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Practitioners as well as scholars of European integration have for decades debated why it takes so long for the European Union (EU) to adopt legislation and how to improve decision-making efficiency. Four studies have investigated decision-making speed using survival analysis, a particularly appropriate quantitative technique. In this paper I show that all four studies suffer from serious methodological problems that render their conclusions unreliable. I then outline where work in this area should focus, and take an initial step in this direction by fitting a methodologically more appropriate survival model to my 2002 EU decision-making data set (Golub, 2002). Substantively, the results indicate that throughout the EU's history, for the most important types of legislation, qualified majority voting (QMV) and EU enlargement have increased decision-making speed, whereas empowerment of the European Parliament and extreme preference heterogeneity amongst decision-makers have decreased it. Theoretically, formal approaches — spatial models and especially coalition theory — do a better job of explaining these results than do perspectives that privilege informal norms.

The dominant paradigm characterizes European Parliament (EP) elections as second-order national elections. Scholars adhering to this view (for example, Marsh, 2008 ; Reif and Schmitt, 1980 ; Schmitt, 2005 ) not only identify these elections as less important, but also emphasize that low turnout in EP elections is unrelated to citizens' support for the European Union (EU). In this article, I challenge this latter proposition. Analyzing all EP elections since 1979, I first find that higher macro-level support for EU membership leads to higher turnout. Second, I discover that changes in aggregate EU support directly trigger changes in turnout rates. Third, a multilevel analysis of Eurobarometer data confirms these macro-level trends at the micro level and finds that citizens who consider their country's membership in the EU 'a good thing' have a higher likelihood of voting in EP elections than those who reject it. These findings have both empirical and theoretical implications. Empirically, the low turnout in EU elections is directly linked to citizens' rejection of the EU project. Theoretically, the second-order national election thesis needs to be altered. Turnout in EP elections is driven by not only national-level factors but also citizens' satisfaction with the EU.

General attitudes of citizens toward the European Union (EU) have frequently been analyzed. However, European integration represents a multifaceted process and citizen attitudes may well depend on the precise nature of policy proposals. In this contribution, we analyze the determinants of specific support for three prominent EU economic policy proposals: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, Eurobonds, and a EU financial transaction tax. Drawing on Eurobarometer data, we find that four standard explanatory factors—ideology, utility, identity, and cues—also affect support for these policies. However, they do so in systematically different ways, depending on whether the policies primarily represent positive or negative integration and market-making or market-correcting, on how they affect national sovereignty, and on how they are affected by complexity and salience.

This book assesses the use and limitations of the principal-agent model in a context of increasingly complex political systems such as the European Union. Whilst a number of conceptual, theoretical and methodological challenges need to be addressed, the authors show that the principal-agent model can still provide deeper insights into a wide range of political phenomena. Through an empirical analysis of multiple principal-agent relations in the EU, covering a variety of policy fields and political actors, the volume refines our theoretical understanding of the politics of delegation and discretion in the EU. It will appeal to scholars in interested in EU politics and policy, public administration and governance, and international organisations. The chapter 'Multiple principals preferences, different types of oversight mechanisms, and agent's discretion in trade negotiations' is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.--

The study of EU foreign policy has for a long time been haunted by Henry Kissinger's famous quip, "what number do I call if I want to get through to Europe?" This has prompted scholars to inquire into the effectiveness of the EU as an international actor. Arguing that the focus on effectiveness has pushed EU studies too far into the world of policy planning, this book examines EU foreign policy from the perspective of functionality. It asks what function foreign policy co-operation plays in the wider European integration process. The findings are original and striking: EU foreign policy serves as a way of managing Europe's retreat from power politics, is the site for inter-institutional struggles between the Council, Commission and Parliament within the EU, and increasingly provides the EU with a new identity at a time when the traditional narratives of European integration are no longer so convincing for European citizens. Far from being the poor cousin of other policy areas, foreign policy is increasingly the terrain upon which the future of the EU is being decided.

This paper analyses the implications of collegiality in the European Commission for policy outcomes in European Competition Policy (ECP). The structure of the Commission creates a dilemma, since the antitrust regulator (DG COMP) can either submit its decisions to a vote in the College, or engage in costly strategizing to circumvent it. Relying on the College maintains organizational unity but also risks producing decisions unfavourable to DG COMP and the non-recovery of sunk costs. Forging external alliances, on the other hand, secures policy positions but may also lead to generalized crisis. In this game of strategy I identify the distance between DG policy preferences, the ability of DG COMP to rely on national competition authorities, and the costs of forging external alliances as the main variables affecting equilibrium strategies, and thus equilibrium policy outcomes. Additional empirical work, on ECP and other common policies, should follow.

Scholars and policymakers in EU foreign policy lament the EU's inability to assert itself on the world stage. This book explains this weakness by arguing that EU foreign policy is burdened by various internal functions, and systemizes the analysis of internal functionality, pushing the study beyond the concern with effectiveness

This book interprets the relationship between Ireland and the European Union (EU). We are coming up to 50 years since Ireland acceded to the EU (2023), and the links between the two are unique and distinctive. The volume presents an original interpretation of Irish-EU relations, and this in turn has implications for a wider understanding of the EU. Its aim is to analyse the Irish-EU relationship from the idea of two apparently contradictory political ideas - internationalism (as represented by European integration in this particular instance) and nationalism (long the dominant value in Irish politics). The authors argue that to date the contradictions have been managed with considerable ease, leading us to characterise the Irish-EU relationship as "nationalism within internationalism".