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External differentiation refers to the various relationships the EU has with neighbouring countries with which it has a formal agreement. There is a general principle that the more access associated countries have to the EU Single Market, the more regulatory alignment they must accept. There is, however, no standard formula for achieving this. The only standardised arrangement is the European Economic Area and even that varies in detail for the individual states. Otherwise the arrangements differ according to concerns about sovereignty, sectoral interests, regulatory styles, power politics and the salience of particular issues and the overall trajectory of associated states towards or away from the EU. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

According to the Interlaken principles, relations with third countries should not slow down the process of integration; compromise the EU’s decision-making autonomy; or share power with non-members. Access to the benefits of the EU Internal Market is conditional, with partner states expected to assume key elements of the acquis communautaire. In practice, there is not a linear relationship. The EU prefers structured, institutionalised arrangements conforming to existing models and encompassing all aspects of the relationship. Yet the existing models themselves, including those in Michel Barnier’s ‘ladder’ are themselves the product of ad hoc deals and often far from comprehensive. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a “softer” or “harder” direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical “package deals”. This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. We also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Electoral reform creates new strategic coordination incentives for voters, but these effects are difficult to isolate. We identify how the reform of the Norwegian electoral system in 1919, when single-member districts (SMDs) were replaced with multi- member proportional representation (PR), shaped voter behavior. Our dataset allows us to measure vote-shares of parties in the pre-reform SMDs and in the same geographic units in the post-reform multi-member districts. The electoral reform had an immediate effect on the fragmentation of the party system in Norway, due in part to strategic party entry. We find, though, that another main effect of the reform was that many voters switched between existing parties, particularly between the Liberals and Conservatives, as the incentives for these voters to coordinate against Labor were removed by the introduction of PR. This has implications for how we understand electoral reform, particularly in the early part of the 20th century.

La crisis económica de la Eurozona, el marco político y los resultados de las elecciones en Reino Unido con la victoria del No a la Unión Europea son algunos de los temas tratados. The economic crisis in the Eurozone, the political framework and the results of the elections in the United Kingdom with the victory of the No to the European Union are some of the topics discussed.

We develop a game-theoretical model of European Union (EU) policy making which suggests that the amount of legislative activity depends on the size of the gridlock interval, consistent with Krehbiel’s (1998) study of US politics. This interval depends on two factors: (1) the preference configuration of the political actors; and (2) the legislative procedures in a particular period. Actors’ preferences and the procedures are not expected to have any effect beyond their impact on the gridlock interval. We predict smaller gridlock intervals, and thus more legislative activity, under the codecision (consultation) procedure when the pivotal member states and the European Parliament (Commission) are closer to each other. Furthermore, we expect more activity under qualified majority voting in the EU Council than under unanimity. We find empirical support for these propositions in an empirical analysis of EU legislative activity between 1979 and 2009. ispartof: FEB Research Report MSI_1226 nrpages: 36 status: published

This article examines the making of monetary policy in the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2008 by analysing voting behaviour in the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It provides a new set of measures for the monetary policy preferences of individual MPC members by estimating a Bayesian item response model. The article demonstrates the usefulness of these measures by comparing the ideal points of outgoing MPC members with their successors and by looking at changes over time in the median ideal point on the MPC. The analysis indicates that the British Government has been able to move the position of the median voter on the MPC through its appointments to the Committee. This highlights the importance of central bank appointments for monetary policy.

Can electoral rules be designed to achieve political ideals such as accurate representation of voter preferences, accountable governments, and strong economic performance? The academic literature commonly divides electoral systems into two types, majoritarian and proportional, and asserts that the choice between these implies a straightforward trade-off by which having more of an ideal that a majoritarian system provides implies less of something that PR delivers in equal measure. We posit that these trade-offs are better characterized as non-linear and that one can gain most of the advantages attributed to PR, while sacrificing less of those attributed to majoritarian elections, by maintaining district magnitudes in the low to moderate range. We test this intuition against data from 610 election outcomes in 81 countries between 1945 and 2006. Electoral systems that use low-magnitude multi-member districts produce disproportionality indices almost on par with those of pure PR systems while limiting party system fragmentation, producing simpler government coalitions, and surpassing both majoritarian and pure PR systems on some indicators of government performance.

This paper examines the making of UK monetary policy between 1997 and 2007 using an analysis of voting behaviour in the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). We use a Bayesian method to estimate the interest rate policy preferences of the MPC members on a ‘dove-hawk’ scale. Then, by comparing the ‘ideal points’ of outgoing members with their successors, we find evidence that MPC composition complements the fiscal policies pursued by the government. The revealed preferences of the MPC members suggest three distinct groups; ‘the doves’, who favour lower interest rates than the median committee member; ‘the centrists’, whose revealed preferences are in line with the median committee member; and ‘the hawks’, who favour higher interest rates than the median committee member. Our analysis suggests that the ‘opposition’ to the centrist group changes from the doves to the hawks as the spending policies of the government ceased to be constrained by the 1997 electoral promise to maintain conservative spending plans.

