Frank M. Häge

University of Limerick | UL · Department of Politics and Public Administration

Social relations have the potential to shape who assumes policy leadership positions in legislative politics. Applying a relational event modeling framework, this paper investigates if homophily and reciprocity predict patterns of collaboration between lawmakers as they negotiate proposed legislation. Specifically, it examines if members of the Eur...

Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective policy positions and in defending them in inter-institutional negotiations. This study sheds light on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of shadow rapporteur selection. Qualitative insights from practitioner interviews and a quantitative analysis of shadow rapporteur data...

Specialisation and delegation of policy leadership within committees is the norm rather than the exception in legislatures around the world. Yet, little research has studied the sub‐groups of lawmakers who serve as policy leaders on particular bills. This article uses conceptual and methodological tools from social network analysis to investigate t...

Imperial Germany is a prominent historical case in the study of Western Europe’s political development. This article investigates the number and content of political conflict dimensions from the foundation of the modern German state in 1867 to the end of Bismarck’s reign as Chancellor in 1890. Methodologically, it applies dimension-reducing statist...

Does the Presidency of the Council of the European Union have the ability to direct the political attention of this body by emphasizing and de-emphasizing policy issues according to its own priorities? This study examines this question empirically by relying on a new dataset on the monthly meeting duration of Council working parties in different po...

Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), is often used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most of these measures ignore, however, that particular co-voting patterns may appear simply by chance (Häge 2011) and that these patterns of agreement (or...

This paper examines the influence of government ideology on public sector size through a statistical analysis of pooled time-series and cross-section data for 16 industrialized democracies over the time period from 1965 to 1994. It improves on previous research on the topic in various respects. Conceptually, it takes into account two factors potent...

Little is known about the effects of the inter-institutional linkages created through the establishment of the codecision procedure on decision-making in the Council of the European Union. After a review of the existing literature and theories on this topic, we examine to what extent the codecision procedure leads to more involvement of ministers i...

Although qualified-majority voting is possible, member states in the Council of the European Union (EU) still adopt most policies by consensus. The agent-based model of coalition building in multilateral negotiations presented here addresses this puzzle. The model demonstrates that consensual decisions may emerge as an unintended by-product of gove...

The Council of Ministers is one of the most powerful institutions of the European Union (EU) and plays a major role in the European policy-making process. Drawing on formal theory and combining quantitative and qualitative methods in an innovative fashion, this book provides novel insights into the role of national bureaucrats in legislative decisi...

This article introduces the European Union Policy-Making (EUPOL) dataset. The dataset contains the complete records of the European Commission's PreLex database, which tracks the interactions between the European institutions on legislative proposals and non-legislative policy documents over time. To be of maximum use to the research community, the...

Research on the intra-institutional consequences of differences in the EU's inter-institutional rule configurations is rare. This study investigates the effect of the empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) on the active involvement of ministers in Council decision-making. The empowerment of the EP is likely to increase the incentives for burea...

The similarity of states’ foreign policy positions is a standard variable in the dyadic analysis of international relations. Recent studies routinely rely on Signorino and Ritter’s (1999, Tau-b or not tau-b: Measuring the similarity of foreign policy positions. International Studies Quarterly 43:115–44) S to assess the similarity of foreign policy...

In contrast to most other international organizations that allow decisions to be adopted by qualified majority, the European Union (EU) has means at its disposal to enforce the domestic implementation of such agreements. Yet despite lacking a serious compliance problem, member states still adopt most EU policies by consensus. To address this puzzle...

Research on the intra-institutional consequences of differences in the EU's inter-institutional rule configurations is rare. This study investigates the effect of the empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) on the active involvement of ministers in Council decision-making. I argue that the empowerment of the EP increases the incentives for bure...

Is the state on the retreat? We examine this question through an analysis of changing patterns of government involvement in infrastructure provision, which is generally considered to be one of the main functions of the modern state. Based on an analysis of the extent of privatization of infrastructure companies between 1970 and 2000 across 20 OECD...

This study presents reliable cross-sectoral data on the relative involvement of working parties, senior committees and ministers in legislative decision-making of the Council of the European Union. In general, the results challenge the received wisdom that ministers are hardly involved in legislative decision-making. However, the findings also indi...

Many legislative decisions of the Council of the European Union are de facto made in preparatory bodies by national officials and diplomats. Ministers rubber-stamp these committee decisions without discussion. Drawing on statistical as well as case study evidence, the study investigates the extent to which this actually occurs. Based on a formal-th...

Der Rat der Europäischen Union, im Folgenden kurz als Ministerrat oder schlicht als der Rat bezeichnet, wird generell als die einflussreichste Institution im rechtlichen Gefüge der Europäischen Union (EU) betrachtet (Hayes-Renshaw 2002: 52; Peterson/Shackleton 2002: 9; Sherrington 2000: 1-2; Westlake/ Galloway 2004: 3). In vielen Politikfeldern ist...

More and more legislative decisions are reached in early stages of the co‐decision procedure through informal negotiations among representatives of the EU institutions. This study argues that the European Parliament has an advantage in such negotiations relative to the Council due to the latter’s limited organizational resources to handle the incre...

Little systematic empirical research exists about legislative decision-making in the Council of the European Union. This study contributes to closing this gap in the literature by examining which groups of actors within the Council decide on what type of issues. The Council structure is made up of a hierarchy consisting of working parties at the bo...

Committees of national officials play a major role in the decision-making of the European Union’s main legislative body, the Council of Ministers. The study investigates the conditions under which bureaucrats decide on legislative dossiers without direct involvement of ministers. A statistical analysis is performed to examine this question, using a...

Fuzzy set techniques, both as a methodological and theoretical tool, can engage in a fruitful liaison with constructivist research. Several important properties of fuzzy set analysis overlap with constructivist theorizing and research practice. In particular, fuzzy set methods are compatible with and support research based on a holistic ontology an...

This article contributes to the development of theories on European integration by testing and exploring statistical models on the long-term development of legislative activity of the European Commission. Drawing on legal information gained from the European Union’s PreLex database and analyzing it with the help of statistical analyses, we map out...

Is the state on the retreat? We examine this question through an analysis of changing patterns of government involvement in infrastructure provision, which is generally considered to be one of the primary functions of the modern state. Based on an analysis of the extent of privatization of infrastructure companies between 1970 and 2000 across twent...

Description of Ph.D. research project (start: 1 January 2004), prepared for the "Governance in the European Union"-session of the NIG Annual Work Conference 2004, 29 October 2004, Rotterdam. Summary The Council of the European Union is commonly regarded as the main legislative institution in EU politics. It is regularly described as the EU's "decis...

Little reliable knowledge exists about the size and diversity of the policy agenda of the Council of the European Union. This study maps the Council's agenda between 2000 and 2008, relying on a new dataset on the monthly meeting frequency of the Council's sectoral working parties and committees. Special attention is given to the potential of the Pr...

In various studies, voting behavior in international organizations (most notably the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)) is used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most such measures ignore, however, that particular co-voting patterns may appear simply because of chance agreement (Häge 2011) and that these p...