Dansk Selskab for Statskundskab
Årsmødet 24-25 Oktober 2013, Vejle Fjord
Public Administration and EU
Who’s a the table? An analysis of participants in EU Council of Ministers meetings
Caroline Howard Grøn, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen, Department of Political Science, University of Aalborg
Abstract
The Council of Ministers is an important part of EU decision-making. Member states are
expected to be represented by ministers in negotiations, but sometimes they send someone
else to represent them. This paper takes a closer look at two questions. First, the paper
determines the extent to which member states are represented by others than ministers in
Council meetings. Furthermore, the paper tries to explain the variance in when ministers
choose to attend and not to attend meetings. The paper build on a data base of all participants
in Council meetings between 2005 and 2009, totaling 9.451 observations. Through a logistic
regression we test four hypothesis as to when ministers choose to participate in meetings. The
paper shows that on average 76.3 % of participants in Council meetings are ministers, 8% are
junior ministers, 4.4 % are politically appointed civil servants and finally, 11.3 % are
permanent civil servants. We hence see that quite a substantial part of participants in
meetings are not ministers. Secondly, we test four hypotheses as to why the participation of
ministers vary. We find that the increasing salience of the meeting, the increasing importance
of the policy area as well as a long membership of the EU all enhances the likelihood of
minister participation in a given meeting. Finally, we test if the politico-administrative system
affects the likelihood that a minister participates in meetings. Here, our findings are more
inconclusive.
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Introduction
Decision-making in the European Union takes place in two fora: in the European Parliament
and at the Council of Ministers. The impact of EU decision-making on citizens both inside
and beyond the EU has been steadily increasing ever since the union was founded in 1957.
While the European Parliament has gained influence with every treaty revision since 1979,
the Council of Ministers (Council) is still an extremely important place when it comes to EU
decision-making (Buonanno and Nugent, 2013:49). Basically, the Council has to agree to any
new legislation before it can enter into force. This makes it an important subject for scientific
inquiry. In order to understand EU decision-making, we need to understand, how the Council
works.
The legitimacy of decisions made in the Council of Ministers rest on the indirect legitimacy
carried into Council negotiations by ministers (Beetham and Lord,1998:13), as representative
for the democratically elected governments of the member states. Hence the Council is
essentially a political institution representing a forum in which politicians meet to discuss and
negotiate political issues. However, quite often member states do not send their ministers.
Rather they are represented by either junior ministers, politically appointed civil servants or
permanent civil servants. This holds a democratic implication as such actors, when
representing their member state at the table in the Council meetings, adds an extra layer into
the process of legitimizing EU decision-making. Although this may be less problematic in the
case of ministers being represented by junior ministers, who may be parliamentary members
in the national parliaments, it certainly raises issues regarding accountability if either political
or permanent civil servants represent ministers. Related to the question of accountability is
the question of whether the actors representing the minister are politically responsive towards
the political mandate they are given. Where this may be expected from the junior minister as
well as the politically appointed civil servant this may be less the case for permanent civil
servants, as their relation to the minister is less personal in terms of loyalty than the two latter
types of actors.
The importance of decisions made in the Council of Ministers has generated some research
interest in the workings of the Council focusing on e.g. the norms dominating the Council or
voting behavior (e.g. Mattila, 2004, Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 2006, Hagemann and De
Clerck-Sachsse, 2007,Lewis, 2007, Adler-Nissen, 2008, Naurin,2009). No one, to our
knowledge, however has looked closer at who actually participates in the meetings and hence
represents member states in this important forum.
Based on these considerations, this paper sets out to investigate to whether member states
send ministers vis-à-vis a junior ministers, politically appointed or permanent civil servants to
the meetings in the Council of Ministers, whether this varies between the member states as
well as how we may explain such a cross-state variance.
The ambition is to contribute to the literature on the Council of Ministers and more
specifically the relationship between politicians and civil servants in Council. Investigating
this will furthermore make us capable of raising questions regarding the legitimacy of
decisions made in Council meetings and the possible functional politicization of civil servants
discussed in the literature on the relationship between politicians and civil servants (Putnam,
1973; Aberbach, Putnam & Rockman, 1981; Mayntz & Derlien, 1989).
To answer the research questions, the paper clarifies when and to what extent civil servants
participate in Council meetings on behalf of their minister as well as outlines a number of
hypotheses as to what could explain why ministers participate in some meetings and not in
2
others. The underlying assumption informing the formulation of hypothesis is that ministers
will aim at maximizing their influence in Brussels, ceteris paribus. In doing so, they of course
face resource constraints and have to evaluate if what is going on is Brussels is sufficiently
interesting for them to go, and if they have other obligations which they find more pressing.
This underlying assumption informs four hypotheses. First, the paper tests a of hypothesis
regarding the salience of a particular meeting, in terms of b-points on the agenda, and tests if
this affects the number of ministers actually participating in the meeting. Secondly, we shift
our view from the individual meeting to the policy level. Here we investigate whether the
salience of the policy area is related to whether ministers participate or not. Thirdly, we turn
to the member state level. Here we test the impact of institutionalization of member states in
the EU system, by analyzing differences in minster attendance between new and old EU
member states. Still at the member state level, we finally test the importance of the way the
politico-administrative systems in the member states is formally organized.
