Search

This article examines how decision makers in the EU legislative process reach consensual decisions through the mechanism of ‘implicit voting’. I introduce a spatial model of coalitional bargaining using a utility function incorporating decision makers’ considerations of the policy gains they expect to obtain from the outcome and the policy concessions they need to give other decision makers so as to have the outcome accepted. The model predicts the formation of a compact coalition, which will be able to implement the final policy. As a compact coalition typically integrates a majority of like-minded legislators, consensual outcomes reached through coalition formations are likely to occur under conditions of preference polarization and reflect ideological choices towards one side of the political spectrum. The empirical evaluation of the model for 44 proposals and 111 issues of the EU legislative process requiring qualified majority voting confirms the expectations of the model and suggests that implicit voting is specifically relevant to explaining decisions leading to high or low levels of policy change.

Most studies of party competition consider the presentation of ambiguous positions a costly strategy. This literature, however, does not study party strategies in multiple issue dimensions. Yet multidimensionality may play an important role in parties’ strategic calculus. Although it may be rational for a party to emphasize a certain issue dimension, it may be equally rational to disguise its stance on other dimensions by blurring its position. This article argues that parties employ strategies of issue emphasis and position blurring in various dimensional contexts. Who emphasizes and who blurs thus depends on the actors’ relative stakes in different issue dimensions. The paper makes its case by performing cross-sectional analyses of 132 political parties in 14 West European party systems using Comparative Manifesto Project data, the 2006 Chapel Hill expert survey and the 2009 European Election Study.