doi: 10.1111/padm.12071
AN INFORMATION PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE
ON DECISION MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
FALK DAVITER
Two decades after the introduction of the punctuated equilibrium model, information processing
theory now offers one of the most comprehensive analytical perspectives on decision making in
public administration and policy research. This article applies information processing analysis to
the decision making process in the European Union (EU). Towards this end, the article inquires into
the organizational foundations of information processing at successive levels of administrative and
legislative decision making and shows how this analytical perspective can be used to gain a better
understanding of policy dynamics at the supranational level. The article argues that information
processing in the EU is likely to produce distinct policy dynamics in key respects. It identifies
promising avenues for future research and discusses some of the issues this evolving theoretical
framework should address in order to allow for a more comprehensive exploration of this analytical
perspective in the context of the EU.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past two decades, the punctuated equilibrium model developed by Baumgartner
and Jones (1991, 1993) has become widely recognized as a core contribution to theories of
the policy process (e.g. Sabatier 2007; Eller and Krutz 2009). While interest in the model
developed into a major comparative research project (see Baumgartner et al. 2006, 2009,
2011), parallel work has been directed at exploring the behavioural and organizational
foundations of this analytical perspective more extensively (Jones 1994a, 1994b, 2001, 2002,
2003; Jones and Baumgartner 2005). As a result, ‘what once was punctuated equilibrium . . .
has since developed into a full theory of government information processing’ (Workman
et al. 2009, p. 75; see also Jones and Baumgartner 2005; True et al. 2007).
Information processing theory now offers one of the most comprehensive analytical
perspectives on decision making in public administration and policy research. The
central contention of this theory is that policy dynamics are crucially influenced by the
way a ‘complex set of institutions and policymaking arrangements filters, blocks, and
occasionally amplifies’ (Workman et al. 2009, p. 76) information in the political decision
making process. This analytical perspective allows researchers to explore both outcome
predictions, such as the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, as well as the underlying
processes on the organizational level of political decision making (see Jones et al. 2006, p.
57). While comparative research confirms that ‘policy agendas are invariably punctuated’
(Baumgartner et al. 2009, p. 616), these contributions have also highlighted the fact that the
‘paths of policy development can be highly varied’ (True et al. 2007, p. 174). The resulting
interest in the organizational foundations of policy making most recently led the authors
of this theory to call for more in-depth analysis of information processing dynamics at
different levels of administrative and legislative decision making to assess ‘whether the
processes we postulate are indeed at work in generating the outcomes that we document’
(Jones and Baumgartner 2012, p. 14; see also Jones 2002, pp. 278–79; 2003, pp. 402–03).
This article applies information processing theory to the decision making process in
the European Union (EU). The main interest of this article is to show how an information
Falk Daviter is at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, Germany.
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processing perspective can be used to gain a better understanding of how EU decision
making structures influence policy dynamics at the supranational level. Towards this
end, the article inquires into the organizational foundations of information processing
at successive levels of administrative and legislative EU decision making and derives
some initial theoretical expectations about information processing effects in the specific
context of supranational politics in the EU. The analysis draws on a wide range of recent
contributions from the broader field of EU studies. This research has produced a new
wealth of empirical insights into how the administrative and legislative organization of
the EU affects the processing of policy issues at different levels of EU decision making.
Based on these insights, the article argues that information processing in the EU is likely
to produce rather distinct policy dynamics in key respects. In contrast to traditional notions
of policy punctuation, the structural design of EU decision making appears to promote
patterns of policy change that are more disjointed and fragmented. The discussion locates
the information processing perspective in the context of broader debates about EU policy
development, identifies some of the most promising avenues of future research, and
shows that some aspects of information processing analysis require further theoretical
specification in order to allow for a more comprehensive exploration of this perspective in
the context of the EU. The next section introduces the key tenets of information processing
theory, specifies the levels of analysis, and develops the main points of theoretical interest.
INFORMATION PROCESSING ANALYSIS
Following Herbert Simon’s analysis of bounded rationality in individual and organizational decision making (e.g. Simon 1983, 1985, 1987, 1995), students of information
processing see politics as subject to the same defects and dynamics that structure human
information processing more generally. Chief among them, as Bendor (2001, p. 1306)
summarizes, are issues concerning decision making under complexity. Because ‘objective
environments always contain far more information than we can perceive or attend to’, utilization of information in politics is highly selective. How policy making systems process
and prioritize information is therefore critical. Most issues are processed in parallel most
of the time. Parallel processing involves decentralization and delegation of authority to
specialized units of governments. This allows policy making systems to deal with large
amounts of information simultaneously. At the same time, the ability of governments
to respond through decentralization and delegation also means that the total system of
decisions is fragmented ‘into relatively independent subsystems, each one of which can
be designed with only minimal concern for its interactions with the others’ (Simon 1973,
p. 270).
