Marcello Carammia | University of Malta (original) (raw)
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Papers by Marcello Carammia
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2016
While some observers have claimed that the European Council has become the key institution in Eur... more While some observers have claimed that the European Council has become the key institution in European Union politics, others have argued that the Council's role has remained relatively stable over time. In this article, we argue that an analysis of agenda formation dynamics in the European Council may help us understand better how the European Council works and how its role has evolved over time. Building on theories of agenda-setting, we identify two ideal-typical modes of agenda formation: selective targeting and routine monitoring. Based on a comprehensive dataset of coded European Council Conclusions in the period 1975–2011, we show that the substantive content of the European Council agenda shows little change over time. However, in terms of agenda formation dynamics, we find a marked shift toward routine monitoring of issues. This supports the claim that the European Council is developing into the EU's de facto government.
"The Anatomy of a Misfit: The 2014 European Election in Malta" has been published on Taylor & Fra... more "The Anatomy of a Misfit: The 2014 European Election in Malta" has been published on Taylor & Francis Online. It is available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13608746.2015.1075313.
As a Taylor & Francis author you can:
download the article from My Authored Works. From this page you will always have access to all your articles on Taylor & Francis Online (instructions below), and be able to see which other articles have cited yours.
share online access to your article with up to 50 colleagues by forwarding this eprint link http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Hi3azNwmXaHvg72pH2s9/full or by adding it to your social media profile. Research suggests that early readership drives citation levels up.
Accessing your article
In Jean Michel De Waele, Nathalie Brack, and Jean‐Benoit Pilet (eds) (2015), Les Democraties Europeennes, Paris: Armand Colin
in Nicolò Conti and Francesco Marangoni (eds) (2015) The Challenge of Coalition Government: The Italian case. Abingdon: Routledge, 36-57.
In Lorenzo De Sio, Vincenzo Emanuele and Nicola Maggini (eds.) (2014) The European Parliament Elections of 2014. Rome: CISE – Centro Italiano di Studi Elettorali, 215-222.
in Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave (eds) (2014) Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems. A Comparative Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 164-182
To test the effect of different degree of party competition on the program-to-policy link this pa... more To test the effect of different degree of party competition on the program-to-policy link this paper makes use of the original CMP design, but departs from it in the way both party intentions and policy output are operationalized. First, we focus on legislative production, rather than budget expenditures, as a measure of the policy output. Second, we adopt the Comparative Agendas Project coding techniques, which allow us to compare the policy content of party manifestos and laws based on a common measurement instrument. In other words, our approach is to test the degree of congruence between party and legislative agendas (i.e. how attention is distributed across policy sectors) rather than between parties’ positions along a policy dimension and a related direction in their policy behavior once in power. The underlying assumption is that the policy priorities claimed by parties during the electoral campaign have a bearing on subsequent legislative priorities. In building the legislative agenda, government and parliamentary actors have to factor in a complex mix of input signals coming from the external world, namely the multitude of pressures and problems asking every day for government intervention. With attention being a finite resource they will end up prioritizing some issues instead of others. The focus on “agendas” allows to check whether the activity of legislative prioritization is, at least in part, affected by party agendas as outlined in party manifestos.
in Yann-Sven Rittelmeyer and François Foret, (eds) (2014) The European Council and European Governance. The Commanding Heights of the EU. London: Routledge, p. 53-72.
Policy Studies …, Jan 2012
The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for s... more The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content-coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36-year period, agenda-setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium-sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time-points.
Policy Studies Journal, 2012
The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for s... more The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content-coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36-year period, agenda-setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium-sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time-points.
Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica, 2010
Quando, come e perché una determinata questione entra nell'agenda di un sistema politico... more Quando, come e perché una determinata questione entra nell'agenda di un sistema politico? Quali attori ne spingono o ne frenano il passaggio dal dibat-tito pubblico alle arene decisionali? Quali aspetti specifici, tra quelli connessi al problema, guadagnano ...
in Chueca, A., Gutiérrez, V.A., Blazquez, I. (eds.), Migraciones internacionales en el Mediterráneo y Unión Europea: un reto. Barcelona: Huygens (2009) pp. 73-102
in Revista de Derecho Migratorio y Extranjeria, 19 (2008): 85-305
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2016
While some observers have claimed that the European Council has become the key institution in Eur... more While some observers have claimed that the European Council has become the key institution in European Union politics, others have argued that the Council's role has remained relatively stable over time. In this article, we argue that an analysis of agenda formation dynamics in the European Council may help us understand better how the European Council works and how its role has evolved over time. Building on theories of agenda-setting, we identify two ideal-typical modes of agenda formation: selective targeting and routine monitoring. Based on a comprehensive dataset of coded European Council Conclusions in the period 1975–2011, we show that the substantive content of the European Council agenda shows little change over time. However, in terms of agenda formation dynamics, we find a marked shift toward routine monitoring of issues. This supports the claim that the European Council is developing into the EU's de facto government.
"The Anatomy of a Misfit: The 2014 European Election in Malta" has been published on Taylor & Fra... more "The Anatomy of a Misfit: The 2014 European Election in Malta" has been published on Taylor & Francis Online. It is available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13608746.2015.1075313.
As a Taylor & Francis author you can:
download the article from My Authored Works. From this page you will always have access to all your articles on Taylor & Francis Online (instructions below), and be able to see which other articles have cited yours.
share online access to your article with up to 50 colleagues by forwarding this eprint link http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Hi3azNwmXaHvg72pH2s9/full or by adding it to your social media profile. Research suggests that early readership drives citation levels up.
Accessing your article
In Jean Michel De Waele, Nathalie Brack, and Jean‐Benoit Pilet (eds) (2015), Les Democraties Europeennes, Paris: Armand Colin
in Nicolò Conti and Francesco Marangoni (eds) (2015) The Challenge of Coalition Government: The Italian case. Abingdon: Routledge, 36-57.
In Lorenzo De Sio, Vincenzo Emanuele and Nicola Maggini (eds.) (2014) The European Parliament Elections of 2014. Rome: CISE – Centro Italiano di Studi Elettorali, 215-222.
in Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave (eds) (2014) Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems. A Comparative Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 164-182
To test the effect of different degree of party competition on the program-to-policy link this pa... more To test the effect of different degree of party competition on the program-to-policy link this paper makes use of the original CMP design, but departs from it in the way both party intentions and policy output are operationalized. First, we focus on legislative production, rather than budget expenditures, as a measure of the policy output. Second, we adopt the Comparative Agendas Project coding techniques, which allow us to compare the policy content of party manifestos and laws based on a common measurement instrument. In other words, our approach is to test the degree of congruence between party and legislative agendas (i.e. how attention is distributed across policy sectors) rather than between parties’ positions along a policy dimension and a related direction in their policy behavior once in power. The underlying assumption is that the policy priorities claimed by parties during the electoral campaign have a bearing on subsequent legislative priorities. In building the legislative agenda, government and parliamentary actors have to factor in a complex mix of input signals coming from the external world, namely the multitude of pressures and problems asking every day for government intervention. With attention being a finite resource they will end up prioritizing some issues instead of others. The focus on “agendas” allows to check whether the activity of legislative prioritization is, at least in part, affected by party agendas as outlined in party manifestos.
in Yann-Sven Rittelmeyer and François Foret, (eds) (2014) The European Council and European Governance. The Commanding Heights of the EU. London: Routledge, p. 53-72.
Policy Studies …, Jan 2012
The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for s... more The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content-coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36-year period, agenda-setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium-sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time-points.
Policy Studies Journal, 2012
The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for s... more The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content-coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36-year period, agenda-setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium-sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time-points.
Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica, 2010
Quando, come e perché una determinata questione entra nell'agenda di un sistema politico... more Quando, come e perché una determinata questione entra nell'agenda di un sistema politico? Quali attori ne spingono o ne frenano il passaggio dal dibat-tito pubblico alle arene decisionali? Quali aspetti specifici, tra quelli connessi al problema, guadagnano ...
in Chueca, A., Gutiérrez, V.A., Blazquez, I. (eds.), Migraciones internacionales en el Mediterráneo y Unión Europea: un reto. Barcelona: Huygens (2009) pp. 73-102
in Revista de Derecho Migratorio y Extranjeria, 19 (2008): 85-305