This paper questions the claim that the European Parliament (EP) is a legislature with strong committees. It examines the extent to which the plenary draws its legislative position on the basis of the draft committee reports under the codecision procedure. It is expected that the committees’...

To understand legislative behavior and party politics in the European Parliament (EP), scholars to date have heavily relied on roll-call vote (RCV) data. However, only a subset of all EP votes is taken by roll call. Furthermore, it has been argued that EP party groups may be requesting RCVs for...

Recent methodological advances (evolutionary factor analysis, discourse networks, etc.) have re-invigorated interest in the study of policy frames and discourses. In this paper we study the changing policy frames surrounding Dutch soft drugs policy. The Dutch case is especially interesting not...

The increased use of early agreements in the EU co-decision procedure raises the concern that intra and inter-institutional political debate is sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. We investigate the effect of early agreements (trilogues) on the time it takes for legislation to be negotiated...