The Impact of Enlargement on Legislative Decision Making in the European Union.

What impact has the 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU) had on legislative decision making? The present paper answers this question, first, by assessing the nature of the controversies and the alignments of actors on those controversies before and after enlargement. I find substantial variation in actor alignments across issues, both before and after enlargement. However, since enlargement a divide between old and new member states has been evident, particularly on issues about financial subsidies. Second, the paper examines whether enlargement has changed the way in which controversies are resolved. What model of legislative decision making gives the most accurate predictions of decision outcomes? Both before and after enlargement, a simple bargaining model, the Nash Bargaining Solution, gives significantly more accurate predictions of decision outcomes than a procedural model. The paper examines the impact of enlargement with a new dataset on legislative decision making in the EU. The dataset has been assembled through 228 semi-structured interviews with key informants. The dataset contains information on the positions taken by EU actors on 229 controversial issues raised by 87 legislative proposals from before and after the 2004 enlargement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]