Peter Hille
email: peter.hille@gmx.de

Christoph Knill
email: christoph.knill@uni-konstanz.de

'It's the Bureaucracy, Stupid' The Implementation of the Acquis Communautaire in EU Candidate Countries

The Central and East European (CEE) countries that had applied for membership in the European Union were confronted with far-reaching requirements in order to bring domestic policies in line with EU standards. Notwithstanding these rather uniform pressures emerging from conditionality, there is considerable variety in alignment performance across the candidate countries and over time. To account for this, we use time series cross-sectional data on the implementation performance of 13 EU candidate countries between 1999 and 2003. Our results indicate that the bureaucratic strength and effectiveness of a country positively influence its ability to adjust domestic arrangements to EU requirements. By contrast, we find no support for veto-player theories of political constraints on legislative change. We hence conclude that the implementation of the acquis communautaire in candidate countries prior to accession has been a question of bureaucratic problems rather than of political veto-manoeuvres.

Introduction

Fundamental change has happened in large parts of Europe during the last 10 years. Those countries that had applied for membership of the European Union (EU) during the 1990s have undergone transformation of unprecedented scope and speed in order to bring their economic and political structures in line with EU standards. This implied far-reaching reforms of legislation, administration and macroeconomic policies. Most scholars agree that this process has been driven by the conditionality of EU membership and its prospective gains for the candidate countries (see [START_REF] Schimmelfennig | Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe[END_REF]. However, the candidate countries 1 have not carried out reforms at a steady pace and with equal success. Both between countries and across time, variation has occurred in the implementation of the acquis communautaire.

How can this variation in implementation performance be explained? When looking at the growing body of literature on the implementation of EU policies, it is difficult to come up with a clear answer to this question. This results from two factors. First, we are confronted with competing theoretical approaches in order to account for implementation effectiveness in the member states. Although a number of studies emphasize the influence of characteristics of the domestic administrative and legal system as well as their compatibility with European requirements (see [START_REF] Duina | Explaining Legal Implementation in the European Union[END_REF][START_REF] Knill | Change as "Appropriate Adaptation": Administrative Adjustment to European Environmental Policy in Britain and Germany[END_REF][START_REF] Bailey | National Adaptation to European Integration: Institutional Vetoes and Goodness-of-Fit[END_REF], others point to the importance of institutional and political constraints affecting the domestic capacity of corresponding policy adjustments (see [START_REF] Haverland | National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points[END_REF][START_REF] Mbaye | Why National States Comply with Supranational Law: Explaining Implementation Infringements in the European Union, 1972-1993[END_REF][START_REF] Mastenbroek | Surviving the Deadline: The Transposition of EU Directives in the Netherlands[END_REF][START_REF] Versluis | Explaining Variations in Implementation of EU Directives[END_REF].

Second, this persistence of theoretical ambiguity partially results from the lack of comprehensive empirical data. So far, there are only a limited number of case studies that have investigated the formal and practical implementation of EU law with regard to certain policies and countries. More comprehensive quantitative studies, by contrast, primarily concentrate on the aspect of formal transposition of EU law or infringement proceedings, where the relevant data are easily available from Commission sources (albeit questionable in terms of quality; see [START_REF] Börzel | Non-Compliance in the European Union: Pathology or Statistical Artefact?[END_REF]. Comprehensive theory-building is thus primarily based on the analysis of formal implementation, although it is highly debatable that this aspect constitutes a viable proxy for the effectiveness of practical application.

In this paper, we try to address these problems. We derive hypotheses from the differing theoretical arguments in order to test them empirically for the implementation performance of EU candidate countries. In this context, we investigate not only aspects of formal transposition but also the extent to which EU requirements are applied in practice in the countries under investigation. Our study therefore addresses an important gap in existing implementation research.

We proceed in the following way. First, we discuss relevant theories that explain the preconditions for domestic policy change and hence effective implementation of EU requirements. Second, we use time series crosssectional data on the implementation performance of 13 EU candidate countries between 1999 and 2003 to test several hypotheses derived from the theoretical discussion. Applying linear regression technique, we find empirical support for the claim that a candidate country's administrative strength positively influences its ability to adjust domestic arrangements to EU requirements. By contrast, our findings provide no support for veto-player theories of political constraints on legislative change. This leads us to the conclusion that the implementation of the acquis communautaire in candidate countries prior to accession has been a question of bureaucratic problems rather than political veto-playing.

