/1
Executive Involvement in Bicameral Bargaining: The Role of the European Commission and
the US President
Whereas legislative resolution in bicameral systems is formally the responsibility of the two colegislating bodies, practice shows that executive powers - such as the US President and the European
Commission - can play important roles in these processes. This makes it somewhat surprising that the
vast majority of the literature on bicameral bargaining in the EU and important parts of the US
literature neglect the role of these additional actors. Therefore, the current piece systematically
examines the conditions under which executives are influential in bicameral bargaining using a simple
model and by presenting empirical evidence at the aggregate and case levels from both EU co-decision
and the US legislative process.
Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Danish Society for EU Studies in Aarhus, August 24, 2006
First Draft
Address for correspondance:
(before September 2006)
International Center for Business and Politics
Steen Blichers Vej 22
DK-2000 Frederiksberg
tel. +45 3815 3586
e-mail: [email protected]
(from September 2006)
Department of Political and Social Sciences
European University Institute
Via dei Roccettini 9
I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI)
e-mail: [email protected]
/2
There is general agreement that the introduction of the co-decision legislative procedure moved EU
legislative politics in the direction of bicameralism as it is known from domestic political systems with
the Council of Ministers (Council) and the European Parliament (Parliament) acting as the key players
in this procedure1 (Crombez 2000; Tsebelis and Money 1997; Hix 2005; Corbett et al. 2003a). Perhaps
as a result of this development, studies of EU co-decision have predominantly focused on the
interaction between these two legislative bodies and have, with few exceptions (Rasmussen 2003; Burns
2004), ignored or very superficially analyzed the role of the European Commission (Commission).
Interestingly, the tendency to ignore - what might for simplicity here be termed - executive powers in
studies of legislative reconciliation is also to a certain extent the case in the political system typically
argued to resemble that of the EU the most, i.e. the US. Thus, important parts of the literature of how
differences between the US Senate (Senate) and House of Representatives (House) are being reconciled
ignore the role of the President.
It is true of course that formally speaking, bicameral bargaining is mostly a matter left for the legislative
bodies in both political systems. At the same time however, it seems unreasonable that the President
and the Commission should merely be passive actors monitoring developments from the sidelines. In
fact, recent statistical evidence from an EU context of what determines the location of bargains in the
end of co-decision reports the exact opposite (König et al. forthcoming). Therefore, the current piece
systematically examines which types of power executives may enjoy in bicameral bargaining using a
simple model and by presenting empirical evidence from both the EU and the US. This helps not
merely to assess whether these executives matter, but also how and some of the conditions under which they do.
Increasing knowledge of the role which the Commission and the President play in these bicameral
bargaining processes is not just important in its own right, but also important because it can contribute
1
The author would like to thank the European Commission and the Sasakawa Fellowship foundation for research support.
/3
to answer a more general question of whether the EU and its legislative process resemble that of the
US political system. It is a common trend in recent EU research to regard the EU not as a state but as a
political system because it shares important features with that of a domestic political system (Hix 2005).
Interestingly, arguments have been that it is not one of its own Member States but the US political
system that resembles the EU the most (Kreppel 2006; Pollack 2000a). Corbett et al. have for example
argued , “The EU political system is more akin to US-style separation of powers than a more traditional
European national parliamentary system” (2003b: 368). However, when it comes to specifically
speaking of similarities between EU co-decision and other bicameral legislative processes, there is a risk
that the conclusions drawn are biased because of the lack of attention drawn to executive involvement
in these processes.
The study showed that even though several authors have pointed to similarities between the EU and
the US political systems the President was better able to affect the character of the legislative outcomes
than the Commission in the analyzed cases. It argues that this is because he was in a stronger
institutional position than the Commission, he was faced with two houses dominated by his own party,
and he had more bargaining power. In contrast, the Commission’s institutional powers were weakened
in practice, it did not find support in the legislative bodies in all cases, and its bargaining power was
relatively low. This means that EU co-decision is actually more bicameral than one of the prominent
examples of bicameralism, i.e. the US legislative system, which is much more tricameral.
After a brief introduction to the design of the study and the existing research, a simple spatial model is
presented, which looks at the ability of executives with different powers to exert influence on the
legislative outcomes. Based on the analysis, three hypotheses are put forward specifying when
executives can be expected to be influential, and they are subsequently tested with data from eight
policy cases. Finally, the paper discusses what the implications of expanding the analysis of bicameral
/4
bargaining with the role of executives are for the generally accepted conclusion that EU co-decision
resembles legislative processes of bicameral systems such as the US.
1. Executive influence and the design of the study
In both EU co-decision and the US legislative process, agreement cannot be reached unless both
legislative bodies positively agree to the text2. Bicameral bargaining between the two legislative bodies
can take two forms3. Either they can amend each other’s legislative texts in turn and send them (or
amendments to them) back and forth between them until agreement is reached and/or they can
delegate responsibility for solving the disputes to a subset of their members in a so-called conciliation
committee4. The data collected here contains the subset of files that went to conciliation because these
typically include both types of legislative reconciliation. Hence, it is common (and in the EU even
compulsory) to try to establish agreement by shifting the text back and forth between the legislative
bodies before deciding to go to conciliation.
In the traditional terminology of the separation of powers, the Commission and the US Presidency can
both be regarded as executive powers with the modification that in other respects than co-decision the
Council also exerts executive power in the EU (Hix 2005: chapter 2). The Commission can best be
described as a multinational bureaucracy with political responsibilities headed by so-called
2
This did not apply in the initial years of co-decision before the Amsterdam Treaty, where the Council had the possibility to
reconfirm its so-called common position in the case of no agreement in the conciliation committees (i.e. the legislative text
agreed to by the Council in its first reading), which unless overruled by the Parliament, became law. However, here the focus
is on how co-decision has functioned since 1999.
3
It is important to point out that only those legislative areas that fall under the EU co-decision procedure can be regarded
as bicameral. According to the figures reported by Mammonas for the period from October 1997 to December 2003, 27 per
cent of the EU legislation was adopted under this procedure (2005: 4).
4
US conciliation committees are called conference committees, which I use here when I specifically refer to them.
/5
Commissioners appointed by their national governments. In contrast, the President is a politician
directly elected by the people of the United States. To study executive influence in bicameral bargaining
is of course far from easy. Firstly, Gamson has noted that influence is one of the concepts about which
“no established consensus on terminology exists” (1968: 59) and secondly, even if there were, it would
still be hard to come up with a generally acceptable way to measure it, which could not be criticized
(Jacobs 1997: 14). Here, I assess whether it can reasonably be expected that the involvement of the
executive resulted in a different outcome than if it had not been involved. The empirical evidence
consists of altogether 56 interviews with 50 different (mainly) staffers from the EU and US political
institutions, some of whom had a general overview of bicameral bargaining (for example policy
advisors on bicameral procedures), and some who were involved in the bargaining of four pieces of
legislation from each political system. Secondly, I have a dataset of all procedures that went to
conciliation in both the EU and the US in the period 1999-2004, for example information about the use
of the presidential veto. Finally, I reviewed a range of general reports about bicameral bargaining and
written documents from the cases.
