Between Power and Luck
| Author | Torsten J. Selck,Bernard Steunenberg |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116504040444 |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
02 040444 (to/d) 9/1/04 11:25 am Page 25
European Union Politics
Between Power and Luck
DOI: 10.1177/1465116504040444
Volume 5 (1): 25–46
The European Parliament in the EU
Copyright© 2004
Legislative Process
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
Torsten J. Selck
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Bernard Steunenberg
Leiden University, The Netherlands
A B S T R A C T
Taking Barry’s (1980a,b) question ‘Is it better to be powerful
or lucky?’ as a starting point, we try to answer the question
of how influential the European Parliament is in the Euro-
pean Union (EU) legislative process. We assess the proxim-
ity between what the Parliament wants and what it
eventually gets and whether this is the result of its own
power or the similarity between its position and the
positions of other EU actors. The empirical analysis uses
different models of legislative decision-making and shows
that the European Parliament has been rather influential
under co-decision and it has been ‘lucky’ for most legislation
negotiated under the consultation procedure. Differentiating
between capabilities and preferences, and therefore
between ‘power’ and ‘luck’, remains crucial in explaining
political outcomes.
K E Y W O R D S
European Parliament
legislative decision-
making
policy success
procedural models
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European Union Politics 5(1)
Introduction
What is the impact of the European Parliament on EU legislative decision-
making? The views on this issue differ because the power of the Parliament
also depends on the authority it has under the various legislative procedures.
Whereas some of these procedures do not require any involvement on behalf
of the Parliament (legislation is based on a decision by the Council of Minis-
ters prepared by the Commission), others require that the Parliament has to
be offered the possibility of advice (the consultation procedure), consent
(assent procedure) or amendments and direct negotiations with the Council
in the event that the views of the Parliament and the Council differ (co-
decision procedure). In his work on the cooperation procedure – the prede-
cessor of the co-decision procedure – Tsebelis (1994) suggests that the
Parliament has a rather substantial impact on the possible outcome because
it can release favourable amendments to a qualified majority of Council
members. Since Council members can change a proposal only by unanimity,
introducing amendments provides the Parliament with ‘conditional’ agenda
power. Tsebelis’s view has been challenged in several articles, indicating that
he does not take account of the Commission, which has the monopoly right
of initiative in most EU legislative procedures as well as the possibility of
ignoring the Parliament’s amendments by not including them in a revised
position (see Steunenberg, 1994; Crombez, 1996; Moser, 1997). Similarly, the
importance of the Parliament in the co-decision procedure is debated: some
argue that it has lost some of its power in comparison with the cooperation
procedure (Tsebelis, 1997; Tsebelis and Garrett, 2000), whereas others claim
that this procedure has increased the Parliament’s ability to affect EU policy
(Crombez, 2000; Steunenberg, 2000; Corbett, 2000, 2001).
In this article, we aim to address this discussion on the role of the Parlia-
ment in the European Union by focusing on actual decisions made by the
European Union. An empirical analysis of the influence of different actors
carries the risk that the possible ‘power in action’ is confused with its prefer-
ences. Whenever an actor is known to prefer an outcome that appears to be the
actual outcome of a decision-making process, it is not clear whether this is the
result of this actor’s abilities or the coincidence that this actor took this position
at the right moment. As suggested by Barry (1980a,b), we need to distinguish
between decisiveness and luck in any analysis of decision-making. Decisiveness
refers to the impact an actor has on the outcome, which is the combined result
of the actor’s preferences and capabilities. Luck reflects coincidence, which is
basically masked by the actor’s preferences. If the Parliament is advocating a
policy that is eventually set by the Council, it is not clear whether this is due
to the Parliament’s role in the decision-making process or to luck.
