The dimensionality and nature of conflict in European Union politics: On the characteristics of intergovernmental decision-making

Tim Veen
Additional contact information
Tim Veen: University of Mannheim, Germany, tim.veen@uni-mannheim.de

European Union Politics, 2011, vol. 12, issue 1, 65-86

Abstract: This article analyses the dimensionality and nature of political conflict in the European Union Council of Ministers between 1998 and 2007. By comparing policy platforms of member state governments, multidimensional scaling techniques are employed to make inferences about the dimensionality of the Council’s political space. The dimensions are interpreted performing 1250 multiple regression analyses. The results largely corroborate the assumption that cleavages are structured along geographically defined clusters of states. After Eastern enlargement (2004), a North—South divide was replaced by an East—West cleavage. The analysis moreover suggests that there are two stable conflict dimensions within the Council’s political space. The first is an integration dimension that represents the support for deepening European Union integration and the transfer of sovereignty to a supranational level. The second is a ‘policy’ dimension, manifested predominantly in disputes over redistributive policies.

Keywords: Council of Ministers; European integration; political conflict; political space (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116510391918 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:12:y:2011:i:1:p:65-86

DOI: 10.1177/1465116510391918

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().