The Informal Politics of Legislation: Explaining Secluded Decision-Making in the European Union

42 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2010 Last revised: 6 Sep 2010

See all articles by Christine Reh

Christine Reh

University College London

Adrienne Heritier

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods; European University Institute - Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS)

Christel Koop

King's College London

Edoardo Bressanelli

King’s College London - European and International Studies

Date Written: 2010

Abstract

This paper investigates a widespread yet understudied trend in EU politics: the de facto shift of legislative decision-making from public inclusive to informal secluded arenas, and the subsequent adoption of legislation at first reading. Since its formal introduction in 1999, “fast-track legislation” has become ever more frequent, accounting for 72% of adopted codecision files in the last parliamentary term. Our paper analyses this puzzling trend and explains under what conditions informal decision-making is likely to occur. Competing and equifinal expectations are drawn from rational choice and sociological institutionalism. Based on institutionalist delegation theory and power-based distributive bargaining, we argue that informalisation saves the transaction costs of multi-party negotiation, and hinges on a legislative act’s issue-properties. By contrast, based on sociological institutionalism, we argue that informal decision-making results from the emulation of tested decision-rules, and from socialisation into habitual procedural choice and inter-organisational cooperation. We test our hypotheses on a data set of all 797 codecision files negotiated between mid-1999 and mid-2009. First, our analysis suggests that informalisation and seclusion are systematically related to an increase in participants, legislative workload and issue complexity. These findings back a functionalist argument, emphasising the transaction costs of intra-organisational coordination and information-gathering. Second, given that even redistributive and salient acts are regularly decided informally, we find little support for a rationalist argument, stressing the role of public interest in, and political opposition to, a legislative file. Finally, we find strong evidence for the impact of the time fast-track legislation has been in use. This finding confirms the sociological expectation that links informal and secluded decision-making to local positive feedback at the intra-organisational level, and to sustained cooperation at the inter-organisational level.

Keywords: European Union, informal decision-making, seclusion, codecision

Suggested Citation

Reh, Christine and Heritier, Adrienne and Heritier, Adrienne and Koop, Christel and Bressanelli, Edoardo, The Informal Politics of Legislation: Explaining Secluded Decision-Making in the European Union (2010). APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1642265

Christine Reh (Contact Author)

University College London ( email )

Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Adrienne Heritier

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ( email )

Poppelsdorfer Allee 45
Common Goods: Law, Politics and Economics
D-53115 Bonn
Germany
+049(0)228 914160 (Phone)
+049(0)228 9141655 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.mpp-rdg.mpg.de/herit.html

European University Institute - Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS)

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50016 San Domenico di Fiesole
Florence, Florence 50014
Italy

Christel Koop

King's College London ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Edoardo Bressanelli

King’s College London - European and International Studies ( email )

Virginia Woolf Building
22 Kingsway
London, WC2B 6NR
United Kingdom

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