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Abstract
This article analyses and compares the influence of the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian Presidencies of the Council of the European Union (taking place between 2011 and 2013) on the Union's policies towards the countries of the Eastern Partnership – Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The influence of the Presidencies is compared through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which aims to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for influence to occur. The results show that there is only one necessary condition for the Presidency to exert influence, that is, the issue should be highly salient to the incumbent Member State. The absence of any other condition for influence does as such not hamper Presidency influence. Moreover, the analysis reveals three sufficient combinations of conditions for Presidency influence, in which the individual conditions play different roles. The application of QCA to Presidency influence leads to novel insights and stimulates conceptual clarity on the level of and the conditions for influence.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Hendrik Vos and Karolina Pomorska for their useful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2015.1039248
List of Interviews
Interview 1. Hungarian Permanent Representation to the EU, Brussels, 29 February 2012.
Interview 2. Hungarian Permanent Representation to the EU, Brussels, 6 March 2012.
Interview 3. EEAS, Brussels, 18 April 2012.
Interview 4. Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Budapest, 8 May 2012.
Interview 5. Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Budapest, 10 May 2012.
Interview 6. European Commission, Brussels, 16 October 2012.
Interview 7. European Commission, Brussels, 24 October 2012.
Interview 8. European Commission, Brussels, 7 November 2012.
Interview 9. European Commission, Brussels, 21 November 2012.
Interview 10. Diplomat from EU country, Vilnius, 19 March 2013.
Interview 11. Lithuanian Permanent Representation to the EU, Brussels, 19 June 2013.
Interview 12. Diplomat from EU country, Brussels, 7 July 2014.
Notes
1 The EaP, part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, is a framework for multilateral and bilateral cooperation between the EU and its Eastern neighbours: Belarus (participating only in the multilateral track), Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
2 A detailed discussion of soft vs. hard knowledge is provided in the appendix.
3 Two other conditions related to policy areas and specific issues will not be discussed: the voting method (Elgström, Citation2006; Tallberg, Citation2006a; Warntjen, Citation2007; Bunse, Citation2009) and the stage in the decision-making process (Bjurulf & Elgström, Citation2004; Tallberg, Citation2006b; Schalk et al., Citation2007; Thomson, Citation2008; Warntjen, Citation2008). These conditions have been studied in relation to EU legislation, but they are less applicable to – mostly non-legislative – EaP policies.
4 It should be noted that some issues may be included for other reasons than salience (legal obligations, input from other Member States or the EU institutions, nearly finalized dossiers that the Presidency wishes to close in order to claim credit), or underemphasized in order not to be viewed as biased or because little progress on the issue is expected.
5 In the analysis, only the policy areas in which at least one of the Presidencies was influential will be considered. As a consequence, cooperation with the EaP on issues like agriculture support for civil society cooperation is not included in the analysis. None of the Presidencies exerted influence in these areas, despite some events taking place during the different semesters. Also, outputs where Presidency influence is theoretically impossible will not be considered. Examples of such outputs are those where the incumbent country is not involved as a host, organizer or chair (e.g. activities of other EU institutions), or if PI of any actor is impossible (e.g. Cooperation Council meetings, who take stock of bilateral relations but do not decide on policy).
6 A condition is necessary if it is a superset of the outcome, that is, if the condition must be present for the outcome to occur. For a necessary condition, its membership score is consistently higher than or equal to the membership score in the outcome. The formula for necessity of condition X for outcome Y is ∑min(Xi, Yi)/∑(Yi). ‘min’ refers to the selection of the lower of the two values Xi or Yi.
7 Conditions are sufficient for the outcome if they are a subset of the outcome, that is, if the outcome is present as soon as the conditions are present. A combination of conditions is considered sufficient if the membership scores in causal paths are consistently lower than or equal to the membership scores of these cases in the outcome. The formula for sufficiency of causal path X for outcome Y is ∑min(Xi, Yi)/∑(Xi).
8 Along with some ‘traditional’ ways of operationalizing size (see infra), other operationalizations have been proposed in the literature as well (Thorhallsson & Wivel, Citation2006; Drulák & Šabič, Citation2010; Buchet de Neuilly, Citation2011). Since these overlap with other conditions for Presidency influence, these operationalizations are not applied in this article.
9 The ranking of Member States according to size based on population, voting weight, the Shapley Shubik Index (Bolus, Citation2010) or the Banzhaf Index (Bailer, Citation2006) are nearly identical.