¹ Thomson, Robert, ‘Appendix II: Comparison of Expert Judgements with Each Other and with Information from Council Documentation’, in Thomson, Robert, Stokman, Frans N., Achen, Christopher H. and König, Thomas (eds), The European Union Decides, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² König, Thomas, Luetgert, Brooke and Dannwolf, Tanja, ‘Quantifying European Legislative Research: Using CELEX and PreLex in EU Legislative Studies’, European Union Politics, 7: 4 (2006), p. 554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ I.e. after the first reading (consultation), second reading (cooperation or co-decision) or after conciliation committee and a third reading (cooperation) and by unanimity or qualified majority voting.Google Scholar

⁴ Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Frans N. Stokman (eds), European Community Decision Making, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994; Thomson et al., The European Union Decides. For a critical review, see Hörl, Björn, Warntjen, Andreas and Wonka, Arndt, ‘Built on Quicksand? A Decade of Procedural Spatial Models on EU Legislative Decision-Making’, Journal of European Public Policy, 12: 3 (2005), pp. 592–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Steunenberg, Bernard, ‘Decision-Making Under Different Institutional Arrangements: Legislation by the European Community’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 150 (1994), pp. 642–69;Google Scholar

⁶ Stokman, Frans N. and Thomson, Robert, ‘Winners and Losers of EU Decision Making’, European Union Politics, 5: 1 (2004), p. 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Thomson et al., The European Union Decides.Google Scholar

⁸ Christopher H. Achen, ‘Evaluating Political Decision-Making Models’, in Thomson et al., The European Union Decides, pp. 264–99.Google Scholar

⁹ Gerald Schneider, Bernard Steunenberg and Mika Widgrén, ‘Evidence with Insight: What Models Contribute to EU Research’, in Thomson et al., The European Union Decides, pp. 299–316, especially pp. 302–8.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Hörl et al., ‘Built on Quicksand?’.Google Scholar

¹¹ Depending on the class and exact specifications of any one model, required data may include estimates on the location and intensity of actor preferences, the spatial location of the status quo and the decision outcome and the dimensionality of the issue space.Google Scholar

¹² De Mesquita, Bruce Bueno, ‘Decision-Making Models, Rigor and New Puzzles’, European Union Politics, 5: 1 (2004), pp. 125–38;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Schneider et al., ‘Evidence with Insight’.

¹³ Bueno de Mesquita and Stokman, European Community Decision Making; Thomson et al. The European Union Decides.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Hayes-Renshaw, Fiona, Van Aken, Wim and Wallace, Helen, ‘When and Why the EU Council of Ministers Votes Explicitly’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 44: 1 (2006), p. 163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Heisenberg, Dorothee, ‘The Institution of “Consensus” in the European Union: Formal Versus Informal Decision-Making in the Council’, European Journal of Political Research, 44: 1 (2005), pp. 65–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Mattila, Mikko and Lane, Jan-Eric, ‘Why Unanimity in the Council? A Roll Call Analysis of Council Voting’, European Union Politics, 2: 1 (2001), pp. 31–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ The potential effects of the EU's eastern enlargement and the increasing ‘diversity’ of interests is an open question; see Helen Wallace, Adapting to Enlargement of the European Union: Institutional Practice Since May 2004, European Commission, Brussels, 2007.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Mattila, Mikko, ‘Contested Decisions: Empirical Analysis of Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers’, European Journal of Political Research, 43: 1 (2004), pp. 29–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Hayes-Renshaw et al., ‘When and Why the EU Council of Ministers Votes Explicitly’, p. 169.Google Scholar

²¹ Heisenberg, ‘The Institution of “Consensus” in the European Union’, pp. 73–7.Google Scholar

²² Mattila and Lane, ‘Why Unanimity in the Council?’, pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

²³ At http://eur-lex.europa.eu/de/index.htm.Google Scholar

²⁴ Including the type of procedure, the date of introduction, the date of adoption, A and B points (i.e. those adopted at the Council meeting without debate following agreement at the COREPER level, or adopted with continued debate), the policy area, the involvement of preparatory bodies and the Commission, the title of the proposal, details about the policy content, the inter-institutional reference number, the sectoral Council, the stage of the legislative process when the vote was taken, the stage of the legislative process when the proposal was adopted, the identity of the member holding the presidency, and finally each member state's decision to support, abstain, oppose and/or make a formal statement.Google Scholar

