This response to Moberg (2002) demonstrates that some of his figures and calculations require more thorough analysis. His dismissal of the risk of inertia in the Council after enlargement, his measurement of blocking power of individual EU states and his figures on relative under- and...

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The article deals with the question of what (quantitative) influence Switzerland could potentially obtain as a Community Member State in the EC Council of Ministers. Since the introduction of the Single European Act, and even more after the Treaty on European Union will become effective,...

Using data of contested decisions in the Council of the European Union, combined with data on the position of member states on the left-right and support for European integration dimensions, this paper provides an overview of winning coalitions formed in the council in the 1998 to 2004 time...

What is the relative power of the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP) in the European Union (EU)? Both scholars and practitioners of EU affairs provide different answers to this seemingly straightforward question. In this article, we examine the balance...

This paper provides information on negotiation patterns in the EU and analyzes the influence of qualified majority voting on the formation of coalitions and the distribution of voting power among the EU states as represented in the Council. Important factors for this analysis are the weighting...

The Convention on the Future of Europe that led to the eventual drafting of an EU Constitution involved numerous political actors from many countries. Their negotiations over the constitution generated a huge volume of texts containing substantive information about their preferences for EU...

Decisions in the Council of Ministers continue to be surrounded by secrecy as far as the details of the decision-making process are concerned. Most of the research on reform efforts has focused on increasing transparency and on facilitating the management of various auxiliary bodies of the...

This paper explores what preferences governments held in the negotiation process on the European Constitution regarding European Union (EU) institutional provisions and decision rules. Applying logistic regression and ordered probit techniques to the data collection ‘Domestic Structures and...