The influence of commissioners' characteristics on the eu's legislative process
Kira Killermann is a PhD Student in the research group Research Methodology, Measurement and Data Analysis (OMD). Her supervisor is Professor Kees Aarts from the Faculty of Behavioural Management and Social Sciences
Given the Commission’s central position in the EU’s system of governance as legislative agenda-setter, improving our understanding of the influence of individual Commissioners is very relevant. Accordingly, this thesis set out to answer the research question How do Commissioners’ characteristics influence their behaviour and consequently the EU’s legislative process? It was argued that the responsible Commissioner enjoys some ministerial discretion and that consequently the preferences of individual Commissioners matter. It was expected that a Commissioner’s nationality and membership in a political party are characteristics that have a decisive impact on how a Commissioner fulfils her tasks once in office.
The first part of the research question about the consequences of Commissioner characteristics for their behaviour was evaluated using the transcripts of speeches as a directly observable behaviour. The unsupervised automatic text analysis method Wordfish was used to extract the positions Commissioners took in the individual speeches that were part of 62 Commissioner – Topics. Within the Commissioner – Topics, the positions were traced over time to test whether a change in the government of the Commissioner’s home country leads to a change of positioning. This was not the case. Instead, Commissioners changed positions they took in speeches on topics in which policy developments were observed or that were affected by the global financial crisis.
For the second part of the research question about the impact on the legislative process, a more indirect measure was used. In this case, the voting records of the other legislative institutions – the Council and the European Parliament, respectively – were analysed. For the Council, 15,994 individual votes from up to 28 member states on 687 legislative proposals were analysed using cross-classified logistic regression models. In accordance with the expectations, member states are less likely to contest a proposal in the Council if the responsible Commissioner is a compatriot. There is mixed evidence concerning the effect of partisan ties. While if the Commissioner and any of the parties in government share such ties the probability of contestation slightly decreases, this is not the case if Commissioner and the responsible minister are members of the same European Party Group.
For the European Parliament, roll-call voting data from EP 6 (2004–2009) and the first years of EP 7 (2009–2011) was used. Again, cross-classified logistic regression models were estimated. The models for EP 6 are based on more than 570,000 individual votes that 883 different MEPs from 185 national parties and 27 member states cast on 966 legislative RCVs. The results for EP 7 are based on more than 310,000 individual votes of 759 MEPs from 175 national parties and 27 member states on 495 legislative RCVs. The results vary over time. The data for EP 6 support neither the hypothesis that shared nationality decreases the likelihood of contestation, nor the one that membership in the same European Party Group decreases the likelihood of contestation. In contrast, the data for EP 7 support both hypotheses.
Overall, the analyses conducted in this thesis suggest that neither nationality nor party membership have a decisive impact on Commissioner behaviour in terms of speech-making. Still, these characteristics seem to impact inter-institutional relations in the EU’s legislative process. In their relation with the Council, a Commissioner’s nationality takes precedence over her partisanship. In their relation with the EP, national party competition seems to be continued. To answer the research question, nationality and party membership – two central characteristics of Commissioners as European politicians – do not seem to solely determine Commissioners’ behaviour.
