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Research on the European Union over the past few years has been strongly implicated in the crises that currently grip Europe with a failure to ask the pertinent questions as well as a perceived weakness in the methods and evidence used by researchers providing the basis for these allegations. This volume moves the study of EU research strategies beyond the dichotomies of the past towards a new agenda for research on Europe through a rich diversity of problem-solving based research. This new agenda acknowledges the weaknesses of the past and moves beyond them towards greater openness and awareness of the importance of research strategies, designs and methods. The 20 chapters in this collection range from micro-level analyses of identities, single policy studies and European discourse, through meso-level analysis of agenda setting, bargaining, implementation and Europeanisation, to macro-level analyses of the EU as a global actor, European integration and globalisation as well as hard and soft governance, elections and party groups, attitude formation, and new-regionalism. As such, it provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to conducting research on the European Union today.

Research on differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union (EU) has focused on the causes, conditions, and patterns of differentiation in European integration. By contrast, we know less about its effects on institutional outcomes and public support; moreover, alternatives to de jure DI in providing flexibility are still rarely accounted for. This introduction to the special issue takes stock of, and discusses omissions, in the current literature on DI. We propose an analytical framework, centering on efficiency and legitimacy, to study the effects of different types of DI. We use this framework to motivate the choice and assess the contributions of the articles selected for this special issue.

"Norway and the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

The need for a systematic analysis of supranational risk regulation -- Functional pressure and path-dependencies : the emergence and development of supranational regulatory regimes -- Efficiency and legitimacy : the evaluation of supranational regulatory regimes -- From national crises to a strong supranational regime : the development of pharmaceutical authorisation in europe -- A strong regulatory regulatory network : -- The evaluation of the European regulatory regime for pharmaceuticals -- From an early single market to a crisis of consumer confidence : the development of foodstuff regulation in Europe -- A weak supranational agency : the evaluation of the European regulatory regime for foodstuffs -- A comparison of pharmaceutical and foodstuff regulation in Europe

In this article, we address recent claims that executive— legislative relations in parliamentary democracies are undergoing important changes owing to either a `presidentialization' or a `Europeanization' of domestic political systems. Therefore, we test empirically whether parliamentary democracies are indeed experiencing changes in executive—legislative relations and whether these developments can, in part, be explained by an increase in European integration. Using data on ministerial selection in Swedish cabinets during the years 1952—2006, we find that there appears to be a slight tendency towards `presidentialization', which is indicated by a decrease in ministers with a parliamentary background being appointed, and that there exists some support for the notion that Sweden's political and economic integration into the European Union is part of the explanation for this change.

We test two of the main explanations of the formation of political ties. The first states that political actors are more likely to form a relationship if they have similar policy preferences. The second explanation, from network theory, predicts that the likelihood of a tie between two actors depends on the presence of certain relationships with other actors. Our data consist of a unique combination of actors' policy positions and their network relations over time in the Council of the European Union. We find evidence that both types of explanations matter, although there seems to be variation in the extent to which preference similarity affects network evolution. We consider the implications of these findings for understanding the decision-making in the Council.

Love is often a key factor in migration decisions. Partner relationships and union formation have also been identified as forming an intrinsic part of intra-European migration. Nevertheless, empirical research into intra-European love migration remains rather scarce. In this paper, we focus on the often neglected but substantial intra-European moves. We analyse the relationship between bi-national couple formation, identification as a European and European transnational solidarity. The analyses are based on the EUMARR survey, investigating bi-national marriages in a unified Europe, comparing European bi-national and uni-national couples. In this paper, we focus on the Netherlands ( n = 898) and compare Dutch–Dutch with Dutch–EU couples. Our findings indicate that bi-national couples are more likely to identify as European compared to uni-national couples, but this is not reflected in more solidarity to European countries in times of crisis. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of the European integration process.

AbstractThe literature on legislative decision‐making and bargaining in the EU has reached a common conclusion that the European Parliament (Parliament) and the Council of the European Union (Council) are on an equal footing in the main legislative procedure, the co‐decision procedure. We present theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that this is not the case. First, our analysis of the formal rules reveals that the Council has conditional agenda‐setting power due to a change in the majority thresholds for adopting legislation from the first to the second reading in the Parliament. This change has important implications for the internal dynamics of the Parliament and its institutional powers vis‐à‐vis the Council. Testing these analytical considerations of the formal decision rules against voting data on all co‐decision legislation adopted in the two institutions between 1999 and 2004, our empirical findings show that: first, from 1999 to 2004 coalition formation in the Council fell predominantly along the traditional left–right political dimensions when negotiating co‐decision proposals. Second, when disagreement over legislation is recorded in the Council, a strong divide can also be found in the Parliament. Third, when the Parliament is divided along party political lines, it is less likely to be able to meet the absolute majority requirement for amending the proposal adopted by the Council. Lastly, Parliament amendments are most likely to be adopted when a decision by voting is requested by a party group associated with the main ideological contingency in the Council.

