Oppositional voting in the Council of the EU between 2010 and 2019: Evidence for differentiated politicisation
| Author | Mike Farjam,Brigitte Pircher |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211004754 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Oppositional voting in
the Council of the EU
between 2010 and
2019: Evidence for
differentiated
politicisation
Brigitte Pircher
Department of Political Science, Linnaeus University, V€
axj€
o,
Sweden
Mike Farjam
European Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature,
Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Abstract
This article presents a new and previously unchartered dataset on roll call votes for all
28 member states in the Council of the EU between 2010 and 2019 and studies the
effects of politicisation on governments’ oppositional voting in the different policy
areas. We contribute to the literature with two main findings. First, our study provides
strong evidence for bottom-up politicisation, where Euroscepticism and the left-right
positions of national political parties strongly affect governments’ voting in the Council.
Second, we provide new evidence for a form of differentiated politicisation where
ideological standpoints of political parties in government and opposition have different
effects on oppositional voting in the various policy areas.
Keywords
Council of the EU, Euroscepticism, oppositional voting, policy areas, politicisation
Corresponding author:
Brigitte Pircher, Department of Political Science, Linnaeus University, Universitetsplatsen 1, 351 95 V€
axj€
o,
Sweden.
Email: brigitte.pircher@lnu.se
European Union Politics
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211004754
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
2021, Vol. 22(3) 472–494
Introduction
The European Union (EU) has been challenged and transformed by multiple crises
(a financial, economic, Eurozone, and asylum crisis) (Bickerton et al., 2015;
Lefkofridi and Schmitter, 2015; Schmitter, 2012; Vollaard, 2018). However, no
study to date has systematically explored the extent to which these crises affected
member states’ voting in the Council of the EU. Nonetheless, we can expect sig-
nificant changes. First, member states have been asymmetrically exposed to eco-
nomic stress, which has increased economic tensions and disparities (Genovese and
Schneider, 2020; Scharpf, 2015; Wasserfallen et al., 2019). Second, the crises have
enhanced two contrasting political developments that manifest themselves in the
Council. On the one hand, decision-making in the Council has long been charac-
terised by a depoliticised consensus culture (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 2006:
24, 56; Heisenberg, 2005: 67–79; Thomson, 2009: 760). On the other hand, the
crises have enhanced politicisation in the member states (de Wilde, 2011; de Wilde
and Lord, 2016; Zu
¨rn, 2016), which places pressure on governments (Bressanelli
et al., 2020) to adjust their policy position (Hagemann et al., 2017, 2019; Hobolt
and Wratil, 2020; Wratil, 2018; Wratil and Hobolt, 2019).
However, existent research provides no guidance on whether governments’
voting behaviour has changed and how potential changes in the post-Lisbon era
can be explained. This article fills this gap in the research by simultaneously esti-
mating the impact of economic-structural factors and facets of domestic politici-
sation on governments’ voting. We present a new and previously unchartered
dataset on roll call votes for all 28 member states in the Council between 2010
and 2019 to model governments’ oppositional voting (defined as votes against and
abstentions) in different policy areas. While a few studies explicitly examine how
governments’ voting differs depending on the policy (Bailer et al., 2015), variations
across a wide range of policy areas, especially in the post-Lisbon area, are under-
studied (Hosli et al., 2011: 1267).
We make two key contributions to the literature on politicisation and EU
policy-making. First, when controlling for structural economic factors relevant
to each policy area in the Council, we find strong evidence of a ‘bottom-up polit-
icisation’ (Bressanelli et al., 2020). Independent of variations in key economic
factors, our analysis reveals that the Eurosceptic and left-right positions of nation-
al political parties substantially affect governments’ voting behaviour in the
Council. Second, we provide new evidence for differentiated politicisation. We
find that political parties’ ideological standpoints in government and opposition
have different effects on oppositional voting in the various policy areas. While
governments’ Eurosceptic and left-right position primarily seem to increase oppo-
sitional voting in policy areas with wider financial implications (agriculture and
fisheries, economic and financial affairs, and the internal market), a more
Eurosceptic parliamentary opposition increases the probability that governments
will take a stance against Brussels only in the area of justice and home affairs.
473
Pircher and Farjam
To continue reading
Request your trial