2. Existing accounts
Before I proceed, I examine what we already know from the secondary literature. Looking at the EU
first, the few pieces of the co-decision literature, which include assessments of the Commission’s role,
are generally pessimistic: Garrett’s finding is for example that “..under co-decision the Commission is
effectively taken out of the game before the real bargaining over policy begins” (1995: 305), and
Crombez states that the Amsterdam version of the co-decision procedure “renders the Commission
irrelevant” (2001: 101). In an analysis of the Commission’s White Paper on Governance, Héritier (2001:
1) also states about co-decision that “there has been a subtle shift in the weight of inter-institutional
decision-making in favour of bilateral relationships between the Council and the Parliament, sidelining
the Commission”.
/6
In addition, Rasmussen (2003) later showed based on statistical analysis of parliamentary amendments
and three case studies that co-decision does put the Commission in what she termed a “situation of
structural disadvantage” but also that it does not exclude the Commission from the policy process
altogether but often gives it the possibility to act as a strategic facilitator between the Parliament and
the Council. Subsequently, Burns (2004) conducted a similar examination of the role of the
Commission in co-decision based on a case study and argued that factors that might potentially affect
the Commission’s ability to exert legislative influence are a) its relationship with Parliament officials, b)
its degree of impatience to achieve a certain outcome compared to the other institutions, and c)
whether it shares preferences with actors of the Council and/or the Parliament.
Schmidt (2000; 2001) and Bailer (2005) have also made recent studies of Commission influence, which
even though they do not focus on co-decision are relevant here. Taking Schmidt first, she shows in her
2000 article how the Commission can use its role as guardian of the treaties to affect the legislative
outcomes both by changing the default condition in case of no legislation and by changing the
preferences of some Member States. However, her 2001 piece more pessimistically argues that practice
often makes it impossible for the Commission to place proposals strategically and that the Council
presidency has taken over much of its brokering role. Moreover, Bailer’s data of policy preferences and
outcomes in specific legislative cases show that the Commission influence is smaller in the bicameral
co-decision than in the consultation procedure, whereas her data of reputational rankings of actor
influence do not indicate a power loss in co-decision.
As far as the US is concerned, there is of course a large amount of literature about the role of
Presidents in lawmaking. However, if the literature of bicameral bargaining in US conference
committees is specifically examined, the vast majority of the studies have just like the EU co-decision
literature largely not taken the executive into account. Most importantly, none of the studies of
/7
conference committees are specifically devoted to examining the role of the President, and Van Beek
was one of the first scholars to emphasize the need to do so (1995: 178-81). His empirical case studies
therefore also pay attention to the role played by the President and show how the President can affect
the compromises with his veto threat (1995: 14-17). Apart from Van Beek, the most comprehensive
secondary source to date of conference committees that also discusses the role of the President is
undoubtedly Longley and Oleszek’s 1989 comprehensive book about bicameral politics. They state,
“The influence of the president on the legislative process is always pervasive – but not determinate”.
However, they do not as such make an assessment of whether and when the President is influential, but
focus on expanding knowledge of how the President is involved in bicameral politics.
In sum, whereas other studies of the Commission and the President exist in large numbers, it is
noteworthy that the studies of bicameral bargaining have only to a very limited extent analyzed the
influence of such executives and that the evidence put forward is inconclusive. Moreover, the role of
the Commission in bicameral bargaining has not been analyzed in comparative perspective, even
though there are clear advantages of doing so. Hence, the studies by Rasmussen and Burns of one
political system and one specific legislative procedure both suffer from an inability to assess the degree
to which various institutional competences possessed by the Commission play a role because these are
held constant. Instead, I compare executives who possess different competences, which is also
advantageous, for example, to a comparison of the role of the Commission in different EU legislative
procedures where some of its competences (such as its right of initiative) would not vary.
3. A simple spatial model illustrating different executive powers
One of the conditions that affect whether executives are influential is which powers they hold. This is
now examined in a simple model. The claim is not that it is necessarily a fully accurate reflection of the
/8
legislative context in question, but that it is nevertheless a useful simplification for illustrating the effect
of different executive competences all things equal and a good starting point for the empirical analysis.
First, imagine two legislative bodies A and B who negotiate along a one-dimensional policy space (for
example a traditional left-right policy scale), that there is an executive C5, and that the status quo (SQ)
represents the initial legislative situation t0. Whereas A and B always need to adopt the final text, C does
not. The ideal point of each actor on the continuum (A*, B* and C* respectively) does not neglect that
they are collective entities with multiple interests, but represents the pivotal member of that body, i.e.
the member who would be the crucial figure in determining the result of a vote on the issue in
question6. Moreover, it is assumed that actor positions are sincere, constant during the game and
Euclidian, i.e. the actors prefer points as close to their ideal points as possible and are indifferent
regarding points that are equally distant from their ideal points. In addition, I assume that the game is a
one-shot affair and that actors are sufficiently well informed that they know where on the continuum
the status quo and the preferences of the other actors are located when making their choices7. I start by
analyzing the effect of proposal power.
5
Using cooperative game theory and making the assumption that the preferences of the legislative bodies involved are
Euclidean, Tsebelis and Money (1997) show that bicameralism will produce just one privileged dimension for these bodies
because the latter would be worse off if they moved into other dimensions. Moreover, it can be argued that when bicameral
bargaining takes place in the end of the legislative process there are typically just a few key issues left to be resolved. Finally,
it is often possible to collapse multiple dimensions into a general one (such as a left-right scale).
6
If the vote is a simple majority, this is the median member of the body, whereas it would be a different member if the
majority requirement is different (Krehbiel 1998).
7
This reflects that actors have often established formal positions when bicameral bargaining begins that are written down
and known by the relevant decision-makers. Rybicki explains, “A recent book by Sarah Binder (2003) provides
circumstantial evidence for the argument that legislators know the preference arrangements of key actors…” (2003: 14).
/9
Proposal power
Generally, the influence of an executive with proposal power varies according to how easy it is to adopt
and modify the proposals. The lower the majority requirement and the harder it is to amend the
proposal, the more influence the executive generally has. Pollack for example argues that proposal
power is not in itself enough for an actor to be an agenda setter (2000b: 120-22).
I first illustrate the effect of the majority requirement by comparing the two bicameral bargaining
systems in Figures 1 and 2. The political systems are the same, except that the majority required for
adoption in each of the two legislative bodies differs as it is simple majority in system A in Figure 1,
whereas it is some kind of supermajority (for example a qualified majority) in system B in Figure 2.
