Spain in the European Union legislative process.

Authors

  • JAVIER ARREGUI

Keywords:

Spain, legislative success, informal power, EU decision making.

Abstract

This article analyses the relative success ratio of Spain in the legislative process of the European Union (EU) with respect to other member states such as Germany, United Kingdom, France or Italy. In our analysis, we use the most complete data set that exists about the decision making process in the EU, the DEU data set. This data set includes information about 66 legislative proposals and 162 issues or conflict dimensions that were object of bargaining and a subsequent political decision. The analysis shows that the political performance of Spain is not as good as the performance of the United Kingdom or Germany and it is somewhat superior to the performance of France or Italy. The main variable that explains the differences among these five countries refers to distinct informal capacities developed by the different member states.

Published

2008-10-15

Issue

Section

ARTICLES