Abstract
The Council of Ministers, representing the member state governments in EU law-making, has long operated away from public scrutiny. However, the enhanced transparency of its decision-making over the last two decades has subjected it to the public purview. Simultaneously, the increased contestation of European integration has put an end to citizens' permissive consensus for elites to shape the nature, direction, and speed of integration. We argue that these developments have incentivized electorally accountable ministers and, consequently, the Council to be attentive to the citizens' policy preferences over EU policy action. We further expect more responsiveness of the Council's position to public opinion in the member state, in which citizens view the given policy as salient and are relatively united in their support for or opposition to further EU action in that policy. Focusing on legislative negotiations in the post-Lisbon period (2009-2020), we estimate the Council's level of support for the expansion of the EU's policy authority in individual acts using semi-supervised machine learning. To capture the level of public support for EU policy action across member states, we rely on the Eurobarometer surveys. The findings confirm our expectations, offering further evidence for the model of territorial representation in the EU.
Download paper (restricted access).
Please note that this paper is work in progress and thus has limited distribution, please contact us if you would like access. Do not cite without permission from the author.
If you would like to attend digitally, contact Silva Hoffmann to get the zoom link.