Assuming that not all members of a legislative body share the same preference, it can be seen that the
higher the majority requirement is, the closer the pivotal members of the legislative bodies are situated
to the status quo. This means that if the preferences in the two systems’ legislative bodies are identical,
and if a supermajority is required in one system but only a simple majority is needed in the other, it is
more difficult for an executive interested in changing the status quo significantly to do so in the
former8.
Figure 1 Political system A
Simple majority ideal points
A*
SQ
B*
C*
E
Figure 2 Political system B
Supermajority ideal points
SQ
B*
A*
C*
E
8
By contrast, if I came up with an extreme case in which all members of a legislative body had the same preference, it would
naturally make no difference whether the majority requirement was for a simple majority, a qualified majority, or unanimity.
/ 10
E is listed as a potential compromise between A and B in the figures, but this is of course not
equilibrium in a game-theoretic sense, as all points accepted by the legislators to the status quo are
possible in theory. Hence, if I wanted to determine the specific location of the final outcome, I would
need to consider the actors’ relative bargaining power (and possibly also that of the executive), which
can be the result of many factors, such as their time horizon, sensitivity to failure, link to voters etc.
I now look at whether the legislative bodies can make any amendment they like (open amendment
rule), only certain types of amendments (restricted rule), or no amendments but merely have to accept
or reject the proposal (closed rule). If they can make any amendment they like and the executive holds
no other power, they can in practice just ignore the initial proposal of the executive (C*) and adopt
their own preferred point, for example E. If they have to either accept or reject the proposal, they will
assess whether the suggested proposal by the agenda-setter makes them better off than the status quo.
This would lead them to accept a proposal placed at C’s ideal point in system A, but not in system B
with the higher majority requirement because C* is located further away from them than the status
quo9. Finally, if there are limits as to how they can amend the proposal (modified amendment rule), the
legislative bodies may for example be prohibited from agreeing on a compromise on certain parts of
the continuum. Hence, it can be seen that as the amendment rule moves from a closed to a modified
and maybe even to an open one, the easier it will be for the legislative bodies to ignore the proposal of
the executive.
Gatekeeping power
The next type of power that an executive may enjoy is gatekeeping power, i.e. the ability of an executive
to affect the majority required by one or both co-legislators. Whereas the majority requirement was
9
Moreover, it is clear of course that with full information, the executive would never propose something at C* in system B,
but something as close to itself that both legislative bodies are able to accept.
/ 11
constant within a legislative body before, gatekeeping now allows it to vary even within one body
depending on what the opinion of the executive is.
Figure 3 An example of gatekeeping power
SQ A*’
A*
E’
B*
E
In Figure 3, legislative bodies A and B take decisions with a simple majority if the executive power
supports their position, but if they do not have such support, legislative body A requires unanimity for
adoption. I assume that the situation is one in which the executive power disagrees with A’s position,
forcing A to take decisions unanimously. Again assuming that not all members of body A have identical
preferences, this affects who the pivotal voter of body A will be, a situation that is illustrated in the
figure by the shifting of body A’s ideal point from A* to A*’. This results in quite a significant change
in the final outcome compared with the one that would result when only a simple majority was required
in body A because the executive agreed with its position. Now the outcome in Figure 3 will no longer
be E, but E’, which is the furthest that the most skeptical member of body A can be moved, as it is
only willing to accept a compromise located a shorter distance from itself than the status quo. A skilful
executive with proposal power can thus use gatekeeping power to make it harder for the legislative
bodies to move away from its initial proposal and select among the different proposals that can attract
qualified majority support the one that it prefers the most. If this strategy does not succeed, it can use
its gatekeeping power. However, in cases where it is more interested in a change than the legislative
bodies, invoking gatekeeping (and thereby increasing the majority requirement) is often not useful, as
this would just make it even harder for the legislative bodies to adopt the changes.
/ 12
Veto power
Finally, I consider the effect of giving the executive veto power. Full veto power cannot be overruled,
which effectively means that not just the legislative bodies but also the executive must prefer the
compromise to the status quo if it is to be accepted. In figure 4, legislative bodies A and B cannot
adopt E as they did without the involvement of an executive power, but will have to adopt E’, which is
the maximum change the executive power will accept to the status quo.
Figure 4. Comparison of conditional and full veto power
SQ
A*’ E’’
C*
B*’
A*
E
B*
E’
Conditional veto power is not final, but can be overruled by the co-legislators if they are able to find a
sufficient majority to do so. Typically, the way this process works is that the legislative bodies need a
higher majority to override a veto than they do to accept a deal in the first instance. The change from
simple to a higher majority requirement is illustrated by the move of the ideal points from A* and B* to
A*’ and B*’. In such a situation, the outcome becomes E’’, which is the outcome that a supermajority
can accept, and the executive will decide not to exercise a veto knowing that the legislative bodies
would override it. Thus, it is easier for the legislative bodies to get a deal close to their preferences with
conditional than with full executive veto power if they can muster the necessary majority to override a
veto.
In sum, we can first hypothesize that how influential executives are depends on which powers they possess. Most
importantly it was seen that the power of putting forward proposals is not in itself worth so much, but
gains leverage the harder it is for the legislative bodies to amend them, the lower majority they need to
adopt them, and if a presented proposal is protected by other competences such as gatekeeping and
/ 13
veto power. Interestingly, the effect of gatekeeping and conditional veto power were shown to be
similar in spatial terms, as both are a way of protecting executive influence by raising the majority
requirement if the legislative bodies do not act with the support of the executive. Second, it also follows
from the model that whether the executive gets the policy it wants depends on what its preferences are compared to those
of the legislators. First, it matters how closely the executive is located to the legislative bodies for how
easily it can persuade them to move in its own direction. Second, whether the executive is more
interested in a radical policy change than the legislative bodies affects how useful it is to invoke
gatekeeping/veto power. Hence, these powers, which make it harder for the legislative bodies to adopt
legislation, are really only useful when the executive is less willing to change the status quo than the
legislative bodies. Finally, we did not explicitly show but argued that because there is typically not just
one point preferred by both legislative bodies to the status quo, their bargaining power and that of the
executive affect where exactly the final compromise is placed. With regard to the executive, we can thus
hypothesize that the more bargaining power the executive has, the more it can influence the placement of the final
compromise.
4. The empirical evidence
I now test these hypothesized relationships on aggregate and case level evidence. The cases have not
been selected with any prior knowledge or expectation of the role of the executive performed in them,
they relate to different policy areas, and a brief overview of them can be found in table 1.