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Selck and Steunenberg
Between Power and Luck
2 7
To distinguish between decisiveness and luck, we will base our empiri-
cal analysis in this article on explanatory models of EU decision-making. By
making explicit the mechanism according to which the Parliament may affect
the outcomes of EU decision-making, we are able to point to the possible
cause that induced the outcome to be close to the preferred position of the
Parliament or any of the other legislative actors. Knowing this cause, the simi-
larity between an actor’s preference and the actual outcome of legislative
decision-making can be interpreted in terms of decisiveness. However, if this
cause is not known or is absent, there is no reason to assume that this actor
has been decisive. He or she is lucky, a situation that may change if circum-
stances in future decision-making processes differ.
The data set for this analysis is based on the Decision-Making in the
European Union (DEU) project, which is more extensively discussed by
Stokman and Thomson in this issue. The empirical information relates to 62
legislative proposals negotiated by the EU. Furthermore, the cases refer to
consultation and the current co-decision procedure. In addition, the Council
discussed these cases in the period from January 1999 to December 2000.
The article is structured as follows. After a discussion of the different
views of the Parliament’s role in the EU legislative process, we evaluate the
proximity of the European Union’s political actors to the legislative outcome.
We discuss and test different explanatory models of EU decision-making that
have been developed in the literature. The models are based on the spatial
theory of voting and on sequential games. They provide different specifi-
cations of the possible interactions between the main legislative actors in the
Union. Finally, we discuss the results of our empirical tests.
Views on the Parliament’s legislative abilities
To understand the power of the European Parliament in the EU legislative
process, different models have been put forward that focus on a stylized
representation of decision-making. There has been a substantial discussion of
the Parliament’s role in the cooperation procedure, which is relevant here
even though the cooperation procedure has been largely replaced by co-
decision and is not analysed empirically in our article. Tsebelis’s model (1994)
of the cooperation procedure attributes substantial power to the Parliament,
which is a result of the Parliament’s possibility of submitting a ‘take-it-or-
leave-it’ proposal to the Council. Applying a different sequence of play, Moser
(1996) contests Tsebelis’s claim.1 He concludes that the Parliament’s power is
much more limited, stressing that the Parliament has to act on a proposal of
the Commission, whereas the Commission decides whether or not to include
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European Union Politics 5(1)
the Parliament’s amendments in its revised proposal. In Moser’s view, the
Commission, rather than the Parliament, plays a much more important role
in the decision-making process. This controversy illustrates that different
game-theoretical designs may result in different conclusions regarding the
relative capabilities of the Union’s legislative actors.
Although the differences in modelling for the new version of co-decision
are less pronounced than they are for the cooperation procedure, distinctions
remain.2 Contrary to most observers, Garrett (1995), Tsebelis (1997) and
Tsebelis and Garrett (2000) suggest that the EP in effect lost decision-making
power with the move from the cooperation to the co-decision procedure. They
argue that, whereas the Parliament had the authority to set the legislative
agenda under the cooperation procedure, the new procedure stripped the
Parliament of this power, replacing it with mere veto power. Tsebelis (1997:
29) states that the Parliament’s ‘ability to influence policy decisions (through
conditional agenda setting introduced by the cooperation procedure) is
reduced’. Crombez (2000b: 366) criticizes this claim and argues that ‘the
consecutive institutional reforms are moving the EU towards a genuinely
bicameral system’; that is, the Parliament gained control with each new treaty.
Corbett (2000: 377) states that ‘the statistics . . . imply that Parliament’s influ-
ence on legislation is greater under co-decision than under the cooperation
procedure’. Scully (1997b: 101) finds that ‘evidence from models of legislative
bargaining and available empirical data reject the idea that the co-operation
procedure places the EP in a more advantageous position than co-decision’.
He regards the formal model of the co-decision procedure offered by Tsebelis
and Garrett (1997a: 59) to be ‘incomplete and seriously flawed’ and concludes
that the procedure ‘enhances the EP’s power relative to the other EU govern-
ing institutions’.
To shed light on the empirical veracity of the competing theoretical claims
on the power of the EP, a number of empirical studies that try to assess the
Parliament’s ability to influence policy on the EU level have been put forward.
On the one hand are case studies that...
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