In the following sections of the paper, we first establish our explanatory framework deducting
four hypotheses from existing studies on the workings of the Council as well as the literature
on the relationship between politicians and civil servants. Following this, we turn to the
design and methodology of the study, explaining the operationalization and measurement of
variables as well as the analytical approach utilized. Following this, we turn to the results of
our analysis. First, we describe the use and variations in use of civil servants in Council
meetings. Secondly, we test our hypothesis through a logistic regression. We end the paper
by concluding on our initial research question and outlining some future avenues of research.
Sending a civil servant – explanations why
We now turn to the possible explanations of variance. Below we introduce four different
explanations, which will lead to four hypotheses we shall test in the following sections. The
four hypotheses address the salience of the issues on the agenda, the question of policy area,
the institutionalization of the member state into the EU context and the formal organization of
politico-administrative systems of the member states.
Salience of the particular meeting
Agendas vary between meetings, some meetings have many important discussions on the
agenda, others only few. We hypothesis here, that the salience of a particular meeting affects
the willingness of ministers to fly to Brussels. Based on our overall assumption, one would
expect influence maximizers to be more interested in attending meetings, which had
substantial issues on the agenda, compared to meeting with fewer of such items.
Agenda items in the Council are split into a- and b-points. Whereas a-points have already
been settled in meetings among civil servants, working groups or COREPER, b-points are up
for political discussion (Hayes-Renshaw, 2006:67). We would hence expect ministers to be
more interested in going to Brussels when they actually have to make decisions and not just
rubber stamp items already settled by civil servants at lower levels. Olsen shows that more
than one third of the cases, legislative acts are finalized by civil servants (Olsen, 2011:123) at
working group level, with even more acts finalized at the ambassadors level (COREPER).
Olsen finds, that the acts which move up the hierarchy from the working groups are acts
which are either controversial and/or have financial implications (Olsen, 2011:225). She
hence substantiates an expectation that the b-points are the politically salient ones, which
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influence maximizing politicians would expect to be interested in. We hence formulate the
first hypothesis as follows:
1. Meetings with a high number of b-points on the agenda will have more ministers
participating, than meetings with a lower share of b-points.
Salience of the policy area
While the meeting may determine what is at stake, it is at the same time obvious that some
policy areas are more important than others. Meetings in the Council formation on
Agriculture and Fisheries are dealing with policies which are substantially more EU
determined than, say, the Council formation on Education, Youth and Culture. Pursuing our
assumption that ministers will attend meetings where something is at stake, we hence look at
the salience of the policy area as an explanatory variable, understood as the degree of EU
competence within a given policy area. Whereas the EU holds sole competence with regard
to e.g. trade, competences are still primarily at the national level when it comes to social
policy or foreign affairs. One could hence expect that meetings in policy areas with strong
EU competence would draw more politicians compared to meetings in policy areas with
weaker EU competence.
The Council of Ministers meet in 10 different formations in the period we investigate (20052009), these are listed below in table 1. The Council formations cover different policy areas
which vary in the intensity of meetings as well as in competence. The Formation on
Agriculture and Fisheries as well as Economic and Financial Affairs have as many as 11
meetings a year while Education, Youth and Culture meet only three times a year in the
period investigated. Formations bundle different themes and an issue area can build on a
number of treaty provisions with differentiated EU competences. An evaluation of the EU
competences within a given policy area must hence been understood as an approximation.
Table 1 below contains such an approximation together with an overview of the average
number of meetings held within a formation between 2005 and 2009. It should be noted, that
the evaluation of EU competences within each area is done in a pre-Lisbon Treaty setting.
Table 1. Share of EU competence within Council formations
Name
Average number of
meetings, 2005-2009
Degree of EU
competence
over policy area
1
2
2
2
3
General Affairs
9.8
Foreign Affairs
10
Economic and Financial Affairs
11
Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)
6.2
Employment, Social Policy, Health
3.8
and Consumer Affairs
Competitiveness
5
1
Transport, Telecommunications and
5.8
2
Energy
Agriculture and Fisheries
10.8
1
Environment
4.2
2
Education, Youth and Culture
3
3
(High degree of EU competence=1, Shared competence=2, Low degree of EU competence=
3).
4
The average number of meetings is included because it gives some approximation of the
importance of the policy area, but as the table illustrates, this should not stand alone. Foreign
affairs is e.g. the formation which meets most frequently. Here, the EU hold rather mixed
competences, but one would expect foreign ministers to meet rather frequently to try to
identify a common EU ground, even if there is no clear EU competence. Member states try to
coordinate and when they find, that they do not agree, as e.g. was the case with the war in
Iraq, they go on promoting their own national viewpoints. Similarly, the Competitiveness
formation gathers for relatively few meetings on average, when kept in mind that it covers
among other things the internal market. One explanation could be, that a majority of what is
covered is very technical in nature, due to the maturity of the policy area. Still, when agenda
items actually reach the ministers table as b-points, we would expect them to be of some
significance.
The number of meetings has hence been combined with a brief review of the literature
dealing with the relative EU competence within different policy areas and draws on (Hix and
Høyland, 2011:6; Kelstrup, Martinsen and Wind, 2012: 152; Nugent, 2010:283).
All in all, this leads to the second testable hypothesis:
2. Policy areas with a high degree of EU competence have more ministers participating
in meetings, than policy areas with a weaker EU competence.