/ 14
Table 1. The eight cases
Procedural
reference
Issue area
Purpose of legislation
EU
Resale
Rights
COD/1996/
85
Ozone
COD/1998/
228
COD/2000/
Public Health 119
GMOs
US
Farm
Medicare
Bioterrorism
Corporate
accounting
(SarbanesOxley)
COD/1998/
0072
HR 2646
(107th
Congress)
HR 1
(108th
Congress)
To harmonize the legal provisions governing the
EU’s resale rights, i.e. the share of the profits that
artists receive when their paintings or other works of
art are resold
To replace the Community’s existing instrument for
implementing the Montreal protocol’s provisions for
protecting the ozone layer
To set up an integrated health framework in the
Community as part of a strategy to improve public
health and complement national policies in this area
To extend and clarify the existing directive
(90/220/EEC) on the deliberate release of GMOs
into the environment
To allocate funding for a series of existing farm
programs through 2011, such as federal crop
subsidies, domestic food aid, conservation, and
rural development
Intellectual Property
Rights
Environment
Health
Food Security
Agriculture
HR 3448
(107th
Congress)
To overhaul the existing health care benefit program
and supplement it with a prescription drug benefit
Health
To help federal, state and local governments to
prepare for and respond to biological attacks in
particular, and to public health emergencies in
general
Health
HR 3763
(107th
Congress)
To tighten corporate accounting and auditing rules
for the purpose of restoring confidence in these
rules
Accounting and auditing
I start by examining whether the executives were successful in the cases and subsequently assess
whether the varying levels of success can be explained by the three factors set out (i.e. institutional
powers, the preference constellation, and executive bargaining power). In the four EU cases, there is
mixed evidence of how successful the Commission was. The Ozone file was relatively successful from
the Commission’s point of view because the Council was persuaded to go further than the already
agreed international standards, which the regulation was meant to implement10. Moreover, there is
evidence that it played a role for the Council’s willingness to go relatively far, that the Commission
10
See for example the final debate in the Parliament: http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=-
//EP//TEXT+CRE+20000613+ITEM-012+DOC+XML+V0//EN&LEVEL=3&NAV=X&L=EN
/ 15
supported the changes, and declared that they were technically feasible. Moreover, on the Public Health
file the Commission, with a little help from the Parliament, received an even higher budget for the
program than its initial proposal11. Moreover, even though the Commission did not get the amount of
freedom it wanted in the implementation, the contents of the final program were relatively similar to
what it initially had in mind despite some opposition from the Council. Instead, the Commission was
much less successful in the other two EU cases. On the Resale Rights file, the share of the art market
that was included in the final text was much lower and the implementation periods much longer than
the Commission had wanted. During the Parliamentary debate on the final report, Commissioner
Bolkestein said, “The Commission is still concerned by the long delays in application which may lead to
ten years elapsing before the directive is able to produce its full harmonising effects”12. On the GMO
proposal, the Commission would have liked a less precautious approach, which is illustrated by the
following statement from Commissioner Byrne: “I don’t like seeing people coming along and elevating
tiny risks into high probabilities on the basis of no evidence and damaging consumer confidence”13.
Moreover, the Commission was “invited” to put forward certain legislative proposals (one on labeling
and traceability and one to implement the so-called “Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety”), to which it was
vigorously opposed.
In contrast to the EU, there is evidence that all the final US bills were generally in accordance with the
President’s wishes. This was for example the case in the final crucial stages of the negotiations of the
11
Comment by Trakatellis in the third reading debate of the European Parliament:
http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20020702+ITEM012+DOC+XML+V0//EN&LEVEL=3&NAV=X&L=EN
12
http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20010702+ITEM-
004+DOC+XML+V0//EN&LEVEL=3&NAV=X&L=EN. See also Legislative Observatory:
http://www.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=126352.
13
The Examiner: “Going against the Green to back GMO trial”, p. 15, September 2000.
/ 16
Sarbanes-Oxley bill, where the President was actively engaged in moving especially house lawmakers in
his direction to get a relatively restrictive bill on industry quickly in order to respond to additional
corporate scandals. A respondent explained that “Oxley (chairman of the House Committee on
Financial Services) was pressured to recede to the Senate position on a lot of these issues, there was no
political will to fight the Senate, and the President wanted a bill”. Also on Medicare, President Bush
exerted influence and was actively involved in persuading lawmakers to get both the initial House and
Senate bills and the final joint bill passed. Congressional Quarterly Weekly for example reported that before
the passage of the House bill, “Bush Administration officials and their congressional GOP aides
repeatedly told holdout lawmakers to be pragmatic, pass the bills and rest assured they would be revised
in a House-Senate conference”14. Moreover respondents explain that the Administration involvement
in final Medicare negotiations was absolutely necessary for getting a bill out of Congress in a situation
where the differences between the lawmakers were large15.
The Bioterrorism bill was also one where the Administration was generally happy with the contents of
the final bill. A respondent explained, “Bioshield was by and large a product that the White House was
very strongly in favor of and played a significant role in creating”. Finally, the same also holds for the
Farm bill, even though there was strong opposition from the President initially. However, as the policy
process evolved and the electoral pressure increased, the Administration worked actively to convince
skeptical lawmakers to increase traditional farm spending to maintain support from rural voters. A
respondent explained, “The farm bill was one of the things that President Bush cited in his re-election
campaign for the rural voters, that he signed the farm bill”. Moreover, the Congressional Research
service reports, “by May 2002, the Administration was engaged in a vigorous public defense of the new
bill, particular in response to widespread foreign criticism” (Congressional Research Service 2002: 5).
14
Congressional Quarterly Weekly, June 28, 2003, p. 1611.
15
Congressional Quarterly Weekly, August 30, 2003, p. 2064.
/ 17
The question is now whether the varying levels of executive success identified both between the two
political systems and within the EU system can be explained by variations in the institutional
competences, the preference constellation, and executive bargaining power. I begin by examining the
institutional competences.
Agenda-setting power
Looking at proposal power first, it can be seen that whereas the Commission enjoys exclusive proposal
power (EU Treaty article 251 (2)) in all the areas that fall under the co-decision procedure, the
President does not have such formal proposal power as bills are put forward by members of the
legislative chambers (Oleszek 2001: chapter 3). However, a closer look reveals that the Commission’s
formal proposal power is to a certain extent watered down in practice, whereas the President’s lack of
formal proposal power is compensated for by a possibility to influence informally which bills are put
forward.
The weakening of the Commission’s proposal power
The Commission has itself explained, “The Commission’s de jure monopoly on the right of initiative
does not correspond to a de facto monopoly. In reality, the Commission exercises its right of initiative
in an exclusive manner in a very small percentage of its proposals” (Commission 2002: 4). Hence,
before presenting a proposal the Commission typically involves the Member States, the Parliament and
stakeholders in extensive consultation processes. Moreover, the Council has, since the beginning of the
Community (currently article 208) and the Parliament since Maastricht (article 192), the possibility to
invite the Commission to submit a proposal. Practice shows that these rights are used extensively, and
the Commission feels politically engaged to respond to these “invitations”.
