Bargaining power in informal trilogues: Intra-institutional preference cohesion and inter-institutional bargaining success
| Author | Maximilian Haag |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165211064485 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Bargaining power in
informal trilogues:
Intra-institutional
preference cohesion and
inter-institutional
bargaining success
Maximilian Haag
Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, LMU Munich,
Munich, Germany
Abstract
Informal trilogue meetings are the main legislative bargaining forum in the European Union,
yet their dynamics remain largely understudied in a quantitative context. This article builds
on the assumption that the negotiating delegations of the European Parliament and the
Council play a two-level game whereby these actors can use their intra-institution al
constraint to extract inter-institutional bargaining success. Negotiators can credibly
claim that their hands are tied if the members of their parent institutions hold similar
preferences and do not accept alternative proposals or if their institution is divided
and negotiators need to defend a fragile compromise. Employing a measure of document
similarity (minimum edit distance) between an institution’s negotiation mandate and the
trilogue outcome to measure bargaining success, the analysis supports the hypothesis
for the European Parliament, but not for the Council.
Keywords
Bargaining, Council of Ministers (Council of the European Union), European Parliament,
informal trilogues, legislative politics
Corresponding author:
Maximilian Haag, Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, LMU Munich, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538
Munich, Germany.
Email: maximilian.haag@gsi.uni-muenchen.de
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(2) 330–350
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211064485
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
Secluded decision-making facilitating ‘early agreement’has become a defining feature of
the European Union’s (EU) policy process. In fact, informal bargaining prior to the first
reading, which takes place in the so-called trilogues attended by representatives of the
Commission, European Parliament (EP) and Council, is the main form of legislative
deliberation under the co-decision procedure (Brandsma, 2015). Yet, we know surpris-
ingly little about the dynamics of these meetings as few studies explore the determinants
of bargaining success in informal trilogues in a quantitative manner. This comes as no
surprise given the semi-transparent nature of trilogue decision-making. Information on
trilogues is often not made available proactively by the institutions but needs to be
requested. This gatekeeping of information even drew criticism amongst some of the
member states who recently expressed their worry about the ‘disconnection between
the EU’s transparency policy and citizens’expectations’(Government of Estonia, et al.
2020).
The use of informal modes of decision-making does not only give rise to concerns of
public accountability, but also presents difficulties for the study of the legislative process
in the EU. Except for resource-intensive expert interviews (e.g. König et al., 2007;
Thomson et al., 2012), researchers often lack data to systematically measure and scale
actor positions and outcomes. As a result, trilogue bargaining has long remained a
black box to scholars of legislative politics in the EU. Yet, we know that the outcomes
of trilogue bargaining systematically differ from those of formal co-decision bargaining
in many respects (Broniecki, 2020; Costello and Thomson, 2011; Cross and Hermansson,
2017; Häge and Kaeding, 2007). As the institutions do not face formal constraint when
meeting informally prior to the first reading, they enjoy more leeway and can engage in
direct negotiation over individual provisions (Cross and Hermansson, 2017). This begs
the question of how we can analyse and identify patterns of institutional bargaining
success in informal trilogues.
Drawing on bargaining theory and empirical accounts of trilogue negotiations, I argue
that negotiating delegations can be expected to be more successful in inter-institutional
bargaining if they can credibly claim that their hands are tied by the institution that
needs to approve the negotiated compromise (Putnam, 1988; Schelling, 1960). The con-
straint in this two-level game is dependent on the heterogeneity of preferences within the
parent chamber. If the members of an institution have similar preferences on an issue,
alternative proposals will not find majorities within the chamber. Similarly, in very
divided chambers, intra-institutional compromise can be fragile and leave little room
for deviation. This study thus proposes that the relationship between intra-institutional
cohesion and institutional preference attainment is curvilinear, that is, the bargaining
success of an institution is higher at both extremes of intra-institutional heterogeneity
compared to intermediate levels.
1
Using the approach employed by Laloux and Delreux (2018), this study compares the
initial bargaining positions of the co-legislating institutions, EP and Council, with the
compromise reached in trilogue negotiations using the document (dis)similarity
DocuToads minimum edit distance algorithm by Hermansson and Cross (2016) to
Haag 331
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