²⁵ Texts cover the legal basis, the responsible directorate-general, dates of transmission and adoption by all institutions, dates of all readings, request and decision of consulted committees, links to documents passed by different institutions (Commission documents, Official Journal, press releases etc.), decisions by institutional actors at each stage and identification of A and B points.Google Scholar

²⁶ König et al., ‘Quantifying European Legislative Research’, pp. 554–7.Google Scholar

²⁷ Krippendorf, Klaus, Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 2000.Google Scholar

²⁸ Benoit, Ken and Laver, Michael, ‘Automated Content Analysis of Political Texts Using Wordscores’, APSA Comparative Politics, 17: 1 (2006), p. 6.Google Scholar

²⁹ Laver, Michael, Benoit, Ken and Garry, John, ‘Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data’, American Political Science Review, 97: 2 (2003), pp. 311–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ For example identifying the policy positions of more than 200 actors taking part in the Laeken Convention on four policy dimensions ( Benoit, Ken, Laver, Michael, Arnold, Christine, Pennings, Paul, and Hosli, Madeleine O., ‘Measuring National Delegate Positions at the Convention on the Future of Europe Using Computerized Word Scoring’, European Union Politics, 6: 3 (2005), pp. 291–313);CrossRefGoogle Scholar MP positions based on Irish parliamentary speeches ( and UK party positions based on election manifestos (Laver et al., ‘Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data’).

³¹ Lowe, Will, ‘Understanding Wordscores’, Political Analysis, 16: 4 (2008),CrossRefGoogle Scholar available online;

³² Stephanie Bailer and Gerald Schneider, ‘Nash versus Schelling? The Importance of Constraints in Legislative Bargaining’, in Thomson et al., The European Union Decides, pp. 153–77; Gerald Schneider and Konstantin Baltz, ‘Domesticated Eurocrats: Bureaucratic Discretion in the Legislative Pre-Negotiations of the European Union’, Acta Politica, 40: 1 (2005), pp. 1–27.

³³ Bond, Doug, Bond, Joe, Oh, Churl, Jenkins, J. Craig and Taylor, Charles Lewis, ‘Integrated Data for Events Analysis (Idea): An Event Typology for Automated Events Data Development’, Journal of Peace Research, 40 (2003), pp. 733–45;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Philip Schrodt and Deborah Gerner, ‘Analyzing International Event Data: A Handbook of Computer-Based Techniques’, manuscript, University of Kansas, 2001.

³⁴ Van Atteveldt, Wouter, Kleinnijenhuis, Jan, Ruigrok, Nel and Schlobach, Stefan, ‘Good News or Bad News? Conducting Sentiment Analysis on Dutch Text to Distinguish Between Positive and Negative Relations’, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 5: 1 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available online.

³⁵ Landauer, Thomas, Foltz, Peter and Laham, Darrell, ‘Introduction to Latent Semantic Analysis’, Discourse Processes, 25: 2 (1998), pp. 259–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ Hagemann, Sara, ‘Applying Ideal Point Estimation Methods to the Council of Ministers’, European Union Politics, 8: 2 (2007), pp. 279–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., p. 285.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., p. 292.Google Scholar

³⁹ Fabio Franchino, The Powers of the Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007; For discussion, see Mastenbroek, Ellen and Veen, Tim, ‘Last Words on Delegation? Examining the Powers of the Union’, European Union Politics, 9: 2 (2008), pp. 295–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara and Michael McDonald, Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments in Central and Eastern Europe, European Union and OECD 1990–2003, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Golub, Jonathan, ‘In the Shadow of the Vote? Decision Making in the European Community’, International Organization, 53: 4 (1999), pp. 733–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Schulz, Heiner and König, Thomas, ‘Institutional Reform and Decision-Making Efficiency in the European Union’, American Journal of Political Science, 44: 4 (2000), pp. 653–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ Golub, Jonathan, ‘The Study of Decision-Making Speed in the European Union: Methods, Data and Theory’, European Union Politics, 9: 1 (2008), pp. 167–79;CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Golub, Jonathan, ‘Survival Analysis and European Union Decision-Making’, European Union Politics, 8: 1 (2007), pp. 155–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar