A new dataset on decision-making in the European Union before and after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements (DEUII)

Abstract

We present a new dataset on decision-making in the European Union (DEUII) that revises and expands a previous dataset. Researchers are using this new dataset to address a range of research questions regarding the inputs, processes and outputs of the EU's legislative system. The dataset contains information on 331 controversial issues raised by 125 legislative proposals that were introduced between 1996 and 2008. For each of these controversial issues, the dataset identifies the policy alternative favoured most by each of the main political actors: the European Commission; the European Parliament; and each of the member states' representatives in the Council of Ministers. This information was assembled during 349 semi-structured interviews with key informants. This article describes the dataset and identifies its relevance to several research agendas in EU studies.

Keywords:

• European Union
• legislative politics
• policy positions
• dataset

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank those who participated in the EU-15 project on which our work builds: Christopher Achen; Stefanie Bailer; Vincent Boekhoorn; Madeleine Hosli; Thomas König; Antti Pajala; Gerald Schneider; Torsten Selck; Frans Stokman; Bernard Steunenberg; Adrian Van Deemen; and the late Mika Widgrén. We ask that researchers who use the dataset presented here cite Thomson et al. (2006) as well as the present article to acknowledge their important contribution. We thank Manuel Schmitz and Caroline Rosenthal for research assistance and the hundreds of policy-makers in Brussels whom we interviewed. The dataset and relevant documentation are available at http://www.robertthomson.info/; http://www.upf.edu/dcpis/en/pdi/professorat/jam.html; and http://www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/leuffen/.

Notes

We did not simply append the new data to the EU-15 data. We added observations regarding decision outcomes that were pending at the time of the previous study and corrected some errors we found in the previous dataset. A total of 56 issues that were in the first version of the DEU dataset, which consisted of 174 issues, were changed in some way. Most of these changes were small, such as changing the direction of the scales so that higher values represented more harmonization or regulation wherever possible. Full details of the changes are available in the documentation accompanying the dataset.

Since our respondents provided information about other actors' policy positions as well as their own, they may be referred to as ‘proxy respondents’. This type of respondent is common in health research.

In the EU-15 period a maximum of 17 actors could have taken positions (the 15 member states plus the Commission and EP). On the 173 issues in the dataset from the EU-15 period, an average of 15.54 actors took positions. In the EU-25 period, the average number of actors with positions was 20.80 (41 issues). In the EU-27 period, the average number of actors with positions was 23.18 (117 issues).

These criticisms were mostly encountered through informal sources, such as at conferences, or in anonymous reviews of papers that later became published articles, and thus are not listed in the references. We thank the colleagues who raised these points for their thoughtful engagement with the dataset.