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This article analyzes electoral cycles in distributional bargaining in the European Union. The author argues that governments attempt to increase their EU membership benefits above average levels in the preelection period, hoping to appear politically competent to voters. The theory discusses when and how EU members can increase these gains before elections through negotiations in the Council of Ministers. A time-series cross-sectional analysis of EU member states' annual budget negotiations from 1977 to 2006 supports the existence of conditional electoral cycles in distributional bargaining and generally points to the importance of accounting for such cycles when analyzing patterns of international cooperation.

Existing research seems to agree that European Union (EU) accession conditionality facilitated processes of political and economic transformation for the recent enlargement rounds. However, despite its importance, systematic research beyond small-N qualitative studies that produces generalizable insights is scarce. Most strikingly, it remains unclear at which stage of the enlargement process and to what extent candidate countries complied with EU law in the context of accession conditionality. Building upon previous theoretical accounts, the authors argue that candidates' compliance behaviour can be examined more thoroughly when focusing on the credibility of EU conditionality at different phases over the process of accession negotiations, which are characterized by varying degrees of membership probability. The article's main contribution stems from the empirical analysis, which employs generalized additive models on new data of candidate countries' compliance with EU law under accession conditionality from 1998 to 2009. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

A framing experiment on the Europeanization of health care supports two assumptions derived from the 'blame avoidance' literature. The constrained perceptions assumption states that performance evaluations at different political levels have 'zero-sum' implications for each other. Empirically, those receiving positive integration frames become not only more positive about the European Union (EU) level, but also more negative about domestic performance (even though frames about such a performance were not provided). The opposite is found for negative frames. Further, the negative bias assumption implies that zero-sum adjustments are best triggered by negative blame frames rather than by positive 'credit' frames. Finally, in contrast to standard blame avoidance assumptions, the experiment mimics the realistic situation in which the opposition attacks integration and the government defends it. This reverses the prototypical blame avoidance situation and opens the way for unintended effects. Governments may paint EU-induced conditions in rosy colours, reflecting negatively on its domestic performance. Conversely, the opposition runs the risk of being too gloomy about integration for its own good, as negative EU welfare frames reflect positively on domestic performance.

Discusses immigration and emigration, focusing on history of nationalism and xenophobia towards guest workers, refugees, and asylum seekers, EU citizenship rights and privileges, and expansion of EU membership to Eastern European countries.