Studying power and influence in the European Union: Exploiting the complexity of post-Lisbon legislation with EUR-Lex
| Author | Jens Blom-Hansen |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116519851181 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Forum |
Article
Studying power and
influence in the European
Union: Exploiting
the complexity of
post-Lisbon legislation
with EUR-Lex
Jens Blom-Hansen
Department of Political Science, Aarhus University,
Aarhus, Denmark
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.
Keywords
EU politics, EUR-Lex database, legislative data, Lisbon Treaty
Corresponding author:
Jens Blom-Hansen, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Alle 7, 8000 Aarhus C,
Denmark.
Email: jbh@ps.au.dk
European Union Politics
2019, Vol. 20(4) 692–706
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116519851181
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