Theory: Capacities of pre-accession alignment

The central question addressed in this article is why we find differences with regard to the performance of EU candidate countries in implementing the acquis communautaire prior to accession (pre-accession alignment). We are interested in the extent to which the candidate countries were able to bring their policies -in both formal and practical terms -in line with the EU requirements. Given this conception of our dependent variable, the implementation performance of the countries under study is affected by two central aspects that define the capacity of a country to enact political change, namely (1) its decisionmaking capacity and (2) its capability to implement these decisions in practice.

This particular scope of our study has several consequences with regard to the development of our theoretical approach. These aspects will be discussed in the following section before our theoretical considerations are presented in more detail.

Pre-accession alignment and implementation theory

Although the analysis of pre-accession policy alignment in the EU candidate countries is closely related to questions of the implementation of EU law, we still need to clarify whether and to what extent existing theories on the implementation of EU legislation are actually suitable for the purpose of the underlying study.

First, we have to consider the fact that the situation of the candidate countries in the pre-accession stage crucially differed from that of existing member states. The candidate countries did not take part in any decisionmaking processes on primary or secondary EU legislation and other EU instruments and they were also not legally obliged to implement EU law. This is why we will not include hypotheses derived from theories of strategic noncompliance (e.g. [START_REF] Fearon | Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation[END_REF] in our analysis.

Second, this constellation does not, however, imply that theories of policy change and policy implementation cannot be applied to account for performance variation in pre-accession alignment. There are two reasons for this. On the one hand, notwithstanding the absence of obligations emerging from Community law, legal requirements for policy adjustment in the candidate countries exist. Several free trade agreements that have been expanded into so-called Europe Agreements provide the institutional framework for bilateral relations between the candidate countries on the one side and the EU and its member states on the other.

On the other hand, Accession Partnerships were established at the start of accession negotiations between the EU and the candidate countries. In these documents, the candidate countries made precise commitments regarding the change in their policies in a large range of areas. Most importantly, the candidates committed themselves to implementing the acquis communautaire. From 1998 onwards, the Commission established a monitoring system of regular yearly reports to supervise and assess progress towards accession by each of the candidate countries. All these measures, labelled a 'preaccession strategy' by the European Commission, are aimed at one decisive goal: the candidates' complete achievement of the Copenhagen Criteria, which were set out as preconditions to membership by the European Council in 1993, when the presidency concluded:

Membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. Membership presupposes the candidate's ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union. (European Council, 1993) What they had to achieve -and are partly still undertaking -can be called 'policy alignment', which implies that the countries are able to decide on and implement far-reaching policy changes. In contrast to member states' steady implementation of EU policies, the candidate countries face a much greater degree of policy change within a much shorter period, which implies the adjustment of existing policies not in line with EU legal requirements as well as the development of new policies in line with the acquis.

Third, based on this conditionality of accession combined with the applicant states' strong economic and political interests in joining the EU, we assume that the governments of these countries are generally willing to effectively align their policies. In other words, ineffective or delayed implementation should not be the result of a general lack of political commitment in the applicant states. Of course, this does not imply that the intensity of this commitment might not vary across countries and over time, hence causing variance in alignment performance. We will take this aspect into consideration by including the party political positions on the EU in our analysis.

Fourth, on the basis of our data, we are able to investigate the degree of both formal and practical compliance with EU requirements. As mentioned in the introduction, this contrasts with many quantitative analyses on the implementation of EU policies that are primarily based on data on formal transposition and infringements (for a concise overview of the state of the art, see [START_REF] Mastenbroek | EU Compliance -Still a "Black Hole"?[END_REF]. Our analysis thus contributes to overcoming existing research gaps with regard to a comprehensive assessment of practical compliance with EU law.

At the same time, however, the nature and focus of our data do not allow for a differentiated assessment of alignment performance with regard to single measures or directives. As a consequence, we will not consider theories that emphasize the legal design of European measures (e.g. the degree of legal specification or the timing of implementation deadlines) and the decisionmaking procedure as explanatory factors in order to account for variation in implementation effectiveness (see [START_REF] Mastenbroek | Surviving the Deadline: The Transposition of EU Directives in the Netherlands[END_REF][START_REF] Versluis | Explaining Variations in Implementation of EU Directives[END_REF]. Moreover, this more general rather than issue-or policy-specific focus of the study does not allow for testing theories on the differential impact of conditionality, according to which the strength of conditionality as well as the clarity of the requirements should have a positive influence on implementation effectiveness [START_REF] Schimmelfennig | Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe[END_REF].

As a result of these considerations, we concentrate in the following on theories that address both political and bureaucratic capacities and constraints in order to account for variation in the candidate countries' performance in pre-accession alignment. The following sections will show that the theories applied in this context differ with regard to their explanatory focus; i.e. the extent to which they can account for the decision-making or implementation capacity of the political systems in question. As a first step, however, we will briefly clarify why the theories that were developed to explain the implementation of EU policies in the member states are also relevant with regard to the pre-accession alignment of candidate states.

