amount of voting power and which is

currently not holding the Presidency. At the final adoption stage it is furthermore

likely that this country is also a net contributor to the EU budget. However, whereas a

smaller member state would prefer to voice its opposition by use of formal statements,

this member state may equally chose to do so through voting.

Further research

All of these findings lend support to the hypotheses that a countrys left/right ideology

as well as voting power affect the member states voting behaviour and that this

15 This conclusion also corresponds with Mattilas (2004) finding, although the scores are obviously

quite different.

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voting behaviour changes across the different stages of the legislative process. Yet,

the results are not entirely as expected: As discussed above, it would be no surprise to

find that large member states are more likely to vote against the majority than small

countries in the last possible vote. At this stage the cost of voting against the majority

is high but any opposing member state can be expected to be fully aware of this

(Crombez 2002) and makes it plausible that only certain member states are willing to

take the risk of showing their discontempt. Yet, the fact that Table 7 shows that large

member states are also more likely to vote against the majority than the smaller

member states at earlier voting stages suggests that our analysis should not end here.

Intuitively, it does not make sense that large member states are repeatedly outvoted at

the same time as voting power is an important determinant for voting outcomes.

However, I believe these result may be an expression for the following: Small states,

being rather insignificant in the broader bargaining game, may deliberately choose not

to vote against the majority at any point during the negotiations, knowing full well

that they would have to concede in the long run. The results from Table 4 and 5 show

a much greater use of formal statements rather than opposition through voting by

these countries and thereby support this argument. Small member states may instead

deliberately position themselves in a moderate position so that they can be sure to be

part of a successful coalition and then perhaps seek to influence policy outcomes

through alternative measures. Hence, what could be important bargaining techniques

for these countries are to 1) ensure an extensive use of vote trading (see also Mattila

and Lane 2001) so that smaller member states can save up the number of times they

have supported other member states (Crisp et al 2004), and in return receive

concessions on decisions that are of high saliency to them; 2) establish efficient

coodination mechanisms with parties with similar preferences in the EP as well as

within the Council itself; and releated hereto 3) perhaps even speculate in the

difference between amendment voting and final take-it-or-leave-it votes.

Therefore, all of the findings from this paper should, alongside the obvious points of

being used to update our empirical knowledge and disconfirm some important

misconceptions from the literature, also be seen as an opportunity to establish a new

research agenda, now that several important shortcomings have been identified. The

immediate tasks ahead must be to extend the analysis and explore the details of how

bargaining, vote trading and coordination takes place across policy areas, across

sectoral Councils, across the different stages in the legislative process as well as

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across the institutions. Though, as has been pointed out throughout the paper, any

quantitative as well as qualitative study must take into account not only the last

possible votes, but also earlier voting stages as well as the extensive use of formal

statements when addressing these issues. Only then will the study of Council

decision-making be able to claim its rights as a proper political science sub-field of

EU politics.

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Appendix 1

Distribution of votes and QMV threshold in the Council

Memberstate

1958-1972

1973-1980

1981-1985

1986-1994

Since1995

NiceTreaty

Germany 4 10 10 10 10 29France 10 10 10 10 29UK 4 10 10 10 10 29Italy 4 10 10 10 10 29Spain 8 8 27Poland 27Netherlands 2 5 5 5 5 13Greece 5 5 5 12Belgium 2 5 5 5 5 12Czech Rep. 12

Portugal 5 12Hungary 12Sweden 4 10Austria 4 10Slovakia 7Denmark 3 3 3 3 7Finland 3 7Ireland 3 3 3 3 7Lithuania 7Latvia 4Slovenia 4Estonia 4Cyprus 4Luxembourg 1 2 2 2 2 4

Malta 3

Total 17 58 63 76 87 321

QMVThreshold:

Votingweights

12 41 45 54 62 232

Population 282.7 mio

(62%)Member

states 13

Source: http://europa.eu.int/institutions/council/index_en.htm.

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Appendix 2

The normalised Banzhaf index

The background for the normalised Banzhaf index is the following: A voting body has

N members with voting weights nwww ,...,, 21 and a decision rule in terms of a

threshold. A particular combination of votes is referred to as a division and the

Banzhaf index is essentially concerned with counting the number ofswings, that is,

the voting outcomes that can be changed from losing to winning by members

changing how they cast their weighted vote. A swing for member i is a coalition

represented by a subset of members of the assembly: iii SiSNS ,, , such that

qWiSj

j

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Vote and power distribution, 1999-2004

Source: Results generated by the Bruninger and Knig (2001) IOP programme.

Memberstate

Population

(in mio.)

Votes

Normalised Banzhaf

Index

Germany 82.4 10 11.16

France 60.2 10 11.16UK 60.1 10 11.16

Italy 58 10 11.16

Spain 40.2 8 9.24

Netherlands 16.2 5 5.87

Greece 10.7 5 5.87

Belgium 10.3 5 5.87

Portugal 10.1 5 5.87

Sweden 9.9 4 4.79

Austria 8.2 4 4.79

Denmark 5.4 3 3.59

Finland 5.2 3 3.59

Ireland 3.9 3 3.59

Luxembourg 0.5 2 2.26

Total 455.9 87 99.97