When policy issues become more salient, however, or when political attention shifts
so as to highlight previously ignored dimensions of an issue, the established patterns
of information processing can become contested. This often paves the way for a more
comprehensive reorganization of decision making rules and responsibilities. Policy assignments shift from one institutional venue of decision making to another and different types
and sources of information gain access to the policy process (Baumgartner and Jones
1993, p. 16). In such cases, parallel processing is disrupted by a ‘serial policy shift’ (Jones
1994a, pp. 180–89; 1994b, pp. 158–59). In contrast to parallel information processing, serial
processing offers possibilities of conflict expansion, issue reframing, and venue shifts (e.g.
Baumgartner et al. 2006, p. 961). While information processing theory contends that shifts
between parallel and serial processing are a universal characteristic of the policy process,
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the organizational design of each policy making system affects how information flows
translate into systemic policy change. ‘Disruptive dynamics are a function of how political
systems process information’ (Baumgartner and Jones 2009, p. 288).
To gain a better understanding of how information processing in the EU affects
supranational policy dynamics, the article looks at successive levels of EU decision
making. Because information typically flows upward in the policy process (Workman
et al. 2009, p. 87), the discussion begins by looking at the decentralized processing of
policy information at the subsystem level. It then turns to the question of how the
specific design of the institutional venues of EU decision making and the nature of
jurisdictional competition in the legislative arena structure the way in which policy
information generated at the subsystem level affects policy change at the systemic level
of the EU. The last part of the article discusses how the increasing information processing
demands in the EU can be linked to the rise of informal venues of decision making at
the systemic level of the policy making system. The conclusions summarize the empirical
evidence and discuss the main theoretical implications.
THE SUBSYSTEM LEVEL OF EU POLITICS
As Jochim and May (2010, p. 308) summarize, policy subsystems structure political conflicts by limiting entrants and debate. In theorizing the effects of subsystem arrangements,
information processing theory initially emphasized policy monopolies, a particularly
strong type of subsystem. Policy monopolies are characterized by a common perception
of the policy problem. In addition, ‘a definable institutional structure is responsible for
policymaking, and that structure limits access to the policy process’ (Baumgartner and
Jones 1993, p. 7). This type of subsystem organization ‘directs attention toward a small
set of the potentially relevant attributes of any given issue’ (Workman et al. 2009, p. 79)
and produces the low-information environments typically associated with incremental
political change.
As this research agenda became more comparative in focus, students of information
processing began to inquire more systematically into how variable features of subsystem organization affect information processing and policy dynamics. This research, for
example, shows that different types of subsystem organization can increase or reduce
the likelihood of conflict expansion and policy disruption (Worsham 1998; Mortensen
2007), and that different types of subsystems are more or less effective in institutionalizing
attention in the political process (Green-Pedersen and Wolfe 2009). The next section discusses how EU research informs our understanding of how the organization of subsystem
politics in the EU affects the flow of policy information at the supranational level.
In the case of the EU, the decentralized processing of functionally separate issues in
highly specialized policy subsystems is one of the most prevalent approaches to policy
formulation. The Commission in particular, as Gornitzka and Sverdrup (2011, p. 65)
emphasize, ‘factors its decision problems into sub-problems and assigns the sub-problems
to sub-units’. This strategy finds its most visible expression in the EU’s sprawling system
of advisory committees. A recent count put the number of expert committees that assist
the Commission in the drafting of EU legislation at 1,237 (Gornitzka and Sverdrup 2011,
p. 50; see Larsson and Trondal 2006, p. 19 for similar numbers). Parallel processing as
‘characterized by delegation to experts and issue specialists’ (Workman et al. 2009, p. 79)
is hence a ubiquitous feature of EU decision making.
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Somewhat counterintuitively, however, the proliferation of the committee system in
the EU has meant in practice that individual committees have lost their ability to
limit entrants and debate. In many areas of EU policy making, ‘it is not unusual to
find a whole mosaic of expert groups . . . all working on the same issues’, Larsson
and Trondal (2006, p. 30) note. ‘Hardly any committee’, van Schendelen (2006, p. 30)
concurs, ‘has a real monopoly status anymore’. As overlap or outright duplication of
responsibilities has become more frequent, existing policy subsystems have turned more
volatile and competitive. Quantitative studies of interest group organization at the EU
level equally corroborate the claim that participation of non-governmental experts in
EU policy formulation is unusually ephemeral. The supranational interest community,
as Berkhout and Lowery (2011, p. 12) summarize the findings of a recent study, ‘is
one in which interest organizations come and go before both the Commission and the
Parliament’.
In addition to the fact that policy subsystems are increasingly overlapping and unstable,
recent studies emphasize that the membership of EU committees is often extremely
heterogeneous. Gornitzka and Sverdrup (2011, p. 64), for example, show that groups with
traditionally adversarial views and interests often appear together with their ‘significant
others’ in the same committee. Further underscoring the EU’s propensity to increase
rather than reduce the influx of information at the subsystem level, the Commission has
been shown to be ‘quite open to new interest organizations, including representatives
of emergent interests’ (Berkhout and Lowery 2011, p. 13). Instead of delimiting entrance
and policy debates, Larsson and Trondal (2006, p. 30) conclude that ‘the sheer number,
complexity and opacity of the committee system’ has become a major source of ambiguity
in the EU decision making process.