Political capacities and constraints

There is a broad consensus in the literature that the institutional characteristics of domestic political systems have an important impact on their reform capacity and performance. This implies that differences in political institutions will have consequences for the ability of countries to cope effectively with EU requirements. However, although most authors agree that domestic institutions matter, contradictory expectations about the effects of different arrangements on implementation effectiveness can be found. An important debate in this respect refers to the extent to which institutional constraints on political decision-makers restrict or increase a country's capacity for effectively changing its policies.

Emphasizing the positive impact of institutional constraints on the policy performance of political systems, [START_REF] Lijphart | Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government[END_REF][START_REF] Lijphart | Democracies: Forms, Performance and Constitutional Engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Lijphart | Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries[END_REF]) has investigated the respective effects of different institutional settings in democratic systems. Lijphart distinguishes consensus democracies from majoritarian democracies, arguing that democracies encompassing elements that increase the necessity for consensual decisions generally perform better than those whose decisions are based upon majoritarian rule. There are several reasons for this.

First, proportional representation is to be preferred to plurality. Consensual political institutions, consisting of multi-party legislatures, sharing government responsibility through coalitions and collegial executives, and proportional electoral systems have a greater capacity to represent diffuse groups and are less pressured by special interest groups. Second, consensus democracies have a greater capacity to implement policies, given the broad representation of affected interests during the decision-making process -an aspect that might outweigh greater needs to accommodate diversity during the stage of decision-making [START_REF] Birchfield | The Impact of Constitutional Structures and Collective and Competitive Veto Points on Income Inequality in Industrialized Democracies[END_REF]. Third, consensus democracies have a greater capacity to develop policies over a longer period of time, avoiding the problems of stop-and-go policy-making found in majoritarian systems [START_REF] Crombez | Legislative Procedures in the European Community[END_REF].

Lijphart's findings suggest that consensus democracies are performing 'at least as effectively in public policy-making' (Lijphart, 1994: 8) as majoritarian ones. These results are backed by other scholars who assert that federalist structures improve governments' ability to provide security and pass effective legislation [START_REF] Elazar | Exploring Federalism[END_REF][START_REF] Ostrom | The Meaning of American Federalism: Constituting a Self-Governing Society[END_REF][START_REF] Crombez | Legislative Procedures in the European Community[END_REF]. Hellman (1998: 231) shows for post-communist countries that governments with many veto players have been more successful in adopting and implementing economic reforms. He argues that a more inclusive political system is better able to produce comprehensive reform and is less prone to partial reforms serving particularistic interests. We should therefore also expect consensus democracies to perform better than majoritarian systems with regard to the formal and practical implementation of EU policies. On the basis of the arguments advanced by Lijphart, we can derive the following hypothesis: H1: The more a candidate country reveals characteristics of a consensus democracy, the better it will be able to align its policies towards EU policies.

The veto-player approach as developed by [START_REF] Tsebelis | Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartism[END_REF][START_REF] Tsebelis | Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work[END_REF], however, questions this expectation. Instead of distinguishing between different forms of democracy -comparing presidential with parliamentary systems or unicameral with bicameral legislations -Tsebelis looks directly at the number and constellation of actors that are involved in decision-making processes. Veto players, i.e. those actors 'who can block the adoption of a policy', are crucial (Tsebelis, 1995: 305). Tsebelis hypothesizes that policy change becomes more difficult, ceteris paribus, with a growing number of veto players; i.e. the more players it takes to change the status quo.

Moving beyond the institutionalist approach applied by Lijphart, Tsebelis also includes actors' preferences in his model. Tsebelis (2002: 330-3) introduces an 'absorption rule', according to which the number of veto players is not relevant to policy stability if they have similar preferences. The policy stability of the state then grows not only with the number of veto players in the system but also with certain constellations of the veto players' preferences.

First, the congruence of veto players' preferences is of importance. The more they differ in their policy positions, the less probable is policy change. Tsebelis applies his concept of the size of win-sets to show that, with increasing distance between the veto players, the number of outcomes that can replace the status quo may be reduced. Secondly, the internal cohesion of collective veto players is relevant because it determines whether they can easily agree on a common position. If one or more veto players are internally divided, changing legislation may become harder in cases of low congruence between veto players.

