Gridlock after enlargement? An analysis of legislative output in the European Union∗

Hertz, Robin and Leuffen, Dirk (2009) Gridlock after enlargement? An analysis of legislative output in the European Union∗. In: UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this paper we analyze the impact of European Union (EU) enlargement on EU policymaking. Most theories of social choice argue that group‐size negatively affects the efficiency of decision‐making. Veto player theory, for instance, claims that adding veto players increases policy stability. Similarly, a‐priori voting power theory expects legislative output to decline with shrinking passage probabilities. Building on these theories, we derive a set of hypotheses on group size and decision‐making. We test these theories by estimating count models on a dataset of EU legislative output from 1976 to 2009. While we find some evidence for a reduction of the number of legislative acts passed, this especially holds for the production of directives and regulations, the effects are smaller than expected by our theories. We also present an analysis of legislative output in the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy. For fisheries we can show that group heterogeneity in addition to group‐size has an impact on policy production.

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