The institutionalization of member states
Length of membership plays a role when it comes to the way member states behave in EU
negotiations. Panke have shown that over time, member states become better at defending
their interests in EU negotiations (2010a: 203). Following this line of thought, we would
expect that length of membership may play a role, when member state ministers decide if
they want to go to Brussels or attend other business. The period of time, we look at is
especially good, for testing this hypothesis since EU saw it’s until now biggest enlargement
in 2004 when 10 new member states joined in, a further two joined in 2007. It is however
difficult to determine in advance, if a longstanding membership makes it more or less likely
that a member state will send a minister. One might argue that on the one hand knowledge of
the workings of the Council leads member states to understand the importance of sending a
minister while on the other hand experienced member states may have competences to
evaluate more specifically when to send a minister and when to send someone else. We hence
propose two hypotheses below, allowing for both experience leading a member state to send
minister or often than new member states as well as the opposite situation.
The literature on the Council reports quite frequently on the socialization which happens,
especially at the working group and COREPER levels (Lewis, 2007, Adler-Nissen,2008).
Here, it is pointed out do member state representatives build a common understanding of rule
of play as well as an idea of a common goal over time. It can however be difficult to
transform these insights into the actual Council meetings. The meetings going on at working
group level and in COREPER are repeated games, the same people meet over and over again,
and especially at working group level, the ones who participate are typically experts, who are
held together to some extent by an epistemic community (Haas, 1992). When ministers meets
it is however a different game; Minsters change, and with and EU of 27 it is to be expected
that quite often new faces will take place at the table. Furthermore, all the “easy” questions
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are dealt with at lower levels. Only controversial questions are left for the ministers to
negotiate. We hence approach the socialization literature with great caution in our case.1
We hence go on to test the following two hypotheses:
3.1 Old member states will be more likely to send ministers than new member
states.
3.2 New member states will be more likely to send ministers than old member
states.
The formal organization of the politico-administrative system of the member states
All governments require some degree of political responsiveness from the bureaucracy. How
this is reflected in the formal organization of the politico-administrative systems of the
member states varies. The variations are firstly reflected in whether the systems add a
position of junior ministers to the government, as actors employed to assist the minister in
ministerial bureaucracies. The variations are secondly reflected in the degree to which the
systems are formally politicized. Formal politicisation refers to formal rules prescribing and
legitimising ministers to recruit staff in the politico-administrative systems by criteria other
than meritocratic, rendering possible political recruitments (Peters and Pierre, 2004; Hustedt
and Salomonsen, in review). This may be performed as the (legitimate) recruitment of former
professional civil servants into top positions within the bureaucracy. Alternatively, it can
appear as a sort of redundant politicisation in others (Peters 2013: 18), where the minister
recruits political and special advisers into staff functions or fully fledged political cabinets. In
spite of the differences in the background of such advisers they share the common feature of
not being expected to grant their loyalty to anyone else than the incumbent minister, and
hence are not expected to safeguard their neutrality as is the case for permanent civil servants.
Hence although both junior ministers, politically appointed and permanent civil servants are
expected to act at the ‘bidding of the politicians for whom they work’ (Hood and Lodge,
2006:53), the permanent civil service provides not a ‘personal’, but a ‘serial’ loyalty as it is
expected to be loyal to successive and not a specific minister (Hood, 2001:16; Hood and
Lodge, 2006: 21), which poses limitations to how political they may appear and can engage
legitimately in the world of politics and in the formal political institutions, including political
negotiations within Council meetings, if they are not to be too functionally politicized, in the
sense of their tasks, behavour and roles becomes and are perceived as being too political
(Hustedt and Salomonsen, under review).
Common to both junior ministers and politically appointed civil servants is that their personal
loyalty to the ministers gives them the possibility to legitimately speak and in some cases act
on behalf of the minister, which is needed in times where there is a general agreement that the
pressures on ministers are increasing due to the 24/7 media attention, globalization etc. This
may also be the case for ministers’ obligation to participate in Council meetings. Here, the
busy schedules of ministers without the help of a junior minister or politically appointed civil
servants could be expected to affect the extent to which ministers participate in Council
meetings or not in person. There, we would expect ministers in systems with some formal
1
Furthermore, the overall theoretical framework focusing on maximizing of influence is on an
ontological level in opposition to parts of the literature on socialization in the Council( e.g. AdlerNissen, 2008).
6
politicisaiton to have the option to send the junior minister or subsequently the politically
appointed civil servant to Council meetings, should they not be able to go themselves. We
hence expect to see fewer ministers participating in Council meeting representing member
states, which do have junior ministers and, or politically appointed civil servants.
4a.Ministers from member states with junior ministers/politically appointed
civil servants will be less likely to participate in Council meetings.
However, we are also interested in whether member states which actually have a formally
politicized alternative to send to Brussels do in fact still send a permanent civil servant. An
actor we, all other things being equal, would expect to be less politically responsive.
Furthermore, one could however expect a further difference between having junior ministers
and politically appointed civil servants. Junior ministers could possibly be seen as a better
representative for the minister, compared to politically appointed civil servants, which may
serve primarily as advisors to politicians. We therefore expect, that:
4b. Permanent civil servants are more likely to participate in Council meetings
representing their member state when they come from countries with no Junior
Ministers, but a political adviser, compared to when they come from countries
with junior ministers.
We now turn to the research design and methodology used to test our hypotheses.
Research Design and Methods
Data
The original data set for this study covers all 361 meetings in the Council of the European
Union from 2005 to 2009, including all council formations.