Few subsystems appear capable of structuring the flow of issues and information in
their respective areas, either because they lack monopoly status in a sufficiently broad area
of policy or because membership is so fluid and heterogeneous that no single dominant
coalition gains lasting control over the issues. Instead, van Schendelen (2006, p. 30)
argues, the Commission’s chef de dossier is left with substantial discretionary power and
‘can shop for information and support from one expert committee to another’. In more
general terms, this research perspective highlights how the informational demands of EU
decision makers affect interest groups’ activity and organization rather than perceiving
of EU lobbying as exogenous causes of supranational policy development (e.g. Broscheid
and Coen 2007).
The findings discussed in this section imply that in many sectors of the EU, the autonomy
and stability of policy arrangements at the subsystem level are comparatively weak, and
that their ability to filter information during the early phase of the EU policy process
is structurally and temporally limited. In contrast to subsystem politics characterized
by clearly delimited authority and stable coalitions of like-minded actors, the EU seems
more likely to produce the type of subsystems Worsham (1998) classifies as transitory and
competitive. Worsham’s (1998, p. 489) concept of ‘subsystem purgatory, with would-be
dominant interests waiting for the opportunity to take control or slip into oblivion’
aptly captures the organizational dynamics of EU subsystem politics as well. As Larsson
and Trondal (2006, pp. 29–30) point out, ‘substantial changes in the organisation and
character’ of committees are common, expert groups can lose their function ‘almost at a
moment’s notice in a truly fascinating way’, while other groups may simply ‘fade from
the scene’. This type of policy subsystem, Worsham (1998, p. 508) argues, has a much less
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definitive effect on subsequent policy dynamics and is more likely to produce a ‘wavering
equilibrium’.
In sum, due to shifting subsystem boundaries, changing mandates, diverse membership, fluid participation, and overcrowding, subsystem arrangements in many areas
of EU policy appear ill-structured to exert a lasting and independent grip on policy
developments, or to produce the stable patterns of parallel information processing that
information processing theorists commonly associate with the subsystem level. While
policy monopolies may exist in individual sectors of EU politics, at least for limited
periods of time, they appear less prevalent in the EU than in other policy making systems.
Based on available findings, the general notion that ‘subsystem politics is the politics of
equilibrium’ (True et al. 2007, p. 162) clearly does not extend to all areas of EU policy
making at all times. As Baumgartner and Jones (2009, p. 272) emphasize, Worsham’s
(1998) work therefore offers ‘an important extension of punctuated equilibrium theory’
by drawing attention to the diversity of subsystem arrangements and their propensity to
change over time.
These theoretical advances allow students of the EU to inquire more systematically into
the varying effects of different types of subsystem organization on policy processing and
change. In contrast to the more specific focus on stable patterns of ‘duelling megacoalitions’
(Baumgartner and Jones 2009, p. 272) that characterizes research of subsystem politics
influenced by the literature on advocacy coalitions, recent extensions of information
processing theory provide the basis for a conceptually richer and empirically more
accurate understanding of the organizational volatility of EU subsystem politics. As a
result, information processing theory faces fewer problems incorporating the growing
evidence of issue-specific alliances and ad hoc coalitions in EU decision making that have
hampered attempts at applying alternative models of the policy process to the case of the
EU (see Rozbicka 2013 for a critical review).
At the same time, information processing theory provides fully developed arguments
concerning the factors that influence whether and how policy disruption at the subsystem level translates into systemic policy change. From this perspective, organizational
volatility at the EU subsystem level points towards a comparatively unfettered influx of
inconsistent and competing information during the initial phase of policy formulation.
The main question thus becomes how easily ‘wavering equilibria’ at the subsystem level
translate into venue shifts and policy change as information travels upwards. To answer
this question, the focus shifts from the subsystem level to the institutional venues that
structure legislative decision making. The following section addresses the role of institutional venues in EU policy making in more detail. It argues that the initial openness and
fluidity of EU policy making contrasts in important ways with a more constrained and
fragmented decision making structure at the subsequent level of policy processing. Based
on these findings, the next section develops theoretical arguments why policy disruptions
at the subsystem level of the EU often fail to translate into large-scale policy punctuations.
INSTITUTIONAL VENUES IN EU LEGISLATIVE DECISION MAKING
The assignment of policy issues to institutional venues of decision making is at the centre
of the information processing argument concerning stability and change in the policy
process. As Baumgartner (2007, p. 484) summarizes, ‘venue assignments play a key role
both in establishing the structures that create the policy equilibria for most issues most of
the time, and in facilitating occasional dramatic changes when the structures fall apart or
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are replaced by others’. A key tenet of this argument is that policy making institutions are
themselves ‘fundamentally endogenous to the policy process’ (Baumgartner and Jones
2002, p. 4). Decision making structures, issue assignments, and jurisdictional boundaries
all change over time, partially in response to the flow of policy-relevant information.
When public perception of an issue changes, for example, or when political attention
shifts so as to highlight new or previously underrepresented facets of a policy problem,
institutional competition and political oversight often ensure that venue assignments
become contested. If venue control is lost as a result, actors that used to dominate policy
making find themselves marginalized as new interests gain privileged access in the policy
process and a different set of actors is empowered to take decisions. In such cases,
abrupt changes in the scope and direction of policy become more likely (e.g. Baumgartner
and Jones 1991, p. 1047; Baumgartner 2007, p. 484). Venue shopping by strategic policy
entrepreneurs exploits the disruptive effect of venue shifts by attempting to move issues
into more receptive institutional arenas.