In addition, the Council and the Parliament have not merely asked the Commission to present
proposals by using this power, but by writing into the actual legislative acts that the Commission has to
/ 18
present a proposal within a certain deadline (Commission 2002: 4; 2002b: 10). One respondent speaks
of “a kind of practice that started to build up in conciliation whereby provisions got inserted in acts
asking the Commission to submit a proposal with a specific content within a specific date”16, which the
Commission interpreted this new practice as “an attack on its own right of initiative” (Shackleton 2004:
4; Parliament 2004: 20; 2002: 19). In addition, it was shown in the formal model how the agenda
setter’s power is generally low if it is hard to adopt its proposals and easy to amend them, which is
exactly the case here. The majority rule in especially the Council is quite strict (usually qualified
majority17), and there are no restricted or closed rules, which protect the initial Commission proposals
from being changed by the co-legislators18.
However, despite this weakening of the Commission’s formal initiative power in practice, my EU cases
did show that it is not merely the case that the Commission anticipates the preferences of the colegislators and puts forward proposals that uncritically go through the legislative process. This was most
pronounced on the GMO proposal, where the Commission was very eager to lift the so-called
moratorium on GMO licensing. It put forward a proposal (COM/1998/85) that was characterized as
more pro-science and pro-producers than what either the Parliament (A4-24/1999) or the Council (C50012/2000) wanted, who put higher emphasis on protecting consumer health. However, also on
Research Rights, the Commission put forward a relatively ambitious proposal (COM/1996/97)
16
Examples include Compound feedstuff (COD/2000/15) and ambient noise (COD/2000/0194).
17
Today, a qualified majority in the EU requires 232 of a total of 321 votes in the Council (72 per cent), representing a
majority of the Member States and 62 per cent of the EU’s population.
18
It should be noted though that they generally respect the subject under negotiation, i.e. it is not the case that legislators
amend the proposal by adding ungermane material, which is more frequent in the US (Bach 1982). Moreover, it should be
noted that Parliament’s Rules of Procedure (16th edition, rule 62) restrict amendments at second reading to those, which
restore the position by Parliament in first reading, make up a compromise between it and the Council, amend new legal text,
or take a new fact or legal situation into account.
/ 19
especially when compared to the position of the Council (C5-0422/2000), which would cover a large
share of the art market and set some relatively ambitious implementation deadlines. The Ozone
proposal (COM/1998/398) was less ambitious as it was mainly a ratification of some commitments
that had already been agreed internationally in the so-called Montreal Protocol, but it did include some
additional measures. Finally, even though the proposal for the Public Health program could
superficially pass for a straightforward amalgamation of eight pre-existing programs (COM/2000/285),
the respondents emphasized that it represented a fairly substantial shift and a more comprehensive
approach in the European Union’s health policies.
The informal proposal power of the President
If I instead look at the US, the President often compensates for his lack of formal proposal power, by
informally affecting the drafting of proposals. One way is by setting the overall agenda in the
presentation of his legislative priorities. Hence, the US Constitution directs the President “to give to the
Congress Information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such Measures
as he shall judge necessary and expedient” (Article II, Section 3). Moreover, he sends additional
messages to Congress each year (for example an economic report and a budget message) outlining his
priorities. Moreover, a respondent explains how “in general prior to introducing legislation. The staff of
both parties, Democrats and Republicans, will sort of get an indication from the Administration where
their policy position may be”. Sometimes, the Administration even drafts an informal bill, which the
House and the Senate legislators can use when putting their bill together. Usually committee chairmen
will be asked to introduce the bills in the houses, and Oleszek explains , “It is customary in both
chambers for the words ’by request’ to be printed in the Congressional Record by the sponsor’s name to
flag the measure as an administration initiative” (2001: 78). It is easier for the President than for the
Commission to get such proposals adopted because the majority requirement is generally lower in the
US bodies (simple majority) than in the Council (qualified majority) and also than in the Parliament at
/ 20
second reading, where the requirement for adoption is not merely a simple but an absolute majority (i.e.
not merely a majority of those present in the vote but of all members of the European Parliament).
That the President is often informally involved at the bill drafting stage in one or both legislative bodies
is also shown in the US cases. Medicare was the number one domestic priority by President Bush
before the last round of presidential elections and is therefore one of the clearest examples of this.
News sources and respondents reveal that the President had most success impacting on the
Republican-controlled House bill and that there was high coherence between this bill and the final bill
between the houses19. Moreover, respondents explained that Bioterrorism was also a bill where the
President and his administration exerted informal agenda setting power. About a part of the bill named
the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, a respondent even explained that it is common practice for the
drug industry and the Food and Drug Administration to get together and negotiate a package that
serves as an important starting point for the negotiations between the politicians, and one to which
lawmakers are generally sympathetic. On the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, the President’s initial views were also
very much in accord with the limited approach of the House bill, i.e. few restrictive provisions on
industry. Finally, on the Farm bill, it is little disputed how much of an agenda setting role the President
exerted, but the overall picture is that it was more modest than on some of the above. One respondent
stated, “Usually the Department of Agriculture produces a report of what the President wants […] kind
of a broad concept report. It is totally ignored”. The fact that the President decided to issue tough
statements criticizing both the House and the Senate bills (Congressional Research Service 2003: 4) also
indicates that he was not that involved in the drafting phase. For instance, concerning the House bill he
argued, “It would encourage overproduction of commodities, fail to help farmers most in need,
19
Roll Call: “Tom Scully Waits to Implement Biggest Change Since Program’s Creation”, July 3, 2003, and Congressional
Quarterly Weekly, June 28, 2003, p. 1614.
/ 21
jeopardize global markets, and boost federal spending at a time of economic uncertainty”
(Congressional Research Service 2002: 5).
Commission agenda-setting during the legislative process
In both the EU and the US, after proposals have been put forward the Commission and the President
can informally attempt to influence the agenda. During first and second reading the Commission is
often invited to informal gatherings between the co-legislators called trialogues, which was also the case
in the examined files. Moreover, the Commission can attempt to influence the position taken by the
Council in its common position or the amendments put forward by the European Parliament in its first
and second reading. In conciliation, the Commission has a formal treaty role, as the EU Treaty says:
“The Commission shall take part in the Conciliation Committee's proceedings and shall take all the
necessary initiatives with a view to reconciling the positions of the European Parliament and the
Council” (Article 251(4)). According to a conciliation guide from the Parliament, this for example
means, “The Commission is often invited to produce compromise texts to be discussed” (Parliament
2000: 11). Nevertheless, the Commission’s role is much more difficult in conciliation where it is no
longer supposed to defend its initial proposal, but to act as an honest broker. Moreover, it is the
Council presidency that determines how much it wants to rely on the Commission’s compromises,
which are typically not presented as its own but as if they emanate from the presidency for political
reasons. According to Commission Director Ponzano, “ A ‘presidency compromise’ de facto replaces the
initial Commission proposal in the final discussions” (own translation from French) (2002: 41-42).
