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This article introduces a novel approach for generating agenda-related estimates of the policy positions of political parties from party manifestos and expert surveys. We show that current party estimates provide for little variation across policy areas and over time. In response, we propose to relate the issue-specific ideological preference profiles of political parties to the legislative context. For the dimensional representation of policy positions of political parties our procedure weights the issue-specific preference profiles by their prominence on the agenda of each policy area. We apply this procedure to EU legislation and locate national political parties on a national/supranational and left/right dimension, which can be used for the analysis of Council decision-making. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

The literature on new modes of governance suffers from a gap between the normative and the positive approaches to legitimacy. This article addresses this gap by studying the patterns of national stakeholders' support for the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The results of our survey demonstrate that the OMC receives greater support than previously assumed and that the support of national stakeholders is largely associated with their involvement in national procedures. These findings corroborate the assumptions of normative theories of participatory democracy about the importance of involvement. Furthermore, the study's findings underline the pivotal role that national stakeholders play regarding matters of legitimacy in the EU's multi-level system of governance. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Drawing on a survey of 800 business associations, the article seeks to explain why interest groups lobby the EU institutions and what groups maintain contacts with them. Rooted in organizational theory, it argues that four main dimensions influence access patterns — institutional context, resource dependencies, interest group organization, and strategic choices. The empirical analysis demonstrates that all dimensions are relevant. Nonetheless, contacts between EU policy-makers and interest groups display only a few general traits: they are shaped by the political mobilization of groups in response to EU regulation, the division of labour among EU and national associations and the importance of organizational resources. Beyond these general influences, the interactions vary profoundly in the segmented institutional context.

What regional factors can explain the heterogeneity in Structural Funds distribution to European Union regions? Past studies have shown that aside from the level of economic development and rates of unemployment, other political, and economic factors systematically explain why certain European Union regions receive greater funding than others, in particular where there is room for bargaining. In this article, a novel theory is posited which argues that the determination of Structural Funds is based on an interaction between a region's formal institutions (the level of a regional autonomy) and informal institutions (its level of quality of government). In cases of low regional autonomy, member states and European Union level actors prefer to allocate greater levels of Funds to regions with lower quality of government in order to increase cohesion. Yet in cases of high regional autonomy, risks associated with absorption failure in lower capacity regions lead states to strategically allocate greater levels of transfers to regions with higher quality of government. The theory is tested on data for 171 European Union regions for the 2007–2013 budget period. The results show robust empirical support for the theoretical claims.

The Assembly of Western European Union (WEU) opened its fifth ordinary session in the House of Europe on June 15, 1959. Mr. Vittorio Badini Confalonieri (Italian Liberal) was elected President, and the following were elected Vice-Presidents: Mr. Joseph Bech (Luxembourg Social Christian), Dame Florence Horsbrugh (British Conservative), Mr. J. J. R. Schmal (Dutch Historical Christian), Mr. Carlo Schmid (German Socialist), Mr. Georges Bohy (Belgium Socialist), and Mr. Robert Abdesselam (Algerian).

Support for Ukraine against Russian aggression has been strong across Europe, but it is far from uniform. An expert survey of the positions taken by political parties in 29 countries conducted mid-2023 reveals that 97 of 269 parties reject one or more of the following: providing weapons, hosting refugees, supporting Ukraine's path to European Union membership, or accepting higher energy costs. Where the perceived threat from Russia is most severe, we find the greatest levels of support for Ukraine. However, ideology appears to be far more influential. The level of a party's populist rhetoric and its European Union skepticism explain the bulk of variation in support for Ukraine despite our finding that many strongly populist and European Union-skeptical parties take moderate pro-Ukraine positions when in government.

On 1 May 2004, the European Union (EU) welcomed its new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. This paper considers to what extent one of the most widely tested and supported theories of voting behavior in Western Europe, the second-order election model, applies in the enlarged EU. We test the model using election data from the new member states and find that voters do not cast protest votes against their incumbent national governments in second-order elec tions, that is, elections where voters believe little to be at stake. This finding contradicts one of the model's basic propositions and runs counter to the empirical reality in the old member states, with potentially significant implications for inter and intra-institutional politics in the EU.

Research on member states' compliance with European Union legislation often focuses on the timing of self-reported implementation measures. It is generally assumed that the earlier a member state adopts an implementation measure the more compliant it is. This is problematic because early measures may only partially address the goals of a European Union directive. We study whether and when reporting national legislation to signal directive implementation is associated with detected non-compliance by the European Commission. We find that unless facing strong reputational costs, member states often do report pre-existing measures of low fit to a given directive without making timely adjustments. Indicating compliance problems, this generally leads to the European Commission opening infringement cases.

This research note addresses an increasingly popular topic in the EU literature, namely the measurement of policy preferences in the Council of Ministers. It aims to provide conclusions on three issues: (1) what data are in fact available from the Council, (2) how preferences are measured in other legislatures, and (3) whether these methods would be suitable for analyses of Council members' preference positions given the available data. Applying the popular scaling method NOMINATE and a Bayesian MCMC model to a data set consisting of all legislation adopted by the Council in 1999—2004, it is found that, although the two methods show similar voting patterns at the general level, the failure to report standard errors by NOMINATE in particular proves to be a severe problem when trying to identify individual governments' policy location. Conversely, the Bayesian approach provides a convincing method for analyses of Council decision records and is easily extended to include more advanced empirical information than merely the governments' decisions to support or oppose a proposal.