Coalitional Bargaining and Duration in the EU Legislative Process

The duration of the legislative process is one of the most important indicators of legislative productivity and gridlock. Focusing the Council of the European Union, we contend that endogenous coalition dynamics within the legislature largely determine efficiency in lawmaking. Our model of legislative bargaining suggests that governments in the Council adopt legislation when they can form a decisive majority coalition with like-minded governments. When a compromise can only be struck by a policy dispersed majority, however, governments have incentives to delay legislation in the expectation of opportunities for better deals in the future. We examine shifts in majority coalitions across all government compositions of the Council from 2002 to 2009. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, our event history analysis shows that the probability of a bill to be adopted considerable decreases when governments are only able to form policy heterogeneous coalitions. We find, however, that as the time spent in negotiations increases, opportunity costs become important and legislation is adopted quickly