In empirical tests of his theory, [START_REF] Tsebelis | Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartism[END_REF][START_REF] Tsebelis | Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work[END_REF] finds support for the suggested relationship between the numbers and preference distances of veto players and the probability of policy change. The results of his regression analyses with data for 18 advanced industrialized countries suggest that there is a negative relation between the number and distance of veto players on the one hand and the number of important laws passed on the other hand. Tsebelis' finding is thus consistent with the expectations put forward in his work, which is theoretically backed -among other things -by literature on divided government (e.g. [START_REF] Fiorina | Divided Government[END_REF] and earlier work on federalism [START_REF] Riker | Federalism: Origins, Operation, Significance[END_REF]. Recent studies on the implementation of EU legislation also underline the argument (see, for instance, [START_REF] Haverland | National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points[END_REF][START_REF] Giuliani | Europeanization in Perspective: Institutional Fit and Adaptation[END_REF].

H2:

The fewer the political constraints -from both constitutional and partisan actors -prevailing in a candidate country, the better it will be able to align its policies towards EU policies.

In sum, we are thus confronted with partially contradictory expectations regarding the implementation effectiveness of EU law in the countries under study. Whereas the theory of consensus democracy emphasizes the advantages of the dispersion of political powers, and hence of more rather than fewer veto points, the theory of veto players points in exactly the opposite direction. It is important to emphasize in this context, however, that, by taking the performance of political systems as the dependent variable, Lijphart's approach constitutes a more encompassing perspective on implementation effectiveness, including not only the capacity to enact political reforms but also the potential for the effective application of these decisions. Tsebelis, by contrast, is concerned only with the decision-making capacity of political systems, without examining more closely the effects of these decisions on actual performance.

Bureaucratic capacities and constraints

Theoretical approaches to account for varying degrees of implementation effectiveness of EU policies in the member states are not restricted to the analysis of the institutions and actor constellations of national political systems. Rather, there are numerous studies that emphasize the need to investigate the resources and characteristics of the national bureaucracies. This is particularly true when it comes to the analysis of the practical application of EU law; i.e. the extent to which national administrative practices and structures are adjusted to EU requirements. In the literature, emphasis is especially placed on three characteristics of national administrations, namely, their financial resources, their strength, and the degree of fit of existing administrative arrangements with European requirements.

With regard to the first aspect, financial capacities, conventional wisdom has it that 'money makes the world go round'. But does it also spin the wheel of policy-making? Answering in the affirmative, Chayes and Chayes (1993: 178) assume that 'governmental resources for policy analysis and decision making are costly and in short supply' (see also Haas et al., 1994). This 'management approach' assumes that failure to implement international treaties can rarely be attributed to a deliberate decision but is more often the result of problems of state capacity, namely, governmental or general resource scarcity. Falkner et al. (2004: 461) put it clearly: 'Sufficient financial or personnel resources are crucial for efficient implementation.' Their study of the implementation of six directives in 15 member states reveals that -besides political opposition and issue-linkage -administrative shortcomings were the 'prime source of transposition failure ' (2004: 466) in 7 infringement cases out of 29. Pridham (1994: 99) acknowledges the same problem for the implementation of EU legislation in saying that the relatively poor 'southern countries do have particular problems of administrative procedure and competence'. In more detailed studies of EU environmental policy, both Krämer (1996: 31) and [START_REF] Demmke | Towards Effective Environmental Regulation: Innovative Approaches in Implementing and Enforcing European Environmental Law and Policy[END_REF] identify insufficient financing as the main cause of member states' implementation problems in this field.

The underlying causal mechanism of these assertions is relatively straightforward: greater financial resources allow for a more prompt, comprehensive and sophisticated implementation of policies because civil servants, their training, their computers, their offices and their cars, cost money. Moreover, resources can buy the infrastructure that enables the steady flow of information that is essential for the accountability of lower levels of hierarchies [START_REF] Phedon | Improving Policy Implementation in an Enlarged European Union: The Case of National Regulatory Authorities[END_REF] and for the monitoring of the effects of policies. In addition, administrations that are in charge of greater resources also possess a greater capacity to provide citizens with positive incentives in order to increase their compliance with regulatory requirements.

H3:

The more financial resources are available to a candidate country's government, the better it will be able to align its policies towards EU policies.

