The European Union (EU) poses quite profound questions for scholars and students of the social and political sciences. This benchmark Handbook is designed to provide an authoritative state-of-the art guide to the scope of the field suitable for both established scholars and students of the EU; reflect and contribute to the debates about the nature of the field of EU studies and EU politics in particular; and explore in detail the development of the many approaches to the study of EU politics. Divided into four sections, the Handbook focuses on theorizing European integration; the EU as polity; politics and policy making in the EU; and the EU and the international system.

Legislative Politics

Legislative politics

Introduction

Characterizing the ways in which legislation is made in the European Union is a complicated business. Different decision rules apply in different policy domains and the full array of legislative procedures can be bewildering for the uninitiated. The balance of power between the principal institutions varies under each legislative procedure, necessitating different strategies and imposing different bargaining requirements on the main actors. An exhaustive account of legislative politics in the European Union (EU) is beyond the scope of a single chapter; the details of the various legislative processes are admirably documented in several texts (for comprehensive accounts see Nugent 2003; Hix 2005; Wallace et al. 2005). Rather, this chapter aims to examine some of the more recent controversies that have arisen in ...

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