As the next section will discuss in more detail, however, the possibilities for venue shifts
and their effects on policy development vary considerably depending on the institutional
features of each policy making system, especially the number of competing venues and
the nature of jurisdictional boundaries. This line of analysis suggests that dramatic policy
punctuations may be less likely in the EU than a more disjointed and fragmented type of
policy change.
In the field of EU studies, the majority of venue shopping research shares a primary
interest in the vertical structure of the EU political system. From this vantage point, the
process of European integration has ‘produced entirely new strata of institutions and
multiplied the venues groups can target’ (Mahoney and Baumgartner 2008, p. 1256; see
also Richardson 2000, p. 1021; Baumgartner and Jones 2009, p. 255). Looking at the vertical
structure of the EU allows researchers to study how new issues can enter the EU agenda,
often by moving from the national to the supranational level (e.g. Mazey 1998; Guiraudon
2000; Princen 2009, 2011). Today, however, EU policy making is less and less concerned
with new issues, and more frequently concerned with the revision and reform of existing
policy that has already been established at the supranational level (e.g. Richardson 2001,
pp. 7–8). Correspondingly, the analytical focus shifts from vertical venue shopping to
horizontal venue shopping. With a more exclusive focus on the allocation and reallocation
of functional policy responsibilities at the supranational level of decision making, the
picture that emerges from applying information processing theory to the case of the EU
becomes more complex.
In their original presentation of the theoretical argument, Baumgartner and Jones (1993,
p. 35) contrast two types of institutional arrangements. The first is characterized by ‘many
venues with only vague or ambiguous constraints on their jurisdictional boundaries’,
which creates more opportunities for venue shopping and policy disruption. The second
is characterized by ‘fewer venues with tighter or more explicitly defined boundaries’,
which creates fewer opportunities for issues to move to another policy venue. While this
distinction is straightforward and convincing, it is also incomplete. Having identified two
central variables of their argument, the number of institutional venues and the nature of
jurisdictional boundaries, the initial discussion of the resulting policy dynamics is limited
to the two ideal-type cases, but only implicitly draws attention to mixed cases. In many
areas of policy making, the EU may be best described as a mixed case, characterized by
an increasing number of policy venues with explicitly defined jurisdictional boundaries.
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Studies with a focus on the nature of jurisdictional boundaries in the EU contend that
opportunities to disrupt existing policy regimes at the supranational level of decision
making often appear to be rather constrained. Sheingate (2000) was among the first
to argue this point based on a comparative study of EU and US agricultural policy.
His research found that in ‘the European Union jurisdictional boundaries are much
better defined than in the United States’ (p. 350). As a consequence, Sheingate (2000,
p. 357) submits that compared to the EU, ‘institutions in the United States create more
opportunities for strategic venue change’. The fact that policy responsibilities at the
level of legislative decision making are often more narrowly circumscribed than in other
political structures has been linked to the EU’s complex system of delegated competences.
In addition to the fact that supranational policy responsibilities are enumerated in the
treaty, Jupille (2007, p. 303) explains, ‘the treaty links institutions to ‘‘issues’’ by attaching
specific procedures to specific policy areas by way of an empowering provision or legal
basis’.
Pralle’s (2003, pp. 239–40) work on venue shopping in Canada raises a closely related
point when she emphasizes that policy issues sometimes ‘fall within a particular institutional jurisdiction because such arrangements are laid out in a constitution’ while other
issues are subject to competing institutional claims in the policy process (see also Princen
and Rhinard 2006, p. 1123). Her research leads her to conclude that ‘the practice of venue
shopping is often more complex than some studies suggest and an oversimplified portrayal of venue shopping runs the risk of overstating the opportunities for and frequency
of policy change’ (Pralle 2003, p. 234).
This literature highlights the fact that policy processing at the legislative level of
EU decision making is often tightly coupled with functionally specific decision making
structures, such as the responsible Council configuration. At the same time, however, the
gradual transfer of policy competences from the national to the supranational level has
resulted in a growing number of functionally specific policy venues. In particular, the
legislative activism of the EU in cross-sectoral areas such as environmental protection or
consumer safety exemplifies that EU legislative responsibilities have not only broadened,
but also that the possibilities to categorize issues and assign policy responsibilities have
multiplied. As students of policy framing frequently point out, issues of EU policy are
indeed regularly processed simultaneously in different institutional venues of decision
making (e.g. Harcourt 1998; Daviter 2011; Princen 2011). EU policy in many sectors
therefore consists of a multitude of disparate measures, taken under different voting
rules and placed under the purview of different legislative and administrative actors.
The result has been a ‘rather excessive fragmentation’ (Majone 2002a, p. 377) of policy
responsibilities at the supranational level.