The administrative capabilities to implement European legislation are affected not only by the financial resources of the bureaucracy but also by the effectiveness and quality of organizational structures and practices. This general strength of the bureaucracy is determined by several aspects. First, it depends on the extent to which national bureaucracies can perform their functions with a certain degree of autonomy from political pressure. Especially in transformation countries, which have been characterized by rapid changes in government, a certain degree of bureaucratic stability and independence from political developments has to be seen as an important precondition to ensure continuity when adjusting domestic arrangements to EU requirements. By contrast, in countries that lack the cushioning effect of an autonomous and well-developed bureaucracy, there is a higher probability that a change in government will yield negative effects with regard to the performance of policy formulation and day-to-day administrative functions. Second, bureaucratic strength increases with the extent to which administrative activities are based on clearly specified legal rules. Third, accountability is generally seen as a crucial factor that increases the quality and effectiveness of administrative authorities (see [START_REF] Evans | Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of "Weberian" State Structures on Economic Growth[END_REF]Knill, 2001: 61-85;[START_REF] Peters | The Politics of Bureaucracy[END_REF].

H4:

The greater the strength of its bureaucracies in terms of bureaucratic autonomy, accountability and legal specification of administrative behaviour and procedures, the better a country will be able to align its policies towards EU policies.

Implementation problems, however, can be traced not only to a lack of bureaucratic strength or sufficient resources. They might also be the result of a lack of compatibility of domestic administrative styles and structures with the requirements emerging from European legislation (see [START_REF] Duina | Explaining Legal Implementation in the European Union[END_REF][START_REF] Knill | Change as "Appropriate Adaptation": Administrative Adjustment to European Environmental Policy in Britain and Germany[END_REF][START_REF] Knill | The Europeanisation of National Administrations: Patterns of Institutional Change and Persistence[END_REF][START_REF] Börzel | Non-Compliance in the European Union: Pathology or Statistical Artefact?[END_REF][START_REF] Bursens | Why Denmark and Belgium Have Different Implementation Records: On Transposition Laggards and Leaders in the EU[END_REF]. In this context, it is argued that effective implementation can be expected only as long as European requirements do not challenge well-established administrative styles and structures at the national level. Thus, a positive relationship between the institutional fit of national administrations and their performance in implementing EU legislation is hypothesized.

However, in contrast to existing member states, the candidate countries were undergoing a far-reaching process of political, administrative and economic transformation while trying to bring domestic arrangements in line with European requirements. As a result of this development, we consider theories emphasizing institutional fit as a crucial predictor of implementation performance to be of limited relevance. We can hardly expect administrative traditions in the sense of well-established administrative styles and structures to be of explanatory relevance because these traditions themselves are subject to fundamental changes in the context of the transformation process. We will therefore not consider theories based on these arguments in closer detail.

Empirical test

On the basis of the theoretical discussion, we have derived several factors that might account for the variation in the implementation of the acquis in the candidate countries, including the number of veto players, the resources of the bureaucracy and bureaucratic autonomy. In the following, the hypotheses based on our theoretical assessment will be tested empirically.

Variables and operationalization

Following the central research question addressed in this paper, the performance of the candidate countries in aligning their policies towards EU requirements is conceived as the dependent variable. This variable is not easily quantified and measured. However, the task is facilitated by the fact that the European Commission has been closely monitoring the process of alignment in the candidate countries on a yearly basis from 1998 to 2004, and continues to monitor the countries that have not yet become members of the Union. 2 These reports were introduced to provide a measure for exactly what we have conceptualized as policy alignment. They encompass candidate countries' progress with regard to not only the formal transposition of EU policies but also the aspect of practical application.

We use these documents to construct an indicator that quantifies the countries' performances in the years 1999 to 2003. For reasons of missing data, we exclude the year 1998. We also leave out the year 2004 because in this year most of the countries under study lost their status as accession countries and became EU member states.

Obviously, this indicator would not be a valid measurement of the above concept if the European Commission were biased -by political or other reasons -towards under-or overestimating the performance of certain of the candidate countries. In particular, it might be argued that the different starting positions of the countries (e.g. in terms of their economic performance or the development of human rights or environmental standards) have a decisive influence on the dependent variable, implying that countries starting from a more advanced position are generally evaluated better than countries revealing a much bigger gap between the domestic status quo and EU requirements. However, this argument of a systematic influence on the dependent variable by the distance of a country from the desired status does not hold because the Commission reports focus on relative changes -i.e. the progress of a country -rather than on absolute gaps. 'The accession conditions apply to all the candidates, regardless of how far they are from membership. Both frontrunners and those further from accession need to show that they are making progress' [START_REF] Grabbe | How Does Europeanization Affect CEE Governance? Conditionality, Diffusion and Diversity[END_REF](Grabbe, : 1016)). We thus assume that the Commission reports constitute a sound indicator to measure progress in pre-accession alignment in the candidate countries.

Using content analysis, we apply a word-in-context 3 method that measures the frequency, direction and intensity of criticism or approval of the candidate countries' performances. The Commission's reports appear to be appropriate for this kind of analysis because they use strongly formalized language. Even though the reports are prepared by different country teams, their structure and wording are very similiar.

