• search hit 1 of 6
Back to Result List

Agenda‐setting under pressure: Does domestic politics influence the European Commission?

  • The European Union (EU) has become increasingly visible and contested over the past decades. Several studies have shown that domestic pressure has made the EU's ‘electorally connected’ institutions more responsive. Yet, we still know little about how politicisation has affected the Union's non‐majoritarian institutions. We address this question by focusing on agenda‐setting and ask whether and how domestic politics influences the prioritisation of legislative proposals by the European Commission. We argue that the Commission, as both a policy‐seeker and a survival‐driven bureaucracy, will respond to domestic issue salience and Euroscepticism, at party, mass and electoral level, through targeted performance and through aggregate restraint. Building on new data on the prioritisation of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (1999–2019), our analysis shows that the Commission's choice to prioritise is responsive to the salience of policy issues for Europe's citizens. By contrast, our evidence suggests that governing parties’ issue salience does not drive, and Euroscepticism does not constrain, the Commission's priority‐setting. Our findings contribute to the literature on multilevel politics, shedding new light on the strategic responses of non‐majoritarian institutions to the domestic politicisation of ‘Europe’.

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Christel Koop, Christine Reh, Edoardo Bressanelli
Parent Title (English):European Journal of Political Research
Publication year:2022
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Number pages:20
First Page:46
Last Page:66
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12438
Release Date:2021/04/26
Tag:agenda-setting; European Commission; politicisation; priorities; responsiveness
Volume:61
Issue:1
Edition:European Journal of Political Research
Hertie School Research:Jacques Delors Centre
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
Verstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.