Presidency agenda-setting during the legislative process
Unlike the Commission, the President has no formal mediating role between the houses in the
conference phase, but can play an important informal agenda-setting role throughout the legislative
process. For example one of my respondents said of the President, “The strongest lobbyist is the
/ 22
Administration…”, and another said about US conferences, “They [the Administration] are often there.
First of all, it’s open meetings, and they are in the room. In informal negotiations, it depends.
Sometimes they are invited, and sometimes they find out and give their opinion usually through the
President’s party”. I see such attempts of informal agenda-setting after the initial bills had been put
forward in my US cases. For example on Sarbanes-Oxley, when more scandals occurred the President
made a public speech where he exerted informal agenda-setting by proposing new legal changes that he
deemed necessary.
Gatekeeping and veto power
The second competence an executive can have is gatekeeping power. The President does not have such
a power, as in principle the majorities (simple majority in both bodies) that are required for the
adoption in the houses are the same regardless of what the President and his Administration might
think about it. However, effectively this is not the case because of the President’s conditional veto,
which raises the majority requirement in certain situations. Accordingly, after a bill has been adopted in
both chambers, the President has 10 days (not including Sundays) to veto it or sign it into law. If he
does neither, the bill becomes law by default (US Constitution, Article 1, Section 7). The reason the
President’s veto is conditional is that it can be overruled if both the House and the Senate manage to
find a two-thirds majority against it. In this way, it works in a similar way to gatekeeping by raising the
majority requirement from simple to a two-thirds majority. This is a considerable practical hurdle,
therefore the President’s veto power is relatively unconditional, which can also be seen in Table 2 that
shows that none of the nine presidential vetos on the conference bills presented to the President in the
period studied here (i.e. 7.7 per cent) were overruled by both bodies.
/ 23
Table 2. Vetoed bills out of the 117 conference bills presented to the President
Pocket vetoed by the
Vetoed
President
Overruled in the
Overruled in the
House
Senate
Total
9
1
0
1
106th
9
1
0
1
107th
0
0
0
0
108th
0
0
0
0
The data also show that the veto is not a heavily used tool. Just 10 out of the 117 conference bills
presented to the President were vetoed or pocket vetoed, i.e. 8.5 per cent20. As is also apparent, the
veto was only used by the Democrat President William J. Clinton in the 106th Congress, in which he
was confronted with a Republican House and Senate. It is noteworthy that the succeeding Republican
President (George W. Bush) did not veto any bills, partly because the Republicans were in control of
both houses during his time in office apart from the 107th Senate, in which the Democrats had a narrow
majority. So the impact of the presidential veto lies primarily not in its actual but in its potential use.
Asked whether the veto is a real threat, one of my respondents stated:
“Oh yeah, on certain pieces of legislation […] sometimes the Administration comes out very early in
the process and says we can accept the House version of the bill but if the Senate version prevailed,
we would have to veto this thing as a threat to the conferees [ members of the conference committee]
not to waste an awful lot of time in the conference leaning towards a position that the Administration
would ultimately veto..”.
Therefore when the President threatens to use his veto, the legislators can either try to make a deal with
the executive so that he does not exercise this option, or they can agree to a compromise backed by the
two-thirds majority that is required in both the House and the Senate in order to override the
presidential veto.
20
In one of these the President pocket vetoed the bill (i.e. did not sign the bill within the specified ten-day period, but by the
time this period had passed Congress had adjourned).
/ 24
The formal situation is different in the EU where the Commission has gatekeeping but not veto power.
Here, the Council is typically required to take decisions with qualified majority as already stated, unless
the Commission uses its gatekeeping power and forces it to adopt a given legislative act unanimously
(EU Treaty Article 250(1))21. However, the value of this gatekeeping competence is not always
particularly high, because the Council often adopts decisions unanimously anyway, even in cases where
the Commission’s support would enable a qualified majority vote to suffice. This diminishes the
Commission’s formal power to affect the majority required by the Council. Probably for this reason,
the Commission argued in its 2001 White Paper on European Governance, “When legally possible,
Council should vote as soon as a qualified majority seems possible rather than pursuing discussions in
search for unanimity” (2001: 22). In any case, it is important to be aware that the Commission only has
this gatekeeping power during first and second readings and not in the conciliation phase where the
required majority for adoption is the same, regardless of the Commission’s opinion (Pollack 2003: 85)22.
In addition, even when decisions are formally taken by qualified majority the actual contents of the
compromises may enjoy somewhat broader support as some views of the skeptical countries may have
been taken into account, even if they do not end up actually voting in favor of the final deals.
We see the limits of gatekeeping power in the two cases where the Commission was not very successful
(Resale Rights and GMOs). The common position on Resale Rights was not one the Commission was
extremely pleased with and one which in content went further than would have been necessary if the
goal had just been to obtain a qualified majority. The Commission opposed it but could not do
anything against a unanimous Council, which stood behind the common position. Hence, it was not
21
In contrast the majority requirement in the Parliament varies between simple majority and absolute majority at the
different stage of the legislative process irrespective of what the Commission thinks (EU Treaty Article 251).
22
See also the opinion of Advocate General Geelhoed delivered on 8 September 2005, European Court of Justice Case C-
344/04.
/ 25
until the final adoption in the Council, where the Commission no longer enjoyed gatekeeping power,
that Austria and Great Britain actually voted against the joint text.
On Resale Rights, the situation was a little different. Here there were actually three countries abstaining
(France, Ireland and Italy) when the common position was adopted, but technically the vote was still
unanimous because the countries did not oppose the deal but merely abstained in the vote. In other
words, the Commission could not use gatekeeping here either. However, even if this would have been
possible, i.e. one or more countries had directly opposed the deal in the Council, it might not have been
an effective strategy. Thus, forcing all countries to positively agree to the common position can often
make it very difficult to get a result or might result in one that would be favored even less by
Commission as the countries which are hardest to bring on board are often the ones furthest away
from the Commission’s position. This was very clearly the case with Italy and France on the GMO
proposal.
Finally, even though the Commission has no formal veto power, it can withdraw its proposal if
amendments are introduced by the co-legislators during the policy process that represent a “manifest
illegality of proposed legislation or serious watering down of the Commission proposal” as a corollary
to its right of initiative (Commission 2000: 6). However, this power is limited to the circumstances
stated in the quote, in addition to being a politically very difficult tool for the Commission to employ.
An internal Commission guide states, “The Commission obviously defends its right of withdrawal, but
in practice seldom exercises it” (2000: 6)23. Moreover, as with its gatekeeping powers, there is general
agreement that the Commission’s right to withdraw or amend its proposals does not exist in
conciliation (Parliament 2004: 19; Nugent 2002: 152; Rutschmann 2002: 75).
23
An exception to this is withdrawal by the Commission where it is in the interest of the Parliament and the Council.
