The ties that unbind: intergovernmental decision rules and the policy-opinion link

Abstract

Whether territorial (intergovernmental) decision rules adversely impact the policy-opinion link is a controversial topic, and unresolved in part due to a lack of empirical evidence. This study leverages the European Union's (EU) codecision reform–introduced to tackle the EU's democratic deficit–to evaluate whether it caused EU policies to better track public opinion (mood). The analysis links an original dataset of ideologically scaled EU policies with existing datasets on European public opinion (1990–2008) and applies the difference-in-differences (DiD) causal inference design. The study finds that EU policies adopted under codecision more closely track European public opinion shifts. The finding supports the argument that territorial legislative procedures can hurt the democratic legitimacy of public policies. This has significant implications for the reform of the EU and of global governance, and contributes to the broader field of political representation and the debate on territorial representation.