East-North-South: Coalition-Building in the Council before and after Enlargement

Abstract

Research on coalition patterns in the Council of the EU has taken a leap forward over the last couple of years. A decade ago, Winkler complained that ‘there is surprisingly little clear evidence of coalition formation in the EU’ (Winkler 1998, p. 399). A few years later another group of scholars noted that ‘most of the suggestions [concerning coalitions] made in the literature seem to be based on anecdotal evidence, rather than on structured documentation’ (Elgström et al. 2001, p. 121). The closed nature of the Council and the lack of reliable systematic data contributed to this situation. Furthermore, a common view on the topic was that there would be few stable patterns to be found anyway, as coalitions were assumed to ‘shift from issue to issue’ (Spence 1995, p. 380). Such a view also fitted well with the ideal picture of the Council as a rational European problem-solving institution. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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