For each meeting, the official press release identified at the Council web-site2 was used to
record the attendees of each member state and the number of items discussed at the meeting,
divided into a- and b-points along with the council formation in question. A total of 13.233
persons officially attended the Council meetings. After excluding cases of more than one
attendee per member state (keeping the ”highest level of attendance”), the effective dataset
consists of 9.451 observations3.
The data coming from the meeting minutes can be characterised as register data. As will be
discussed in the following sections, this means that validity of data is high. However, as we
worked through the minutes of Council meetings we did experience some problems. In one
case, a Polish representative was registered as a “federal minister” despite the fact that Poland
does not have a federal system. Similarly, the Danish title “departementschef” was in some
cases registered as “permanent secretary” and in other as “state secretary”. Ensuring the
quality of data has hence been a somewhat bigger task than we had expected at the outset, we
return to this below when discussing the operationalization of the variables included in the
study.
22
3
consilium.europa.eu
148 meetings of the EU-25 in 2005-2006 and 213 meetings of the EU-27 in 2007-2009.
7
Regression model
The hypotheses are investigated using a multi-level logistic regression analysis. Before we
elaborate on this choice of model, we will elaborate on the operationalization of our
variables.
The dependent variable
The dependent variable in the study is whether or not, a given member state sends a minister
to a Council meeting. The variable is identified by coding the title of all participants in the
different Council meetings as reflected in the minutes of the meetings. The participants have
subsequently been coded according to whether they are a minister, a junior minister with their
own portfolio within a ministry, a politically appointed civil servant or a permanent civil
servant. It is not straight forward what each title as registered in the minutes of Council
meetings actually entails in terms of our typology. In order to register participants in the
correct category we applied a number of strategies to ensure the validity of our coding. First,
we contacted the permanent representations for each member state in EU, to ask them, how
they would categorise the titles, we had identified in the minutes participating in meetings as
representatives of their specific member state. When responses were straightforward, and
matched the overall categorization of the system in the member state, as discussed in relation
to hypothesis four below, we used the categorisation made by permanent representations. For
some countries it was however difficult to get unambiguous answers, and we hence applied
some extra checks. For some countries, we contacted the Danish embassy in the particular
member state to get their evaluation of the different types of titles applied. We also contacted
government information offices of some member states, who contributed to the coding (for
further details see appendix A). In some Eastern European cases we got the information that
in some cases a formal title could in some cases represent a politically appointed civil servant
and in some a permanent civil servants. Based upon Meyer-Sahling & Veen’s analysis of the
politicisation of these countries in general and their estimation of the percentage of turnovers
of senior civil servants after elections in particular (2012). This means for example, that the
dependent variable was coded dichotomously according to whether or not the member state
attended the meeting with a minister or junior minister as opposed to a civil servant.
In addition we add a dependent variable on whether or not, in the observations where another
type of actor than the minister is present in the meetings, this is a permanent civil servant or
not. This analysis is performed only for the member states in countries where there is a
minister, a junior minister and/or a politically appointed civil servants. Member states who
only have ministers and permanent civil servants cannot be included in the analysis since if
the minister is not participating in the meeting, a permanent civil servant will be. We make
this additional dependent variable to be able to explore hypothesis four.
The independent variables
Based on our four hypotheses, we identified four independent variables. In the final model,
we include these four variables and add size of member state. This variable is included,
because the initial descriptive statistics indicated a certain relationship between member state
size and attendance of a minister in meetings. We hence chose to include this variable in the
final model.
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Number of b-points as an indicator of meeting salience
The number of b-points on the agenda, has been coded by going through agenda for all the
Council meetings coded and counting the number of a- and b- points. As b-points we have
coded “items debated” from the minutes whereas a-points are defined as the category “items
approved” from the minutes. The variable is continuous. It is clear, that counting points on
the agendas is an approximation of the salience of the meeting. One could imagine a situation
where one b-point could be extremely salient, while being the only point on the agenda. We
would however expect that as an overall consideration, most b-points are relatively salient
and counting them constitutes a reasonable proxy.
Degree of competence, as an indicator of policy area salience
The degree of competences has been coded according to table 1, as a dummy/trichotomous
variable, distinguishing between Council formations with high degree of EU competence,
shared competence between member states and the EU and a low degree of EU competence.
The operationalization is done based on a literature review. It is quite clear, that Council
formations can comprise policy areas of different salience, and we hence have to accept that
categorizing Council formations is a proxy, which has been used over e.g. analysing
individual meetings to evaluate the importance of the individual policies dealt with. Such an
evaluation would be extremely time consuming and probably also cause validity problems of
its own in the objectivity of the coding.
New or old member state as an indicator of membership institutionalization
We operationalize the variable by distinguishing between member states which were
members before 20044 and member states that joined in 20045 and 20076 respectively. The
variable is hence a dummy/dichotomous variable in our model.
The formal organization of the politico-administrative system
The politico-administrative systems are categorized as four different types of systems:
Systems with ministers, junior ministers and politically appointed civil servants as well as
permanent civil servants (A), with ministers and junior ministers and permanent civil servants
but no politically appointed civil servants (B), with ministers and politically appointed civil
servants and permanent civil servants but no junior ministers (C), and systems ministers and
only permanent civil servants (D). In order to identify the type of system for each member
state we initially contacted either by phone or e-mail the permanent representation of each
member state in EU and asked them of whether the politico-administrative system of their
member state formally had 1) junior ministers, being ministers with their own port folio
within the ministries and/or 2) politically appointed civil servants. If the information was not
given by the permanent representation we asked the Danish embassy in some member stats,
and/or government information offices of member states. The criterion for identification was
the formal features of the system, se also appendix A for the full overview of how each
member state is categorised. The variable was used as a dummy in our model.
