Stéphanie Novak co-authored the paper with Renaud Dehousse and Selma Bendjaballah, both Sciences Po Paris.
Abstract
The current crisis could lead us to expect an overall increase of conflicts in the EU legislative process and eventually a shift from a consensual system to a majoritarian system. This paper aims to assess the evolution of conflict in the EU legislative process in order to test this expectation. We first define several intra-institutional and inter-institutional indicators of conflict. Then we assess the evolution of conflict for the period 1996-2014.
The data show a limited increase of conflict in the legislative process. However, the legislative actors still comply with the norm of consensus; the EU political system has not shifted from a consensual system to a majoritarian system. In order to explain this trend and apparent lack of change, we put forward several hypotheses: The institutions’ adaptation by stealth; the inter-institutional drive towards legislative productivity; institutional patriotism; the lack of transparency of public data.
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