/ 26
Overall, the examination of the institutional competences possessed by the EU and US executives
(proposal power, agenda-setting during the legislative process, gatekeeping and conditional veto power)
shows that the President is in a much stronger institutional position than the Commission even though
the President does not have formal proposal power. As hypothesized, the differences in the extent to
which the executive was influential in the case files in the US and the EU can thus partly be explained
by differences in the institutional competences possessed by the executives in these systems in practice.
Preference constellation and bargaining resources
The second and third factor hypothesized to affect executive influence was the preference constellation
and the amount of executive bargaining power. The analysis showed that both of these mattered.
Hence, it was shown to be important for executive success that the executive could find allies in one or
both legislative bodies. In both EU cases where the executive was successful (Ozone and Public
Health), it thus enjoyed strong support from the Parliament, whereas it was less successful in the other
cases involving a much more divided Parliament and Council (Resale Rights and GMOs). Moreover,
one reason the President was influential in all the US case files is likely to be related to the fact that he
had strong political support in either one or both legislative bodies. One informant told me,
“You are here at a unique time, because right now the Republicans control everything […] What
people are acting on in conference is coming from the White House and the emphasis is to try to
pass as much that is coming from the White House as the White House wants. This is a unique
situation, we haven’t had this in 60 years”.
Interestingly, the President was thus not successful in the US cases because he threatened to or used his
presidential veto, but because he was actively engaged in persuading the lawmakers to move further in a
certain direction. Hence, he was largely dependent on getting the legislation through and had no
intention whatsoever to make it harder/impossible for the legislative bodies to adopt the legislation by
/ 27
using the veto, just like the Commission did not use gatekeeping power in the analyzed EU cases.
However, in other cases, the President can use conditional veto against proposal to block proposals
that have been put forward against his wishes. Instead, the Commission typically has no interest in
using its somewhat similar gatekeeping power because it has drafted the proposals and does not want
to make it harder to get them adopted.
Also the level of executive bargaining power can help explain differences in legislative success of the
US and EU executives. The Commission has informational advantages that can serve as a bargaining
resource first because it is the only body that participates in the internal deliberations of both the
Council and the Parliament, and second because its staff is far larger and more specialized than that of
the Parliament and the Council. However, in the analyzed cases where the political climate was tense
and it lacked support in the legislative bodies (Resale Rights and GMOs), this informational advantage
was not sufficient to exert legislative influence. Hence, despite the fact that all EU files went all the way
to conciliation, the ones where the Commission was successful (Ozone and Public Health) were
relatively uncontroversial from a political point of view, whereas the last two where it was not (Resale
Rights and GMOs) involved a higher level of political controversy. In the latter, enormous efforts had
to be made behind the scenes to accommodate the views of the skeptical countries (most importantly
Britain in the Resale Rights case and France on the GMO case) even if Britain ended up opposing the
final deal on Resale Rights and France abstained from the final vote on GMOs.
If we instead look at executive bargaining power in the US, the President and his Administration often
have an informational advantage compared to the houses just like the Commission. Moreover, the
Administration does not just provide oral advice, but may also draft actual amendments or
compromises to the text being negotiated. A respondent explained:
/ 28
“The Administration can present amendments to members, they can be available to comment on
amendments that members may be drafting themselves […] So they would ask the Administration
representatives to take a look at that particular section and give them comments, and then the
Administration might say, ‘OK, we have taken a look at it, we can accept most of it, but we think this
ought to be changed, this ought to be added, and this ought to be deleted”.
However, what made the difference between the Commission and the President here was not the
informational resources, which they both had. Instead, it was seen how the President could often use
his direct link to the voters as a bargaining resource to force Congress to deliver him specific bills in a
situation of electoral pressure, for example by going public with a given message. Hence, whereas in
many ways it made it harder for the Commission to interfere in a case of high political controversy, the
situation was in many ways the opposite for the President, who could benefit from such a situation.
Thus, he was actively engaged in party politics and strategically used his link to voters. For example, on
Medicare the President issued a Statement of Administration Policy about the Senate draft bill in which
he said, “More work needs to be done to assure that private insurers, not the government, bear the risk
of providing coverage”24. In sum, it can be seen that differences in bargaining power and differences in
the preference constellation impact on the degree of executive success. The President had greater
bargaining power than the Commission, and he was faced with two legislative bodies where his own
party was in the majority in all the US cases. The Commission, on the other hand, had to struggle with
legislating bodies with quite deviating positions from it in some of the EU cases.
Conclusion
This study has analyzed how executives exert influence in bicameral bargaining and has shown that
three factors are important for when executives can be expected to be influential. First, despite
24
Congressional Quarterly Weekly, June 21, 2003, p. 1537.
/ 29
similarities in the powers of the Commission and the President there were also important differences,
which in practice put the President in the strongest position. Despite the fact that the Commission did
not just put forward legislative proposals exactly as its legislative principals wanted, its role as an agenda
setter was shown to be considerably weakened, whereas the President had substantial informal agenda
setting power. Moreover, the President’s conditional veto was generally a much more effective
institutional tool to protect his legislative ideas than the Commission’s gatekeeping power was due to
the severe limitations put on the use of Commission gatekeeping in practice. Hence, its gatekeeping
power was shown to be restricted to first and second reading in the policy process and to be politically
difficult for the Commission to employ.
Second, there was evidence that the preference constellation played a role for the executive’s chances of
exerting legislative influence. Hence, there is a systematic difference in the preference constellation
between the two systems, which has an impact on the usefulness of gatekeeping and conditional veto
power respectively. Thus, it was argued that whereas the Commission is usually more interested in
adopting far-reaching legislation than especially the Council (not least because it has put forward the
initial proposal), the President is not necessarily pleased with all legislative proposals that are put
forward. This means that whereas a power to prevent something from going through or to make it
harder for something to get adopted is often useful for the President, it is much less so for the
Commission as it typically does not have an interest in making it even harder for the Council to adopt
the compromises. Moreover, the preference constellation matters in the sense that in both political
systems support in either one or both legislating bodies was important for whether the executive could
persuade the co-legislators to move in a certain direction.
Third, I also found evidence that apart from preferences and institutional powers alone, it also matters
which bargaining resources executives have at their disposal. Thus, it was seen that whereas high
/ 30
political controversy often reduces the bargaining leverage of the Commission considerably and makes
it much harder to defend its own proposal, high political controversy often increases the informal
influence of the President. Hence, in such a situation the President can use his direct link with the
voters as a bargaining resource and engage in party politics through, for example the media, and put
pressure on Congress to deliver him a certain bill.
These conclusions have implications not merely for what the roles of the President and the
Commission are, but also for the generally accepted conclusion that the EU resembles the US political
system and that EU co-decision resembles that of bicameral legislative processes. It can be seen that
when it comes to specific similarities between EU co-decision and the US legislative processes, there is
an additional actor to account for who does not necessarily play the same role in the two systems, i.e.
the executive. Ironically, it was seen that it is actually EU co-decision and not the US legislative process
that functions most predominantly in a bicameral fashion, whereas the US system to a much greater
extent functions in a tricameral way. This indicates that even though the US may be the political system
that resembles the EU the most overall, the comparison between its legislative process and that of
other less tricameral countries than the US (for example Germany and Switzerland) should not be
abandoned altogether.