4
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and UK.
5
Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and
Slovenia.
6
Romania and Bulgaria.
9
Size of member states
Finally, we include the size of the member state, which we operationalize as a continuous
variable, based on the number of votes in the Council of individual countries between 2005
and 2009. See appendix B.
Methods
Due to the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable, a logistic regression model is
applied to analyse the data. We are interested in explaining differences in member states’
probability of sending a minister to Council meetings. The regression results are reported as
odds ratios, which describe the relative change in the probability of sending a minister for a
specific observation. An odds ratio greater than 1 means an increasing probability of sending
a minister, whereas an odds ratio less than 1 equals a decreasing probability.
The logistic regression model builds on an assumption of independence between
observations, which is somewhat violated in our dataset. We would expect a certain
dependence at the member state level, because there may be coherent criteria for sending
ministers within states. At the same time, there may be factors at the individual meeting level
that could create dependence between member states’ level of attendance. Since it is not clear
which level of dependence is relevant to control for, we cluster standard errors by both
member state and meeting, respectively. These controls only affect the determination of
statistical significance and thus our potential for generalization, which will be discussed later.
Results
Identifying variation: how often do they send the minister?
First of all, we examine our initial claim that member states actually do send ministers as
their representatives in Council meetings. On average, 76.3 % (7211) of attendees were
ministers and 8% (759) were junior ministers. Politically appointed civil servants constitutes
on average 4.4 % (421) of participants in meetings, the rest 11.3 % (1069) are permanent
civil servants. There are no significant variations over time in who attends meetings. There
are, however quite big variations between member states, as illustrated below in table 2.
Table2: The extent to which member states send a minister, junior minister, politically
appointed or permanent civil servant to Council meetings on average between 2005-2009
INCERT TABLE 2 AROUND HERE
Finland tops the chart. It sends ministers in 93 % of all meetings. Looking at the figures, a
rather big group of member states send ministers to more than 80 % of meetings (8
countries). In the bottom of the chart the United Kindom sends ministers just above half of
10
the times, that is 57 %, closely followed by Romania at 60 %. However, just around half of
the member states (13) send a minister between 77 and 71 % of the times, that is just around
3 out of 4 times, which does reflect that the member states and the ministers of the national
governments give the meetings priority in their otherwise very busy schedule. However, the
table also reveals that there are variations in the attendance of ministers in Council meetings,
which are worth pursuing in the subsequent section, which presents the results of the analysis
of the hypotheses.
Explaining variation: when and why do member states send the minister?
Table 3shows the analysis of all relations proposed in the hypotheses. The table illustrates the
two models we test. In the first model, we check for dependence in our data at the level of
individual meetings; in the second model, we test for dependence at member state level.
Table 3: logistic regression model for ministers participating in Council meetings
INCERT TABLE 3 AROUND HERE
The first hypothesis addressed the salience of a given meeting.
1. Meetings with a high number of b-points on the agenda will have more ministers
participating, than meetings with a lower number of b-points.
The two models show similar results, both in terms of the size and direction of ratio as well
as the level of significant. The model illustrates that the likelihood of ministers participating
in meeting goes up with the number of b-points. The ratio is not very large, but this should be
understood in relation to the fact, that the ration shows the probability of a minister attending
the meeting when one extra b-point is added to the agenda. Since the number of b-points vary
between 1 and 21, the average number being 6.14 and the standard deviation 4, one should
underline that one b-point is only a small change. Overall, our first hypothesis hence is
corroborated.
Our second hypothesis addressed the salience of the policy area.
2. Policy areas with a high degree of EU competence have more ministers participating
in meetings, than policy areas with a weaker EU competence.
For both models, the analysis shows that compared to the group of Council formations with
shared competences between the EU level and member states, the group of Council
formations with high degree of EU competences have a larger share of ministers attending.
The odds ratio is well above one. It is more likely that a minister will participate in a meeting
within a high salience policy area compared to one of medium salience, for both models the p
is below 0.001 and the ratio is 1.465. As we would expect, the probability that a minister will
participate declines when moving from a formation with shared competence to one with a
lower level of EU competence, the ratio for both models is 0.691. Here however, we see a
lower level of significance in the model testing for member state dependencies compared to
the model testing for meeting. Model II is still significant at 0.01 and we hence find that our
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hypothesis should over all be seen as corroborated. If ratios are re-calculated into margins7
the possibility of a minister in a Council meeting within a high salience area is 81 %, a
meeting in a medium salience area to be 74 % and in a meeting of low salience to be 67 %.
One should however keep in mind that such ratios are calculated based on our model with its
limited explanatory power.
The third hypothesis addressed the institutionalization of EU membership, but two subhypotheses were derived, as it did not seem possible a priori to determine, which way we
would expect the institutionalization would affect minister participation.
