An experimental investigation of legislative procedures in the EU: Essay one: Consultation vs. cooperation. Essay two: New procedure vs. consultation and cooperation

Caryn Marie Vazzana, Purdue University

Abstract

This study considers two of the legislative procedures in the European Union, the Consultation and Cooperation procedures, tests a theoretical model representing these procedures, and considers the issues of influence and efficiency within the EU's legislative procedures experimentally. In this work the basic model of Steunenberg (1994) and Crombez (1996, 1997) was converted into an experimental framework which could test their predictions by replicating the basic features of the legislative procedures using committees representing the Commission, Council and EP. The data suggest that the predictions of Steunenberg (1994), Crombez (1996, 1997), and Moser (1996), SCM, are robust for certain configurations, that is, where the committees' positions are on opposite sides of status quo, where the committee itself is split by status quo or where the committees' are in general agreement. The study also finds that the SCM predictions significantly underpredict the efficiency of the committee representing the Council and overpredict the efficiency of the committee representing the Commission. This implies that the theory in the literature attributes too much power to the Commission and too little to the Council. In addition to the predictions of SCM, several alternate theoretical predictions were considered. The differing prediction of Tsebelis (1994, 1996) is generally found to outperform the SCM prediction when they differ. Evidence also suggests that if Committee B has a group interested nature, that the prediction of Committee B's optimal point may be more accurate. The study finds that unlike the theoretical prediction the status quo is not significantly more frequent in the Cooperation procedure as compared to the Consultation procedure. In addition to an evaluation of the Consultation and Cooperation Procedures, a new process was designed which significantly reduced the frequency of status quo versus the Consultation and Cooperation Procedures. Statistical tests were unable to confirm the theoretical predictions that a certain subset of configurations gives more power to the committees representing the EP and the Commission. For the New process no particular configuration or set of configurations is strongly robust in achieving the predicted outcome.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Pomery, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Economics

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