In order to capitalize on its increasing legislative powers, the European Parliament (EP) has had to specialize internally. The scholarly literature has predominantly studied the structural manifestations of specialization, such as the allocation of committee seats among parliamentarians. This article sheds light on a second selection process: participation in legislative negotiations. For every given legislative dossier, parliamentarians have to decide whether and how strongly to participate in the negotiations. The literature on office allocation contains assumptions about the role of office-holders in negotiations. The first aim of this article is to test the validity of these assumptions. The second aim is to apply theories used in studies on office allocation to negotiations and gain insight into the following questions: Are actors with extreme preferences more active than others? What is the role of experts? How do party politics play out? Although we find effects of preferences and expertise on negotiations, the evidence is most compatible with the view that negotiations serve EP party groups to form and exchange policy positions.

"Mexico and the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

This paper evaluates the circumstances under which affluent interest groups wield influence over policy outcomes. Interest group scholarship is ambiguous about the beneficial role of economic resources for lobbying influence. Economically resourceful groups are often presumed to provide more and better expert information to decision-makers and, in exchange, receive more favourable policy concessions. We argue that the beneficial role of economic resources is contingent on the media salience of policy dossiers. We expect that resourceful groups are more influential when issues are discussed behind the public scenes, while their competitive advantage dampens once issues grow salient in the news media. We test our expectations in the context of European Union policymaking, drawing from 183 expert surveys with lobbyists connected to a sample of 41 policy issues. Our empirical findings demonstrate that economic resources matter for lobbying influence, but that their effect is conditional on the media salience of policy issues.

In order to capitalize on its increasing legislative powers, the European Parliament (EP) has had to specialize internally. The scholarly literature has predominantly studied the structural manifestations of specialization, such as the allocation of committee seats among parliamentarians. This article sheds light on a second selection process: participation in legislative negotiations. For every given legislative dossier, parliamentarians have to decide whether and how strongly to participate in the negotiations. The literature on office allocation contains assumptions about the role of office-holders in negotiations. The first aim of this article is to test the validity of these assumptions. The second aim is to apply theories used in studies on office allocation to negotiations and gain insight into the following questions: Are actors with extreme preferences more active than others? What is the role of experts? How do party politics play out? Although we find effects of preferences and expertise on negotiations, the evidence is most compatible with the view that negotiations serve EP party groups to form and exchange policy positions. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

We present an automatically updatable database of background information about Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from 1979 until the present. Although this information is already directly accessible through the European Parliament's web page, it is presented in a manner that makes it ideal only for those interested in finding information about individual MEPs, but difficult for anyone interested in doing large-N analysis. We provide an online 'live' source of background information about MEPs that is tailored towards the need of the latter group. Our web page allows researchers to specify the time period in which they are interested & to obtain data on committee, party group & delegation membership, as well as leadership positions within seconds. As the collection of the data is fully automated, we are able to keep the data updated as long as the European Parliament (EP) continues its current practice of making background information about members available online. Researchers will be able to combine this information with other data sources at a substantively lower cost than is currently the case. As such, we hope to encourage a new generation of research into the EP. The research note is organized as follows. The next section reviews the literature. It highlights how our database may be used to extend the already extensive quantitative literature on the ER The second section gives the reader an overview of how the technology behind the database works & how to access the information. We leave the technical aspects of the principles behind the data collection scripts to the web appendix. The third section describes the database. References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2009.]

At the end of its sixth legislative term the European Parliament adopted a rule change subjecting all final passage votes on legislative matters to roll call votes. Some studies use this rule change to assess whether roll call votes are characterized by more or less party discipline. Cautioning against such simple comparisons I propose to estimate in this article the extent to which members of the European Parliament are subject to party pressure. Comparing the results from the beginning of the sixth and seventh legislative term shows that in final passage votes the average party pressure has decreased considerably after the rule change.

The European Union's ambitious Mediterranean policy has the declared goal of bringing about economic and political transformation by explicitly linking reform with rewards. Drawing on mechanism design theory, we argue that the EU's Mediterranean policy has the potential to reveal information about the respective partner countries' reform 'types'. However, the current incentive structure of the EU's Mediterranean policy does not fit with the requirements of incentive compatibility, which would allow for screening, because it does not encourage partner countries to reveal the costs of reform. Data on the political and economic reform performance of Mediterranean partner countries reveal the pooling pattern that we would expect from a screening model. By offering two differentiated reward agreements that are not specifically targeted towards each country's progress on reform, the European Commission could learn which countries are sincere about reforming.