3.1 Old member states will be more likely to send ministers than new member states.
3.2 New member states will be more likely to send ministers than old member states.
Testing for the impact of being a new member state comparing to an old member state, the
two models show slightly different results. For both models the ratio shows, that the
probability of sending a minister goes down quite significantly if the member state in
question is a new member state. Calculating margins from 81% likelihood of minister
attendance from an old member state to 70 % for a new for an average meeting. However, the
model which takes possible dependencies within member states into consideration again
shows a level of significance which is lower than the model, where we test for dependencies
at meeting level. It hence seems that the impact of being a new member state is somewhat
weakened when we test for individual states, results are however still clearly significant. This
finding does not seem too surprising. We hence find that hypothesis 3.1 is corroborated,
where as we can reject 3.2.
Our fourth hypothesis dealt with the politico-administrative system in the member states,
where we expect to see fewer ministers participating in Council meeting representing
member states, which have junior ministers /politically appointed civil servants. We expected
that:
4a.Ministers from member states with junior ministers/politically appointed
civil servants will be less likely to participate in Council meetings.
As reflected in table 3 the two models show different results. When testing for dependencies
between member states, model II the type of politico-administrative system becomes
insignificant. In model I there are in some cases significant differences across the systems.
That is, when we compare type D member states (minister and permanent civil servants) with
type B member states (ministers, junior ministers and permanent civil servants) as well as to
A (ministers, junior ministers and politically appointed and permanent civil servants) we find
significant differences. If there are formally politicized, and hence politically responsive
alternative actors, the likelihood of sending a minister decreases compared to if there are no
such actors. This means that our hypotheses 4a is partly confirmed, except for member states
with ministers, politically appointed and permanent civil servant. The ratios show, however,
that the likelihood of sending a minister is lowest for member states with a minister, a junior
minister and permanent civil servants (B) compared to systems with both ministers, junior
ministers and politically appointed civil servants (type A), indicating that there is no relation
between the degree of formal politicisation and minister attendance. Hence although there are
7
Working with a confidence interval of 95 %.
12
more politically responsive actors in type A to send than compared to type B, the likelihood
of sending a minister is lower in the former than in the latter.
Another way to approach the question is whether member states where the politicians have
’political’ alternatives to send, that is either junior ministers and, or political civil servants, do
in fact prefer that, rather than sending a neutral and, all other things being equal, less
politically responsive actor to the meetings? We expected:
4b. Permanent civil servants are more likely to participate in Council meetings
representing their member state when they come from countries with no Junior
Ministers, but a political adviser, compared to when they come from countries
with junior ministers.
In order to test hypothesis 4b, we need to add a second regression model to the one, presented
above. In this model, the dependent variable is no longer minister attending, but rather the
presence of a permanent civil servant, in the countries with formally politicized actors. The
regression is reflected in table 4.
Table 4: logistic regression model for permanent civil servants participating in Council
meetings
INCERT TABLE 4 AROUND HERE
Table 4 shows, that in both models the likelihood of sending a permanent civil servant is
higher in member states having a minister, junior minister and permanent civil servants (B)
compared to member states having a minister, politically appointed and permanent civil
servants (C). This is, however, not the case for member states with ministers, junior
ministers, politically appointed and permanent civil servants (A), where the likelihood of
sending a permanent civil servant is lower than in member states with a minister, politically
appointed and permanent civil servants (C). This reveals a somewhat ambiguous result.
Whereas as expected system A member states to a lower degree send a permanent civil
servants compared to C systems, system B member states to a higher degree sends civil
servants compared to C, that is systems with only a junior minister as the politically
responsive alternative to the minister is more likely to send a permanent civil servant that in
systems with only a politically appointed civil servant as the politicized alternative to the
minister. Hence hypotheses 4b is only partly confirmed. This is however only significant in
model 1.
Finally, we tested for size of the member state, understood as the number of votes in Council.
Here the original model presented in table 3 show a slightly decreasing likelihood of a
minister participating in a meeting, when member state size goes up. The finding is however
not significant when we test for member state, and we hence find that the variation is
probably better explained by other differences between member states than size.
13
Discussion and conclusion
Based upon our analysis we may conclude that the participation of ministers varies a great
deal between member states, but also between Council formations and meetings. Further we
corroborate hypotheses 1 -3 whereas hypothesis 4a and b show more ambiguous results.
The somewhat ambiguous results from hypotheses 4a and b indicate that there are other
factors than ’merely’ the formal features of the politico-administrative system, which
determines whether the minister chooses to participate or send another actor to Council
meetings as well as whether it is a permanent civil servant who is the chosen ‘substitute’. An
alternative explanation would be to look upon both differences in administrative traditions
(Painter and Peters, 2010) as well as the (potential) differences in the actual roles and
competencies of the junior ministers, political advisers and the permanent civil service across
the member states.
The result that there are no significant differences in whether the minister participates
between member states with a political adviser and member states with only permanent civil
servants indicates, that political advisers are not the obvious alternative for the minister. This
is further indicated by the fact that there were only on average 4.4 % political advisers in the
meetings. This may be related to political advisers being more advisers to, than actual
representatives for, the minister. Furthermore, they might also be perceived as being if not
less than, at least not more, competent in terms of representing and negotiating on behalf of
the minister in the Council meetings. Also, the result that member states with a junior
minister is not always less likely to send a civil servant compared to the member states with
only political civil servants as the politicized alternative indicates that there are potential
cultural, institutional etc. differences between the actors who are formally equivalent, which
should be included in future research.
Turning to the descriptive analysis revealing that permanent civil servants on average
represent the minister more than 10 % of the times reflects a bit of a paradox. On the one
hand one could argue that they represent a de-politicisation of the representation in this
essentially political institution. On the other hand, one might wonder if their mere presence
reflects a functional politicisation of the national bureaucracies. Where the former may call
for a discussion of their accountability while representing their national governments in those
fora, the latter shows the importance of a discussion the functional politicisation not only in
relation to civil servants roles, functions and behaviour in the bureaucracies and the political
institutions in the national contexts, but as importantly in relation an important international
political institution like the Council of Ministers.
Our model II includes as test for the assumption that there will be systematic variation at
country level, beyond the type of the administrative-politico system and size of the member
state in question. We do however not theorize this. A number of different explanations could
be explored. Looking inductively at the composition of delegations between member states a
possible explanation could be the status of EU in domestic debates. When looking at the
bottom five in table 2, it appears interesting that among these, we find the UK, known for its
EU reluctance, and Poland who had an EU skeptic government at the time. Similarly, if we
look at the top of the chart we find Finland, a prime European along with the Benelux, all
known for their engaged membership of the EU, the Dutch however moving towards a more
reluctant position in recent years. There are however quite a few outliers to this intuitive
analysis, and should such a hypothesis be put to the test, it would take a convincing
14
operationalization of the level of EU skepticism among governments for the given period of
time. Something we expect to be hard to come by.
Similarly, one might speculate that there are also differences at the individual (minister)
level, which our set-up has not caught. In 2010 the Danish magazine Mandag Morgen made
of count of the number of times two consecutive Danish foreign ministers had participated in
Council meetings between 2003 and 2010. One minister had declared himself absent in 30 %
of the meetings sending a civil servant instead, much more so than his successor (Ritzau,
2007). When these figures were discussed with diplomatic sources in the Danish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, it became clear that the two ministers had quite different personal
preferences for participating in EU meetings, and this had an impact on the number of
meetings the minister would attend. Such a variation caused by individual preferences is not
possible to include in the kind of test we propose here.
Following this, there may also be differences between the traditions in different ministries,
notwithstanding the importance of the policy area. In an analysis of the way Danish
ministries pursue interest representation in Brussels, Grøn finds quite substantial differences
between e.g. the Ministry for Business and Growth, who deals with the internal market, the
Ministry of Agriculture and Foods, and finally the then Ministry for Integration, dealing with
substantial parts of Justice and Home Affairs. All areas with a substantial EU competence
and areas of salience in the national political debate (Grøn, forthcoming). Here the possibility
of testing individual ministries in each member state also lay well beyond the technical
possibilities of our analysis.
Furthermore, one could perhaps also have hypothesized about the relative competence in EU
work among different member states. Panke (2010b) does so, and concludes that there are
quite some differences between the 19 smaller member states she analyses as to how
competent they deal with defending their interests in the EU.
As we discussed above, our data is register data and hence of a relatively robust character.
However, we spotted certain inaccuracies in the way the Council secretariat has registered
titles of participants in meetings. Through an extensive validation of data we have tried to
make up for this, but these findings underline that even when dealing with official minutes,
one needs to proceed cautiously. However, we think that our analysis do presents some
interesting new findings by showing the extent to which meetings in the Council of Ministers
is primarily made up of ministers.
The final question this piece of work raises is, if the participation of a minister in Council
matters beyond the question of the legitimacy of decisions made. We would like to know,
does presence actually result in influence? Our underlying assumption was that busy
ministers chose to go, where they will maximize their influence, and that is done in Brussels,
when something important is on the agenda. This argument could probably be substantiated
by more qualitative data asking the actors involved around the Council if member states
actually gain more influence over policy-making when they are represented by a minister. We
would expect ministers to be able to barging in a different way, compared to civil servants,
but strategies of “self-binding” are not unheard of in the IR literature (Grieco, 1995) and one
might also expect that having a civil servant at the table who know a dossier by hart might be
preferable to a minister with no clue as to what the dossier is about. This study is not capable
to do anything but speculate on the actual impact on decision-making of sending a minister,
but future research digging into this, would be interesting.
15
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17
Table2
Minister
Junior minister
Finland
93%
*8
Politically
appointed civil
servant
0%
Luxembourg
91%
1%
*
8%
The Netherlands
91%
*
*
9%
Belgium
89%
4%
0%
7%
Sweden
88%
0%
9%
2%
Italy
87%
2%
0%
11%
Austria
86%
7%
0%
7%
Slovenia
83%
*
*
17%
Denmark
77%
*
*
23%
Estonia
76%
2%
0%
22%
Spain
76%
20%
0%
4%
Portugal
76%
19%
0%
5%
Lithuania
75%
9%
*
15%
Latvia
74%
*
0%
26%
Bulgaria
73%
19%
0%
8%
Cyprus
73%
*
*
27%
Czech Republic
73%
*
19%
8%
Greece
73%
2%
0%
25%
France
73%
17%
1%
10%
Germany
72%
10%
19%
0%
Hungary
71%
24%
2%
2%
Ireland
68%
21%
0%
12%
Malta
68%
12%
*
20%
Poland
67%
0%
32%
1%
Slovakia
63%
*
28%
9%
Romania
60%
33%
0%
7%
United Kingdom
57%
30%
*
14%
8
Permanent civil
servant
7%
An * indicates that the memberstate do not formally have a such actor in the politico-administrative
system.