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The study of European Union (EU) politics has matured in important ways in the past two decades. In place of the grand yet vague focus on the study of European integration writ large, scholars have increasingly organized themselves into research communities focusing on particular aspects of European Union governance. With this specialization, scholars in each community have advanced towards agreement on definitions and conceptual characterizations. These ground rules are essential to the collective research enterprise and the advancement of knowledge. However, we are concerned that this advancement is retarded unnecessarily by the dearth of public and systematically collected data on EU politics. In short, such data are essential if the field endeavours to move toward normal science. It is our opinion that too little attention has been given to disseminating information about available data and, more fundamentally, to the collection of such data. In this essay, we argue that the cumulation of knowledge in the study of European Union politics depends crucially on expanding the amount of public systematic data. We then describe the data currently available a broad range of research communities. In so doing, we hope this provides an effective means of disseminating information about available data. We intend to provide a continuously updated list of such data sets our journal website. Finally, we describe an agenda for future data collection, focusing on a variety of areas in which data are particularly scarce.

Starting from the assumption that the EU can be analysed as a comparative political system, Simon Hix draws on basic considerations of comparative constitution for a 'multi-ethnic, continental-scale political system' (Lijhart) two basic issues have to be addresses: the vertical design, i.e. the power relations between the centre and the states (allocation, separation/fusion of policy competences, resolution of competence disputes) and the horizontal dimension, i.e. the representation in and accountability of the central institutions (executive-legislative relations, organisation of representation and decision-making, selection of legislature and executive). Reaching the conclusion that the Treaty of Nice has led to a growing centralisation of policy competences and to increasingly fused majorities for selecting executive power and for enacting legislation, Hix stresses two major questions to be addressed by the newly launched 'Constitutional Convention': should there be fused/centralised or separated/judicialised institutions and should these institutions be majoritarian or allow for multiple-veto-players and divided government?

Discusses the issue of accountability. Argues that the holders of political power in the EU institutions must be made more accountable. The so‐called ‘permissive consensus’, in which Europe's leaders can build a European polity without requiring a priori consent from their voters, no longer exists. The challenge for the EU institutions is that a central element of the practice of democracy in all political systems is the ability of citizens to ‘throw out’ the holders of executive office through the process of competitive elections. The EU has, however, a ‘dual executive’. On the one hand, national governments possess long‐term executive power; on the other hand, in the everyday making of EU social and economic policies, the EU Commission exercises considerable executive power. In the exercise of these powers, moreover, whereas the Council is a true ‘collegial executive’ with a rotating president, the Commission is more like a national cabinet, where the Commission President is the primus inter pares, the ‘first among equals’. Prior to the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties, neither of these branches of the dual EU executive was accountable via the classic indirect or direct methods. In concluding, the chapter suggests that the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties have increased the democratic accountability of at least one part of the EU executive. However, critical questions remain to be addressed, e.g. has this quasi‐parliamentary model of EU executive selection really allowed Europe's voters to choose the EU executive? Can European citizens throw out the Commission President? Or is more fundamental institutional reform needed?

Hix (European and comparative politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) presents an introduction to the political system of the European Union. Assessing a variety of explanatory theoretical models, he describes the organization and operation of executive, legislative, and judicial governance. He then offers separate chapters analyzing the influence of public opinion, parties and elections, and interest representation on EU politics. Finally, he looks at the formation of policy in the areas of market regulation, expenditures, economic and monetary union, citizen freedom and security policies, and foreign policy.

Defence date: 1 December 1995 Examining Board: Prof. Maurizio Cotta, Università degli Studi di Siena, Supervisor ; Prof. Giandomenico Majone, EUI, co-supervisor ; Prof. Peter Mair, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden ; Prof. Roger Morgan, EUI ; Prof. Alberta Sbragia, University of Pittsburgh First made available online: 5 August 2016 Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of the limitations of the traditional approaches to parties and politics in the EU, and introduces an alternative framework which combines the theory and method of ‘comparative politics’. In Chapter 2, the two theoretical levels are brought together in a “comparative politics theory of parties in the European Union”. This theory is subsequently tested in three empirical chapters, each covering a different aspect of party federation behaviour in the EU: party organisational development (Chapter 3); the changing shape of party policy competition (Chapter 4); and the ability of parties to reap policy rewards from the European Council (Chapter 5). A description of the data and the methods used in the analysis is set out in a series of Appendices. Finally, the empirical and theoretical conclusions of the research are drawn together in Chapter 6.