When political attention shifts or coexisting programmes are found to be in conflict
with each other along some previously ignored dimension of the problem, as is frequently
the case, the various legislative and administrative actors whose competences are affected
must therefore coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries, or seek to repeal and replace
part of the existing legislation in accordance with new priorities. Since coordination
between different Commission services is notoriously poor (e.g. Larsson and Trondal
2006, pp. 24–25), both strategies involve high decision making costs and often result in
failure. Even successful attempts at interrupting individual issue equilibria easily fail to
impose a consistent new approach across the board. As Daviter (2011) illustrates in a
longitudinal study of EU biotechnology policy, the institutional fragmentation of policy
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responsibilities in the EU ensured that outright contradictory policy regimes coexisted in
the same area for close to a decade, even in the case of highly salient policy issues.
While the multiplicity of functionally specific policy venues thus allows EU actors to
process policy issues in different institutional contexts, the jurisdictional constraints of
supranational decision making make it more likely that policy competences are divided
rather than transferred when established patterns of policy processing become contested.
Unlike in cases where venue shifts mean that existing structures ‘fall apart or are replaced
by others’ (Baumgartner 2007, p. 484), total loss of venue control seems less frequent in
the EU. The notion that venue shifts result in policy punctuation, however, is rooted in
the assumption that a multiplicity of institutional venues ‘works to wash away existing
policy subsystems’ (True et al. 2007, p. 157) and that policy responsibility is transferred in a
more encompassing way. Policy dynamics in the EU are likely to differ from the dramatic
policy punctuations caused by the wholesale transfer of policy responsibilities from one
venue of decision making to another. Instead, the structural design of EU decision making
appears to promote policy dynamics that are more disjointed and fragmented.
In their updated study of US tobacco policy, Baumgartner and Jones (2009, p. 281) draw
attention to similar patterns of policy change that they characterize as ‘disjoint, episodic,
and disruptive. There was no single punctuation nor was there a lasting equilibrium
after any punctuation.’ Based on their analysis of more disjoint policy dynamics, they
submit that ‘one might want to reconsider the generality of the punctuated equilibrium
description’. Instead, they argue, it may be more instructive ‘to think of punctuated
equilibrium as one manifestation of complex evolutionary policy dynamics, one that
yields occasional punctuations in at least some policy areas, but which may not settle
down to an equilibrium for a very long time.’
Expanding the scope of information processing theory to include more disjointed and
fragmented dynamics of policy change allows students of the EU to inquire more broadly
into what types of policy dynamics are likely to emerge on the systemic level. This
perspective notably differs from those literatures in the field of institutional analysis
that primarily perceive of multiple institutional venues and fragmented decision making
structures as potential veto points (Immergut 1990) or institutional veto players (Tsebelis
2000). While these approaches highlight how institutional complexity provides opportunities to block new initiatives or policy reform, information processing theory treats
institutional venues as opportunity structures and asks the researcher to inquire into
the conditions under which institutional fragmentation facilitates policy change (see also
Baumgartner et al. 2006, p. 968). As this section has also highlighted, this type of analysis
would profit from further theoretical specification to become more applicable to the case
of the EU.
Specifically, studies of venue shopping need to address the implications of mixed cases
in which the key institutional variables work in opposite directions, one facilitating venue
shifts, the other restricting them. Advancing research in these areas promises to provide
new insights into questions of how the specific jurisdictional restrictions of supranational
decision making and the evolving structure of its policy venues interact to influence
the size and frequency of systemic policy change in the EU. A more fully developed
understanding of the ways in which issue complexity and institutional fragmentation
interact in EU decision making might go a long way towards reconciling a constantly
growing body of case research that highlights individual instances of EU venue shopping
and policy shifts with research that perceives of the main puzzle in EU politics as ‘the fact
that any decisions are made at all’ (Zahariadis 2013, p. 811). As remains true for policy
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research more generally, most theoretical accounts of EU decision making speak much
more eloquently to either the causes of policy paralysis or punctuation. In particular,
researchers who seek to explore factors contributing to both types of policy dynamics
from a single theoretical perspective should find information processing theory highly
instructive.
JURISDICTIONAL COMPETITION IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
The preceding paragraphs have argued that the institutional fragmentation of supranational policy responsibilities often means that policy issues are processed simultaneously
in different decision making structures. Students of information processing contend that
shared policy responsibilities often turn the legislative process into a ‘battle over the
contours of issues’ (Workman et al. 2009, p. 84). In such cases, different units of government search for competing or conflicting information to make their case and define the
policy problems in line with their functional interests and responsibilities. Legislative
committees play a central role in these battles (Baumgartner and Jones 2009, p. 271).
Expanding this line of inquiry to the case of the EU, the following discussion draws on
recent research on the legislative behaviour of parliamentary committees in the EU to
assess how institutional fragmentation of functional responsibilities affects the formation
of jurisdictional conflicts inside the European Parliament. Given its vastly expanded
influence, the parliament has become a major focus of EU research. Many of these studies provide critical insights into how the rules and procedures of this body affect the
processing of policy issues in supranational politics.
