Publisert i
Journal of European Public Policy 15(8), 2008, pages 1205-1221.
Also in Bjorn Lindberg, Anne Rasmussen and Andreas Warntjen (eds.), The Role of Political Parties in the European Union. London: Routledge, 2009.
Sammendrag
Ideology is widely seen as a powerful explanatory force of behaviour
in collective decision-making. Yet, research on the Council of the European Union,
the chief legislative body in the European Union, has only recently started to pay
attention to ideology. We investigate to what extent formal position-taking can be
explained by the ideological party affiliation of the governing parties. The focus is
twofold. First, can aggregated coalition patterns be explained by ideological party
affiliation? Second, do countries change coalition partners when there is a change
of parties in government?