18
Table 3.
Minister
attending
I - Meeting
Odds ratio (S.E.)
II - Member state
Odds ratio (S.E.)
B-points
1.095***
(0.0191)
1.095***
(0.0116)
High
competence
1.465**
(0.205)
1.465***
(0.129)
Low
competence
0.691**
(0.0843)
0.691**
(0.0862)
New member
state
0.528***
(0.0267)
0.528**
(0.106)
System 1/A
0.843*
(0.0642)
0.843
(0.243)
System 2/B
0.679***
(0.0557)
0.679
(0.216)
System 3/C
0.889
(0.0709)
0.889
(0.275)
Size
0.975***
(0.00300)
0.975
(0.0128)
3.729***
(0.694)
N
9451
Pseudo R2
0.0332
Exponentiated coefficients (odds ratio).
Robust standard errors in parentheses.
*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Constant
3.729***
(1.165)
9451
0.0332
19
Table 4.
Permanent
civil servant
I - Meeting
Odds ratio (S.E.)
II - Member state
Odds ratio (S.E.)
System 1/A
0.684**
(0.0849)
0.684
(0.477)
System 2/B
1.535**
(0.249)
1.535
(0.847)
0.914***
(0.00587)
0.914**
(0.0276)
Size
7.198***
(1.212)
N
1964
Pseudo R2
0.113
Exponentiated coefficients (odds ratio).
Robust standard errors in parentheses.
*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Constant
7.198*
(6.188)
1964
0.113
20
Appendix A
The Political systems are categorized as four different types of systems: Systems with ministers,
junior ministers and politically appointed civil servants as well as permanent civil servants (A), with
ministers and junior ministers and permanent civil servants but no politically appointed civil servants
(B), with ministers and politically appointed civil servants and permanent civil servants but no junior
ministers (C), and systems ministers and only permanent civil servants (D).
Member
State
Type of politicoadministrative
system
Information of both the type of both the type of politico
administrative system as well as whether the formal titles in the
minutes of the meetings from the council represents a minister, a
junior minister, a politically appointed civil servant or a
permanent civil servant are based upon:
Austria
A
The permanent representative
Belgium
A
The permanent representative
Bulgaria
A
The permanent representative and information from government
information office
Cyprus
D
The permanent representative
Czech
Republic
C
The permanent representative stated that Deputy ministers, First
deputy ministers, Head of the delegation, Vice ministers and State
Secretaries could be both politically appointed or permanent civil
servants. In these cases we labelled 40 % politically appointed
and 60 Permanent civil servants based upon Meyer-Sahling and
Veen’s calculation of 30-49 % of the senior civil servants are de
facto politicised in the sense that they leave their positions after
elections (2012:9).
Germany
A
The permanent representative
Denmark
D9
Own knowledge
Estonia
A
The permanent representative
Greece
A
The permanent representative
Spain
A
The permanent representative
Finland
C
The Danish embassy
France
A
The Danish embassy in France and the homepage of the
government, visited in May 2013. The embassy informed that
Minister with responsibility for and Ministers of states could both
9
Denmark has a some politically appointed civil servants (special advisers) but they are primarily
political communication advisers and never represents the minister in formal political institutions,
why we have categorised Denmark as not having politically appointed civil servants. The same is the
case for UK.
21
be junior ministers or ministers. However, all persons formally
labelled as Minister with responsibility for in the minutes from
the meetings was in fact Ministres delegués, which is a junior
minister. Also
Minister of State and secretaire d'État have been labelled as junior
ministers. Finally has “Ministre d'État” been labelled as ministers
as they represent honour titles of a minister.
Hungary
A
The permanent representative stated that Administrative state
secretaries could be both politically appointed or permanent civil
servants. In these cases we labelled 40 % politically appointed
and 60 Permanent civil servants based upon Meyer-Sahling and
Veen’s calulation of 30-49 % of the senior civil servants are de
facto politicised in the sense that they leave their positions after
elections (2012:9).
Ireland
A
The permanent representative
Italy
A
The permanent representative
Lithuania
B
The permanent representative
Luxembourg
B
The permanent representative
Latvia
C
The permanent representative, the Danish embassy and the press
secretary to the cabinet ministers
Malta
B
The permanent representative
Netherlands
D
The permanent representative
Poland
A
An expert in Polish politics, former employee at the Centre for
European Policy Studies (CEPS). In the Polich case "state
secretary", "secretary of state" and "Secretary of the committee of
European Integration" was labelled as politically appointed civil
servants.
Portugal
A
The permanent representative and the Danish embassy
Romania
A
The permanent representative
Sweden
A
The permanent representative
Slovenia
D
The permanent representative
Slovakia
C
The permanent representative
United
Kingdom
B
The permanent representative
22
Appendix B
The size of the member state based on the number of votes in the Council of individual
countries between 2005 and 2009
Austria
10
Belguim
12
Bulgaria
10
Cyprus
4
Czech Republic
12
Germany
29
Denmark
7
Estonia
4
Greece
12
Spain
27
Finland
7
France
29
Hungary
12
Ireland
Italy
7
29
Lithuania
7
Luxembourg
4
Latvia
4
Malta
3
Netherlands
13
Poland
27
Portugal
12
Romania
14
Sweden
10
Slovenia
4
23
Slovakia
United Kingdom
7
29
24