Special Issue: winners and losers in european union decision making

This special issue examines legislative decision-making in the European
Union (EU). By focusing on specific examples of legislative decision-making
and actors’ preferences in those situations, we aim to address questions of
interest to mainstream Europeanists. Two contributions identify and attempt
to explain which actors – of the Commission, the European Parliament and
the individual member states – won and lost in controversial policy decisions
in recent years. A third investigates shifts in actors’ positions during the
bargaining process that takes place between the introduction of a Commission
proposal and the adoption of the legislative acts. A fourth article examines
measures of member states’ power that take into consideration the policy
positions they favour, as well as the number of votes they hold in the Council.