In contrast to the notion that shared policy competences systematically trigger contestation along functional lines of responsibility, however, recent findings indicate that
this type of conflict is easily transformed or replaced by new lines of conflict rooted in
inter-institutional competition between the major legislative bodies of the EU. As the next
section will discuss in more detail, initial evidence from studies of EU legislative behaviour
specifically suggests that issue salience may reduce the level of jurisdictional competition along functional lines of policy and give rise to informal norms of cross-sectoral
cooperation. These findings have important theoretical implications for the information
processing dynamics in EU legislative decision making.
In the European Parliament, much like in the United States Congress, ‘positions are in
most cases decided in practice in the committees before the plenary stage’ (Mamadouh
and Raunio 2003, p. 348). When a policy initiative is sent to the European Parliament by the
Commission, Burns (2006, p. 237) summarizes, ‘the conference of committee chairs decides
which committee should be allocated competence for the report and which committees
(if any) should offer additional opinions on the legislative proposal’. The lead committee,
however, retains the right to decide whether or not to include the recommendations of
the opinion-giving committees in its final report. At first glance, the process of decision
making appears characterized by deference to specialized committees and structured by
functionally defined areas of policy responsibility. While this system indeed worked well
for some time as the European Parliament tried to improve its reputation as a reliable
legislative body, Burns (2006, p. 244) finds, ‘having gained increases in powers under the
Amsterdam Treaty, it appears that the EP’s norm of internal cooperation was forgotten’.
An increasing number of studies instead highlight that the organization of parliamentary activities ensures that multiple political logics are at work, be they functional, as
in the case of committee dominance, or ideological or national, and that none of them
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seems to prevail consistently. As Whitaker (2005) explains, for example, the European
Parliament’s rules of procedure guarantee that committee membership reflects the overall
composition of the body not only with respect to the proportional representation of
the political groups, but also with respect to the representation of national delegations.
National party meetings often precede the meetings of the full political group (Raunio
2000, p. 239). Correspondingly, parliamentarians have been shown to ‘interpret their own
representative roles broadly, believing that they have important responsibilities towards
multiple constituencies’ (Scully and Farrell 2003, p. 285). Based on a related study of
the parliament’s unclear representational function and the kaleidoscope of viable political rationalities at work, Mather (2001, p. 192) eventually submits that ‘it is left to the
individual representative to determine her/his stance on every issue’.
The assumption that the European Parliament behaves like any other committeebased legislature, Settembri and Neuhold (2009, p. 130) point out, may in fact be quite
misleading. How the parliament’s internal organization of policy responsibilities affects
the processing of information and how it structures the conflicts most likely to emerge in
inter-institutional negotiations has therefore attracted renewed attention. These findings
specifically call into question whether highly salient policy issues raise the level of
inter-committee competition in the European Parliament. Contrary to this assumption,
Settembri and Neuhold (2009, p. 148) emphasize, ‘committees are crucial in channelling
expertise and appointing key players to find consensus, even if this means over or sidestepping committee boundaries’. Rather than giving rise to jurisdictional competition
along functional lines of policy responsibility, the authors find, the European Parliament
has been ‘developing new norms to facilitate co-operation in order to become a cohesive
actor, notably under co-decision’.
Their study of one of the most salient pieces of EU legislation in recent years, the
Bolkestein Directive, reveals that the lead committee practically deferred substantial
portions of the legislative redrafting to several opinion-giving committees under an
informal agreement in which ‘each committee had the last word on a part of the final
text’ (Settembri and Neuhold 2009, p. 143). This research suggests that in the European
Parliament, the formal logic of committee-based policy deference is in practice subject to
important limitations. The pressure to pursue its legislative prerogatives as a collective
actor in EU policy making has given rise to informal norms of cooperation that appear to
override jurisdictional competition along functional lines of responsibility (see also Burns
2006, p. 247).
These findings on EU legislative behaviour are reflective of the more general contention
that in the EU, ‘the prime theme of the internal political process was, and still largely
is, the contest of autonomous institutions over the extent and security of their respective
jurisdictional prerogatives’ (Majone 2002b, p. 327; see also Peterson 2001, p. 300). This
dynamic has its main source in the unique distribution of legislative powers across the
main EU institutions. In the vast majority of issue areas, the Commission ‘enjoys a strong
form of proposal power known as gatekeeping power, i.e. a monopoly on legislative
initiative and the right to withdraw legislative proposals at any time’ (Jupille 2007, p.
303). In order to maximize its legislative influence, the parliament must act collectively so
as to muster the majorities needed to successfully push for amendments of Commission
initiates. In this process, internal conflicts over ideology or the distribution of functional
policy competences can easily become sidelined. Peters (1992, p. 92) was an early observer
of the parliament’s propensity to switch between a policy game and a game of institutional
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politics or, more to the point, its willingness to permit ‘institutional interests to trump
policy preferences’ (Jupille 2004, p. 242).
This has important theoretical implications for the application of information processing
theory to the case of the EU. Information processing theory generally contends that issue
salience increases the level of jurisdictional competition along functional lines of policy.