We consider only word groups that clearly relate to the application of EU policies, i.e. that appear close to or are mentioned in a clear context with words such as acquis, Accession Partnership Priorities or certain policy fields' denotations such as 'in the environmental sector'. Furthermore, we consider only words that appear in a context that assesses the progress of a candidate country over one year and not statements that concern the overall level of alignment independent of actions taken or not taken during the year under consideration.

For these word groups we first define the direction of the statement, which can point to either criticism or approval. Then the intensity of the statement is determined: we differentiate between strong, medium and weak. Statements that include adverbs such as very, strongly, significantly, urgently or adjectives such as substantial, serious, major, important are considered to be strong. Weak statements include words such as some, partially, limited, as well as notions of incompleteness and recommendations that are formulated in the subjunctive form. All remaining word groups are categorized as implying medium intensity. Next, every word group of weak criticism is evaluated with one minus point, medium criticism with two minus points and strong disapproval with three minus points. The same logic applies to word groups that express approval, such as the statement 'in the field of food safety, substantial progress has been made'. In a comprehensive coding scheme, we determined all the specific words to be counted in the content analysis. Finally, the total points for each country and each year were summed to give an overall and comparable assessment of their alignment performance during the particular year. This indicator might be subject to the many shortcomings associated with the rather indirect measuring that content analysis provides. It has, however, the benefit of being an easily replicable and reliable measurement of the concept of policy alignment. (An inter-coder reliability test with a different coding person yielded a value of 0.78 for Lin's concordance.)

Running a logistic regression of the candidate countries' performances as measured by this indicator on their chance of accession, we find that with one word group of weak criticism above average a country's probability of joining the Union in 2004 sank by 0.08 approximately, at a significance level of 0.1%. This means that a country that obtained more than the average criticism in the Commission reports of 1999-2003 was less likely to become a EU member state in 2004. Thus, disregarding political biases inside the Commission, the indicator seems to be at least associated with the Copenhagen criteria of alignment towards EU policies.

Based on our theoretical considerations above, we consider the following independent variables in order to account for variation in the alignment performance of the candidate countries: political capacities and constraints, governmental financial capabilities, and the general strength of the bureaucracy.

For the measurement of the concept of political capacities and constraints resulting from institutional and partisan veto players we rely on data collected by Witold [START_REF] Henisz | The Institutional Environment for Infrastructure Investment[END_REF]. 4 Henisz's Polcon III index is a measure that estimates the feasibility of policy change in a country in a given year. Henisz has successfully used this indicator as an explanatory variable for infrastructure investment.

To construct the index, Henisz first identified the number of independent branches of government that possess institutional veto power over policy change in a country. Assuming a uniform and one-dimensional policy space, he then incorporated the distance between the preferences of these actors into his index. To do this, he used data on party alignment and the party composition of the executive and legislative branches. Furthermore, the degree of preference heterogeneity within each of the collective actors was included. The Polcon III index is thus constructed according to Tsebelis' concept of veto players outlined above and should provide a valid measure of institutional and partisan constraints on overall policy change in the candidate countries.

At the same time, we use the Polcon III index as an indicator for identifying the extent to which the countries under investigation reflect a more consensual or majoritarian democratic system. We are aware of the fact that this procedure might be criticized because the items covered in the index are not fully congruent with the analytical categories suggested by Lijphart. On the other hand, there is a broad overlap between the categories used by Henisz and Lijphart, the basic difference being that Polcon III contains information on the preferences of political actors, an aspect that is not considered relevant in Lijphart's theory. Moreover, alternative sources and indicators that explicitly concentrate on the measurement of consensus versus majoritarian democracies for our countries under study are not yet available. By employing Henisz's indicator of political constraints we include the impact of institutional and partisan veto players in the empirical test. To be sure, the preferences of these actors are considered only under the assumption of a uniform and one-dimensional policy space.

It is important to emphasize, however, that preferences towards the EU might or might not be correlated with veto players' left-right preferences that Henisz considers in his approach. We thus control for actors' policy positions towards the EU. Yet, such data are not readily available for all the relevant actors that Henisz introduces in his measure. Still, we can come up with a measure for the preference of the single most important actor in the game: the government. We take data from the data set on party policy in modern democracies [START_REF] Benoit | Party Policy in Modern Democracies[END_REF] to construct an indicator that measures the government's political position towards EU membership.

