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The collection of articles in this special issue provides a comprehensive analysis of European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis. We investigate national preference formation and interstate bargaining related to major reforms of the Economic and Monetary Union. The analyses rely on the new 'EMU Positions' dataset. This dataset includes information about the preferences and saliences of all 28 EU member states and key EU institutions, regarding 47 contested issues negotiated between 2010 and 2015. In this introductory article, we first articulate the motivation behind this special issue and outline its collective contribution. We then briefly summarise each article within this collection; the articles analyse agenda setting, preference formation, coalition building, bargaining dynamics, and bargaining success. Finally, we present and discuss the 'EMU Positions' dataset.

There is no shortage of would-be leaders in EU climate change politics. The EU institutions (e.g. European Council, Council of the EU, Commission and the European Parliament (EP)), member states and societal actors have all, though to varying degrees and at different time periods, tried to offer leadership in EU and international climate change politics. Importantly, public support for EU environmental policy in general, and climate change policy in particular, has been consistently high (e.g. Eurobarometer 2015). The economic recession which followed the 2008 financial crises triggered only a moderate drop in public support for EU action on climate change, although considerable variation exists between member states.

Informed by epistemological pluralism and state-of-the-art debate on research design in the social sciences, this volume combines conceptual elaboration with substantive research puzzles. Research Design in European Studies investigates different notions of causality and relates them to methods and techniques. Designed for use either in a course on European Union politics or in preparing projects on Europeanization, the book offers an applied perspective on research methods in specific areas of qualitative approaches to causality, as well as chapters introducing quantitative, critical realist, and discursive strategies. Substantively, the contributors tackle research issues in the domains of compliance, EU external relations, foreign policy, health care, party politics and urban governance.

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

The European Parliament (EP) possesses a highly specialized committee system, operating in a complex institutional and political environment, yet little empirical work has investigated how MEPs are assigned to EP committees and what consequences this process has for representation and policy-making. In this article I examine the growth of EP committees and committee membership since 1979, and address the question of whether these committees are representative of the EP as a whole. Using an original data set of committee membership, national and EP party affiliation, MEP characteristics, and MEP policy preferences derived from roll-call votes, I address three key questions: Does committee membership reflect the party group composition of the EP? Do committee members possess specialized expertise in their committees' policy areas? And, finally, do committee members' general or committee-specific policy preferences differ substantially from those of the overall Parliament? The results suggest very strongly that, although committee members do tend to possess policy-specific expertise, committees are, nonetheless, highly representative of the EP as a whole, in terms of both party and policy representation.

"Small States in the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

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

Most of the papers presented at the International Seminar on the European Union in World Politics, held at New Delhi during 21-22 May 2003

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

Most current debate about the democratic deficit equates democracy with party government and popular direction of policy (popular sovereignty). Alternative conceptions of democracy, pluralist or veto-group liberalism, are more consistent with European political and social circumstances and with EU institutions. After developing the difference between popular sovereignty and liberal models of democracy, the paper uses data from a survey of members of the European Parliament and members of the national parliaments in the EU to show that MP orientations with respect to these democratic values contribute significantly to explaining their evaluations of the quality of EU democracy and their preferences for EU institutional development.

Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on a new data set tracking the transposition of a sample of 119 directives, the paper finds effects of both political preferences and government capacity on the likelihood of timely transposition. Furthermore, important sectoral differences are uncovered, with trade-related legislation having a better chance and environmental legislation having a significantly worse chance of being incorporated into national legal systems on time. Beyond the conditionality of the accession process, the paper unveils a complex causal structure behind the ups and downs in transposition performance.

Reflecting on the articles in this special issue of European Union Politics, this essay first asks whether EU scholarship has sufficiently conceptualized and measured what it means to identify with the European Project and/or the European Community. The evidence in this special issue indicates that many citizens now have attachments to Europe, albeit in uncertain depth. European attachments also exist in combination with or as an alternative to national identities. European/national identities also now overlap with partisan attachments, potentially forming a new basis of political cleavage. The research in this collection demonstrates a rich portfolio of methods to examine this important topic, and yields new evidence of how geographic identities are related to public opinion on issues such as immigration.