The above analysis implies that in the EU the logic may in fact be reversed. The more
salient the issues on the supranational agenda, the more likely they will give rise to
inter-institutional conflict. As a result, internal policy conflicts along functional lines of
policy responsibility are more likely to be overridden by the parliament’s pursuit and
exploitation of its increasing institutional prerogatives as a collective actor vis-à-vis the
Commission and the Council. To explore more systematically how central variables of
information processing theory such as issue salience and issue complexity affect the way
in which different logics of jurisdictional competition come to the fore and how this affects
the processing of policy issues in EU decision making appears a highly rewarding subject
of further study. Information processing theory can not only help to systematically guide
this type of inquiry; it also allows students of EU legislative organization and behaviour
to integrate their findings with established models of policy change in ways that have
remained largely unexplored.
INFORMAL DECISION MAKING AT THE SYSTEMIC LEVEL
The findings discussed in the previous sections speak to the more general question
of whether functional requirements of information processing result in institutional
adaptation of the EU policy making system. As the authors of information processing
theory elaborate with explicit reference to the case of the EU, complex policy interactions
‘cannot be confined to activity within fixed institutional frameworks. It must be the case
that the entire policymaking system can evolve . . . actually changing the decision making
structure that acted as policy venues in the first place’ (True et al. 2007, p. 178). The
previous section discussed for the case of the European Parliament how the increasing
pressure to act as a more cohesive body in inter-institutional negotiations has been linked
to the rise of informal norms of cross-sectoral cooperation that partially supersede formal
rules of policy deference to functionally specific decision making structures. Further
contributing to this line of analysis, current research highlights the general tendency of
EU legislative actors to side-step formal institutional venues of decision making and to
replace them with more informal decision making arrangements at the systemic level of
the EU. This section discusses this trend in more detail and proposes ways to explore
these findings more systematically from an information processing perspective.
Recent studies of EU procedural politics have identified ways in which this policy
making system may indeed have begun to reconfigure itself. This research argues that
the European Parliament’s successful use of its power to delay and block legislation
‘led, in turn, to the development of the informal rule of early agreements’ (Farrell and
Héritier 2007, p. 409). Under this rule, the discussion of legislative items is fast-tracked
for deliberation in informal meetings between representatives of the Commission, the
European Parliament, and the Council even before the Council has formally adopted
a position and before the first reading in parliament (see Farrell and Héritier 2004, p.
1197; Reh et al. 2013, p. 8). The later formalization of this institutional practice means that
the rather intricate formal process of sequential legislative decision making in the EU
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was supplemented by a new decision making process that is characterized by a ‘more
informal, simultaneous, and diffuse set of relations’ (Farrell and Héritier 2004, p. 1199).
Follow-up research now confirms a general tendency in EU legislative policy making to
bypass formal institutional venues as the main channels of information processing, resolve
policy disputes in informal arenas, control the scope of political debates at the systemic
level, and reach agreement at first reading (Reh et al. 2013; see also Rasmussen 2011).
Confirming earlier studies that identified ‘the proliferation of informal and unconventional
negotiating forums’ (Settembri and Neuhold 2009, p. 148) in the EU legislative process,
Reh et al. (2013) show that the percentage of EU laws that were successfully ‘fast-tracked’
under the newly established rules has quadrupled over ten years and now accounts for
the vast majority of legislation adopted in the EU.
This research specifically highlights the finding that early agreements become more
likely the higher the number of parliamentary committees in the European Parliament
that are involved in decision making. Contrary to what might be expected, available data
show that the likelihood of EU legislative files being resolved informally increased with
the number of participants in the negotiations, the overall workload of the legislative
bodies, and the complexity of the issue under discussion. As Reh et al. (2013, p. 21)
explicitly note with reference to the European Parliament, every extra procedure under
consideration at the time as well as ‘every additional committee consulted increased the
likelihood’ that legislative procedures are fast-tracked. In other words, the higher the
information overload in the policy process, the more likely it is that the formal institutions
of EU legislative decision making are side-stepped. Out of the seven factors tested by Reh
et al. (2013) to explain legislative fast-tracking, all factors indicative of higher demands on
the information processing capacities of the EU policy making system were confirmed,
while none of the other factors were found to have systematic effects on the decision to
resolve legislative issues informally.
As information processing theorists would point out, policy making systems vary in how
much information they generate and process. In general terms, polycentric and pluralistic
policy making systems systematically produce more information than systems that are
more hierarchical and unitary (Workman et al. 2009, p. 83). The more information policy
making systems generate and process, the greater the need for prioritization (Workman
et al. 2009, p. 82). Polycentric policy making systems with large numbers of competing
decision making venues therefore require more effective mechanisms of coordination and
control if they do not want to risk policy volatility or perpetual gridlock (Simon 1973, pp.
270–71; Workman et al. 2009, p. 85). As Baumgartner and Jones (2002, p. 299) contend, the
open and fragmented policy making system of the European Union is facing increasingly
high demands on its ability to effectively prioritize available information in the policy
process. The overarching question therefore becomes ‘how this information is used in
making tradeoffs among competing demands and functional requirements’ (Jones et al.
2006, p. 55) of the policy process.
The dramatic increase in informal legislative decision making in the EU seems to
not only underscore the more general point that policy making systems occasionally
reconfigure the way in which they process policy issues. The findings also conform with
the expectation that system-level change is closely linked to the changing information
processing capacities and the functional requirements of the policy making process. If it
can be shown that EU decision making systematically evades formal institutional venues
the higher the information processing demands, as existing research appears to suggest,
this would greatly extend the explanatory reach of the information processing perspective
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in the analysis of EU decision making. A better understanding of this question would
require increasing the traditional scope of information processing analysis to pay equal
attention to the formal and informal rules and procedures that shape the EU decision
making process. Both can change, as the case of the EU impressively illustrates, just as
systems of policy deference more generally are subject to dynamic adaptation, especially
when the relationship between major institutions changes over time (Baumgartner and
Jones 2002, p. 299).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
From an information processing perspective, policy dynamics can be understood as a
function of how decision making structures process information. Recent advances in
the field of EU studies have produced a new wealth of insights into how the decision
making structures of the EU process policy issues at different levels of the political system.
The main purpose of this article was to explore how recasting these insights from an
information processing perspective can inform our understanding of supranational policy
dynamics at the systemic level of EU politics. Towards this end, the article has inquired
into the organizational foundations of information processing at successive levels of the
EU decision making process. Based on the analysis of available empirical insights, it was
argued that policy dynamics in the EU must be expected to follow a distinct logic in key
respects. The discussion in turn pointed towards possible avenues for future research
and identified some of the most promising areas for more systematic investigation. The
remainder of the article summarizes the empirical evidence on which the analysis was
founded and discusses the main theoretical implications.
The first part of the analysis discussed the structure of information processing at the subsystem level of EU decision making. The available research indicates that decision making
structures at this level are increasingly characterized by shifting organizational boundaries, changing mandates, diverse membership, fluid participation, and overcrowding.
The article has argued that the EU is therefore unlikely to produce stable policy monopolies and more likely to produce competitive and transitory subsystem arrangements that
create ‘wavering equilibria’ (Worsham 1998). How easily organizational volatility and
policy disruption at the subsystem level translate into venue shifts and policy punctuation
at the subsequent levels of EU decision making was therefore identified as a key point of
theoretical interest.
In addressing this question, the article developed arguments why the specific structure
of institutional venues in EU legislative decision making reduces the likelihood that
organizational volatility and policy disruptions at the subsystem level translate into
large-scale policy punctuations at the systemic level. The discussion highlighted how the
complex system of delegated competences in the EU works to limit the possibilities to
disrupt existing policy regimes through horizontal venue shifts in the legislative process.
While the increasing number of functionally specific policy venues allows the EU to
process policy issues in different institutional contexts, jurisdictional boundaries restrict
the ability to reassign policy responsibilities when political attention shifts or coexisting
programmes are found to be in conflict with each other. As a result, EU policy in many
sectors consists of disparate measures, taken under different voting rules and placed
under the purview of different legislative and administrative actors. The structural design
of EU decision making therefore appears to promote policy dynamics that are more
disjointed and fragmented. While this article has taken initial steps to identify key effects
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of EU decision making structures on information processing at the legislative level, how
the specific institutional restrictions of supranational decision making and the evolving
structure of EU policy venues interact to influence the size and frequency of systemic
policy change in the EU remains largely unexplored.
The resulting question of how the institutional fragmentation of functional responsibilities affects the nature of jurisdictional competition in EU legislative decision making
turned the discussion to recent research on the legislative behaviour of EU parliamentary
committees. Contrary to the expectation that shared policy responsibilities systematically
increase the level of inter-committee conflict, the analysis of available evidence instead
suggested that the need to act as a cohesive body in inter-institutional negotiations frequently levels out internal jurisdictional conflicts in the European Parliament and has
led to the development of informal norms of cross-sectoral cooperation. The effect of
functionally specific decision making structures on the processing of policy information
therefore appears to be partially superseded by a countervailing logic of collective organizational behaviour. The article specifically highlighted the fact that issue salience appears
to increase the likelihood that formal rules of policy deference give way to informal
structures of information processing. Existing research is only beginning to understand
how increasing demands on information processing in EU legislative politics contribute
to shifting logics of jurisdictional competition and how these shifts affect policy choices.
The increasing use of early agreements in EU legislative decision making provided
further evidence of a general tendency in EU policy making to bypass formal institutional
settings at the systemic level and resolve policy disputes informally. Whether the rise
of informal venues of information processing has systematic effects on the dynamics of
supranational policy change, specifically whether it works to counteract the effects of
the fragmented structure of formal decision making venues, remains largely unclear. The
available research, however, suggests that the likelihood of formal institutions of EU
legislative decision making being side-stepped increases with the number of functionally
specific policy venues involved in the decision making process. More research is needed to
assess whether the EU is indeed systematically more likely to process legislative issues in
informal decision making arenas the more complex and demanding the issues are in terms
of the information processing capacities they require. If this can be shown, these findings
would not only greatly extend the theoretical reach of information processing analysis in
the field of EU studies but also raise some problematic normative issues of democratic
governance. As information processing theory is becoming increasingly comparative in
focus and continues to develop its foundations in models of organizational behaviour, the
above discussion has tried to show that this theoretical perspective is only beginning to
realize its explanatory potential in the study of EU decision making.
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