References
Bach, Stanley (1982). “Germaneness Rules and Bicameral Relations in the U.S. Congress”. Legislative
Studies Quarterly, 7(3): 341-57.
Bailer, Stefanie (2005). “The European Commission’s Power: Overrated or Justified?”, Paper presented
at the Ninth Biennial Conference of the European Community Studies Association, Austin, 31
March–2 April 2005.
Burns, Charlotte (2004). “Co-decision and the European Commission: A Study of Declining
Influence?”. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(1): 1-18.
/ 31
Commission (2000). “Guide to relations with the Council”, internal document.
Commission (2001). “European Governance. A White Paper”, COM(2001)428.
Commission (2002). “The Commission’s right of initiative”, Contribution from Mr. Barnier and Mr.
Vitorino to the Convention, CONV 230/02.
Commission (2002b). “Codecision November 1993 to November 2002. An Analysis”, internal
document.
Congressional Research Service (2002). “The 2002 Farm Bill: Overview and Status”, Geoffrey S.
Becker and Jasper Womach, RL31195.
Congressional Research Service (2003). “A New Farm Bill: Comparing the 2002 Law with Previous
Law and House and Senate Bills”, Jean Yavis Jones, RL31704.
Corbett Richard, Francis Jacobs and Michael Shackleton (2003a). The European Parliament. London: John
Harper, fifth edition.
Corbett Richard, Francis Jacobs and Michael Shackleton (2003b). “The European Parliament at Fifty: A
View from the Inside”. Journal of Common Market Studies, 41(2): 353-73.
Crombez, Christophe (2000). “Codecision: towards a bicameral European Union”. European Union
Politics, 1(3): 363-81.
Crombez, Christophe (2001). “The Treaty of Amsterdam and the co-decision procedure”, pp. 101-22
in Gerald Schneider and Mark Aspinwall (eds.) The rules of integration. Institutionalist approaches to the study
of Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Gamson, William A. (1968). Power and Discontent, Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press.
Garrett, Geoffrey (1995). “From the Luxembourg Compromise to Codecision: Decision Making in the
European Union”. Electoral Studies, 14(3): 289-308.
Héritier, Adrienne (2001). The White Paper on European Governance: A Response to Shifting Weights
in Interinstitutional Decision-Making, contribution to Jean Monnet Working Paper No.6/01.
Hix, Simon (2005). The Political System of the European Union. London: Palgrave, second edition.
/ 32
Jacobs, Francis B. (1997). “Legislative Co-Decision: A Real Step Forward?”. Paper presented at the
Fifth Biennial Conference of the European Community Studies Association, Seattle, 29 May–1 June,
1997.
Krehbiel, Keith (1998). Pivotal Politics. A Theory of US Lawmaking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kreppel, Amie (forthcoming 2006). “Understanding the European Parliament from a Federalist
Perspective: The Legislatures of the USA and the EU Compared” in Martin Schain and Anand
Menon (eds.) Comparative Federalism: The European Union and the United States. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
König, Thomas, Björn Lindberg, Sandra Lechner, and Winfried Pohlmeier (forthcoming). “Bicameral
Conflict Resolution in the European Union. An Empirical Analysis of Conciliation Committee
Bargains”. British Journal of Political Science.
Longley, Lawrence D. and Walter J. Oleszek (1989). Bicameral Politics. Conference Committees in Congress.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Majone, Giandomenico (2002). “The European Commission: The Limits of Centralization and the
Perils of Parliamentarization”. Governance 15(3): 375-92.
Mammonas, Dimosthenis (2005). “Secrets and Lies About EU Policy-Making: Are the European
Institutions Delivering Efficient Laws under the New Codecision Procedure?”. Brussels: General
Secretariat of the Council. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science
Association, Chicago, April 7-10, 2005.
McKay, David (2001). Designing Europe. Comparative Lessons from the Federal Experience. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Nugent, Neill (2002). “The Commission’s Services”, pp. 141-163 in John Peterson and Michael
Shackleton (eds.) The Institutions of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oleszek, Walter J. (2001). Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process. Washington D.C.: Congressional
Quarterly, fifth edition.
/ 33
Parliament (2000). “Conciliations Handbook”, 2nd edition.
Parliament (2002). Delegations to the Conciliation Committee: Activity Report 1 August 2001 to 31
July 2002.
Parliament (2004). “Delegations to the Conciliation Committee: Activity Report 1 May 1999 to 30 April
2004.
Peterson, John (2001). “The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common framework
for analysis”. European Journal of Political Research, 39(3): 289-318.
Pollack, Mark A. (2000a). “End of Creeping Competence? EU Policy-Making Since Maastricht”. Journal
of Common Market Studies, 38(3): 519-38.
Pollack, Mark A. (2000b). “The Commission as an Agent”, pp. 111-130 in Nugent, Neill (2000). At the
Heart of the Union. Studies of the European Commission. Bastingstoke: MacMillan, 2nd edition.
Pollack, Mark. A. (2003). The Engines of European Integration. Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the
EU. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ponzano, Paolo (2002). “Le processus de décision dans l’Union européenne”. Revue du Droit de l’Union
Européenne, 2002(1): 35-52.
Rasmussen, Anne (2003). “The Role of the Commission in Co-decision: A strategic facilitator operating
in a situation of structural disadvantage”, European Integration Online Papers, 7(10),
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2003-010.htm.
Rutschmann, Frank (2002). Der europäische Vermittlungsausschuss. Eine Organisationsrechtliche Untersuchung der
interinstitutionellen Vermittlungseinheit im Rechtsetzungsverfahren nach Artikel 251 des EG-Vertrages. Phd
dissertation, die Juristenfakultät der Universität Leipzig 2001, Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, Beitrage
zum Parlamentsrecht, Band 56.
Rybicki, Elizabeth (2003). “Unresolved Differences: Bicameral Negotiations in Congress, 1877-2002”.
Paper presented for the History of Congress Conference, University of California-San Diego,
December 5-6, 2003.
/ 34
Schmidt, Susanne K. 2000. “Only an Agenda Setter? The European Commission’s Power over the
Council of Ministers”. European Union Politics, 1(1): 37-61.
Schmidt, Susanne K. (2001). “A constrained Commission: informal practices of agenda-setting in the
Council”, pp. 125-46 in Gerald Schneider and Mark Aspinwall (eds.) The rules of integration.
Institutionalist approaches to the study of Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Shackleton, Michael (2004). “The Interinstitutional Balance in the EU: What has Happened Since
1999?”, EUSA Review Forum, 17:3, 2-3.
Tsebelis, George and Jeannette Money (1997). Bicameralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Beek, Stephen D. (1995). Post-Passage Politics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.