Forum Section Quantifying European Legislative Research: Using CELEX & PreLex in EU Legislative Studies

In: European Union politics: EUP, Band 7, Heft 4, S. 553-574

Abstract

Research on European legislative decision-making has entered a stage of quantitative analysis. The quantitative approach promises to advance the current dialogue by allowing for the evaluation of competing approaches across multiple policy domains & over time. At the same time, the quantitative study of EU decision-making introduces a number of drawbacks: it is difficult to identify one definitive source for legislative information, & case-level data are not directly accessible in a machine-readable format. In order to identify the most crucial pitfalls & provide a reliable data source, we evaluate the most frequently cited, publicly available EU legislative database, CELEX, & compare it with a less publicized legislative database referred to as PreLex. We find that CELEX documents legislative events, whereas PreLex records inter-institutional activities in the legislative process. Unsurprisingly, each of these databases has particular advantages, & we discuss which of the two might be better suited for the analysis of specific research questions. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2006.]