The data set, building on expert surveys, provides a measure ranging from 1 to 20 for the various political parties in the countries considered. A party obtaining a value of 1 is strictly opposed to the country's membership in the EU, and a party attaining a value of 20 is totally in favour of accession to the EU. We merge the values of the different parties in government by weighting them with their strength in the coalition. Strength is defined as a party's percentage of the government's combined share of votes in the last parliamentary election. It seems reasonable to assume that governmental parties with fewer parliamentary seats also have less influence on the government's position concerning EU membership. If this control variable shows a strong positive influence on the alignment performance of a candidate country, then political willingness is crucial for alignment, and institutional factors may have lesser influence.

The quantification of governments' and bureaucracies' financial capabilities should not pose a problem: hard currency will do the job. We include data on yearly government expenditures 5 in US dollars as a proxy for financial administrative capacities. We also incorporate PPP-corrected data on gross domestic product per capita in Euros 6 as a control variable.

To measure the strength of the bureaucracy, we rely on an indicator of overall bureaucratic quality, as measured by the World Bank's index in Governance Matters IV: Governance Indicators for 1996[START_REF] Versluis | Explaining Variations in Implementation of EU Directives[END_REF][START_REF] Kaufmann | Governance Matters IV: Governance Indicators for 1996-2004[END_REF]. The indicator combines analysts' ratings of the quality of the bureaucracy, including the independence of the civil service from political pressure, political stability, bureaucratic accountability and transparency as well as the extent to which administrative activities are based on legal rules and proceedings in the candidate countries. This measure thus provides us with a proxy for the overall strength of the bureaucracy and, together with our measure for the financial resources of the executive and veto players, allows us to compare the influences of structures at the implementation level and of structures at the decision-making level on the success of alignment with the acquis.

Empirical findings

Our data reveal a large amount of variation between the candidate countries' implementation performance. Figure 1 depicts the mean performance of the various countries between 1999 and 2003.

The units of analysis for the empirical analysis are 65 country years, i.e. the 13 candidate countries in the years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. 7 In order to test whether the independent variables outlined above can account for some portion of the variation shown above, an ordinary least squares regression is performed. The regression model is fitted to the cross-sectional time-series nature of the data and allows for an estimation in the presence of temporal autocorrelation within panels. It is specified that there is temporal autocorrelation 8 with regard to the errors for countries and that the coefficient of the process is specific to each country. The linear OLS regression of the five independent variables as operationalized above on the dependent variableperformance in alignment towards EU policies -yields the results shown in Table 1.

First, the political constraints index seems to be relevant. It shows a distinct and statistically significant (at the 95% level) positive correlation between candidate countries' political constraints and their performance in implementing EU policies. This finding supports hypothesis 1 and contradicts hypothesis 2. This lends support to promoters of systems of checks and balances and is in sharp contrast to [START_REF] Tsebelis | Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work[END_REF] theory of the impact of veto players. It seems that, for the countries considered, a higher number of veto players is associated with relatively good alignment performance.

Secondly, the positive correlation between the GDP per capita control variable and alignment performance supports the idea that a candidate country's performance in aligning towards EU policies is dependent on its economic capabilities. It could be that transformation towards the EU regulatory style, characterized by strong economies that can cope with policies of market liberalization, is undertaken more easily in a country characterized by a strong economy. It might thus be mainly EU policies on industry, service and agriculture liberalization that are troublesome for poorer candidate countries. However, the positive correlation of GDP per capita with alignment performance could also reflect certain attitudes inside the Commission. The reports on alignment from which the data were obtained could be biased against poorer countries if there was a fear of endangering the economic stability of the Union by accepting economically weak countries as members.

In order to fully research the causality behind the detected correlation, a more comprehensive analysis disentangling different policy fields is needed. Yet, the GDP per capita variable is statistically significant only at the 90% level. Moreover, referring to governments' financial capabilities, the more direct measurement of government spending per capita does not show any statistically significant correlation with the dependent variable. The idea stated in hypothesis 3 that a candidate country's performance in aligning towards EU policies is dependent on its government's financial capabilities is thus contradicted by the data. These rather ambiguous findings suggest that it might be relatively rich countries with relatively slim, well-functioning administrations that have the least problems in aligning towards EU policies. This is supported by the positive correlation between the quality of the bureaucracy and the candidates' alignment performance, which is statistically significant at least at the 99% level. Thus, the data do not contradict hypothesis 4. Countries with independently and effectively operating bureaucracies have fewer problems in aligning to EU policies. These findings are valid independently of the political willingness of the government to implement EU regulations; i.e. its stance towards accession. The variable government's position, controlling for its eagerness to align to the EU, shows no statistically significant correlation with the performance of governments during pre-accession -even though the coefficient has the expected positive sign. Government parties' anti-European preferences seem not to be clearly related to the performance of candidate countries in aligning to the acquis.

