IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v20y2019i4p692-706.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Studying power and influence in the European Union: Exploiting the complexity of post-Lisbon legislation with EUR-Lex

Author

Listed:
  • Jens Blom-Hansen

Abstract

The Lisbon Treaty fundamentally changed EU legislation. It introduced a new hierarchy of acts, new types of acts and new decision-making procedures. However, instead of replacing the pre-Lisbon types of acts and procedures, it added to them. The legislative landscape is therefore now more complex than before. However, to political scientists, this complexity represents new opportunities to study power and influence. But these opportunities have been under-exploited so far. The article explains the complex post-Lisbon situation and uses legislative output from the period 2012–2017 to discuss how much the various types of acts and decision procedures are used in practice. The advantages and drawbacks of the EUR-Lex database are discussed, and a guide to navigate this database is provided. The article concludes by pointing to the potential of using the full complexity of the post-Lisbon legislative landscape and the EUR-Lex database for analysing the politics of the European Union.

Suggested Citation

  • Jens Blom-Hansen, 2019. "Studying power and influence in the European Union: Exploiting the complexity of post-Lisbon legislation with EUR-Lex," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(4), pages 692-706, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:20:y:2019:i:4:p:692-706
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116519851181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116519851181
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116519851181?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:48:y:2010:i::p:811-833 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Junge, Dirk & König, Thomas & Luig, Bernd, 2015. "Legislative Gridlock and Bureaucratic Politics in the European Union," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 777-797, October.
    3. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:47:y:2009:i::p:385-409 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Michael Kaeding & Kevin M. Stack, 2015. "Legislative Scrutiny? The Political Economy and Practice of Legislative Vetoes in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(6), pages 1268-1284, November.
    5. Golub, Jonathan, 1999. "In the Shadow of the Vote? Decision Making in the European Community," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(4), pages 733-764, October.
    6. Sara Hagemann & Bjørn Høyland, 2010. "Bicameral Politics in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 811-833, September.
    7. Raya Kardasheva, 2009. "The Power to Delay: The European Parliament's Influence in the Consultation Procedure," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 385-409, March.
    8. Tsebelis, George, 1994. "The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 128-142, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karlson, Nils & Herold, Theo & Dalbard, Karl, 2022. "Ratio Working Paper No. 353: From free competition to fair competition on the European internal market," Ratio Working Papers 353, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Jonathan Golub, 2024. "EUPROPS: A new dataset on policymaking in the European Union from 1958 to 2021," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(1), pages 197-217, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karlson, Nils & Herold, Theo & Dalbard, Karl, 2022. "Ratio Working Paper No. 353: From free competition to fair competition on the European internal market," Ratio Working Papers 353, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Heike Klüver & Iñaki Sagarzazu, 2013. "Ideological congruency and decision-making speed: The effect of partisanship across European Union institutions," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 388-407, September.
    3. Adam William Chalmers, 2014. "In over their heads: Public consultation, administrative capacity and legislative duration in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(4), pages 595-613, December.
    4. Cesar Garcia Perez de Leon, 2012. "Does implicit voting matter? Coalitional bargaining in the EU legislative process," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(4), pages 513-534, December.
    5. Nikoleta Yordanova, 2011. "The European Parliament: In need of a theory," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(4), pages 597-617, December.
    6. Frank M. Häge, 2011. "The European Union Policy-Making dataset," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 455-477, September.
    7. Frank M. Häge, 2007. "Committee Decision-making in the Council of the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(3), pages 299-328, September.
    8. Christophe Crombez & Pieterjan Vangerven, 2014. "Procedural models of European Union politics: Contributions and suggestions for improvement," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 289-308, June.
    9. Thomas König & Bernd Luig, 2012. "Party ideology and legislative agendas: Estimating contextual policy positions for the study of EU decision-making," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(4), pages 604-625, December.
    10. Serra Boranbay-Akan & Thomas König & Moritz Osnabrügge, 2017. "The imperfect agenda-setter: Why do legislative proposals fail in the EU decision-making process?," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 168-187, June.
    11. Tanja Börzel, 2010. "European Governance: Negotiation and Competition in the Shadow of Hierarchy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 191-219, March.
    12. Edoardo Bressanelli & Christel Koop & Christine Reh, 2016. "The impact of informalisation: Early agreements and voting cohesion in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(1), pages 91-113, March.
    13. Abdul G. Noury & Gérard Roland, 2002. "More power to the European Parliament? [‘Nice try: Should the Treaty of Nice be ratified’?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 279-319.
    14. Mika Widgrén, 2008. "The Impact of Council's Internal Decision-Making Rules on the Future EU," Discussion Papers 26, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    15. Michal Ovádek, 2021. "Procedural Politics Revisited: Institutional Incentives and Jurisdictional Ambiguity in EU Competence Disputes," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(6), pages 1381-1399, November.
    16. Abdul G. Noury & Gérard Roland, 2002. "More power to the European Parliament? [‘Nice try: Should the Treaty of Nice be ratified’?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 279-319.
    17. Robert Inman & Daniel Rubinfeld, 2002. "Subsidiarity, governance, and EU economic policy," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 3(04), pages 3-11, October.
    18. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    19. Thomas König & Daniel Finke, 2007. "Reforming the equilibrium? Veto players and policy change in the European constitution-building process," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 153-176, June.
    20. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2011. "Strategic versus non-strategic voting power in the EU Council of Ministers: the consultation procedure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(3), pages 511-541, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:20:y:2019:i:4:p:692-706. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.