In a second model, we have also controlled for the level of democracy in the acceding countries with data from the PolityIV project [START_REF] Gurr | PolityIV: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1800-2002[END_REF]. It has been argued that leaders of more democratic countries had a greater incentive to push ahead with alignment with EU rules and institutions because of pressure from the electorate (Mattli and Plümper, 2004: 313). Yet the variable does not show a statistically significant positive impact on our measure of candidates' performance. We have to acknowledge, however, that there is not much variation in levels of democracy in our small sample of EU candidate countries, which have all achieved a high level of democracy. The inclusion of the variable does not reduce the significance of the political constraints index and the quality of bureaucracy measure, which seem to be robustly associated with the candidates' alignment performance.

Conclusion

This article aimed to find explanations for differences in candidate countries' performance records of implementing EU policies prior to accession. Several theories on the preconditions for policy change and on implementation problems were surveyed and reconsidered in their applicability to preaccession alignment. Subsequently, four hypotheses on the impact of political constraints and financial and administrative capabilities on pre-accession alignment were fashioned.

Empirical testing of our hypotheses suggests several interesting findings. First, and probably most surprising, veto-player theory has found no support in our data on candidate countries' performance in adopting the acquis communautaire of the EU. On the contrary, the data support the idea that consensus decision-making increases the prospects of quick and comprehensive implementation of the acquis. Obviously, a higher number of veto players favoured not only effective decision-making in order to comply formally with EU requirements but also the domestic capacities to apply the relevant decisions in practice. Second, the quality and effectiveness of their bureaucracy is of great importance for candidate countries in aligning national policies towards the EU. This finding suggests that the characteristics of the bureaucracy are at least as important as the nature of their political systems for the performance of countries. In contrast, the political position of governments towards accession, i.e. their willingness to align policies, seems to be less important once accession negotiations have started and clear conditionality for membership is in place.

How can these partially surprising results be explained? First, the rejection of the veto-player hypothesis might be traced to the fact that -in contrast to other studies on the implementation of EU policies supporting this argument (see [START_REF] Haverland | National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points[END_REF][START_REF] Giuliani | Europeanization in Perspective: Institutional Fit and Adaptation[END_REF] -the focus of this study was not just on formal but also on practical implementation. Practical application is basically a matter of bureaucracy rather than the realm of politics, implying that veto players are of less importance during this stage of the implementation process. Looking at both formal and practical implementation, our findings hence indicate that implementation effectiveness seems to be more affected by problems of practical application than by formal transposition of European requirements.

Second, our findings support the arguments by [START_REF] Grabbe | How Does Europeanization Affect CEE Governance? Conditionality, Diffusion and Diversity[END_REF]Grabbe ( : 1029) that EU conditionality in the candidate countries generally implied a strengthening of the core executive at the expense of parliaments and other branches of government. As a result, the influence of veto players with regard to preaccession might be lower than expected from the outset.

Third, it might be the case that countries that took the decision to join the Union -and thus to fulfil the preconditions for joining -with the consent of a greater number of veto players might find it easier to adopt and implement the acquis because the different national actors will support this process. We can assume that there is a clear preference in such consensus democracies towards accession among not only the majority but a broad political coalition. It then seems reasonable that governments that are even more anti-European would not dare to decelerate the pace of accession. In contrast, for countries where governments decided to apply for EU membership and faced no veto-playing constraints in taking that decision, there is some probability that EU-sceptical minority groups might try to hinder the quick and comprehensive alignment of policies. Moreover, even minor changes in the median voter's preferences in these countries could result in a decisive majority opposing the accession process.

Even if we assume relatively stable preferences because of the high costs linked to breaking out of accession agreements once the process of aligning has started, obstruction is possible in the implementation phase of policymaking. Impeding alignment might be not only dependent on institutional veto power but also possible in the stage of policy implementation. Here, the strength of the bureaucracy is of utmost importance. Where bureaucratic strength is high and bureaucratic action is less dependent on possibly unstable political input, the process of alignment towards the EU, once started, can go ahead smoothly.

In conclusion, our results suggest that the functioning and the quality of the domestic bureaucracy constitute crucial preconditions for effective alignment with EU policy requirements. This holds true in particular if the focus is not only on the formal transposition but also on the practical application of EU requirements. This finding is of interest for further pre-accession strategies. Support for the setting up and improvement of administrations has, according to the data used, a greater effect than the funding of governments. Appeals to achieve political consensus on increasing efforts towards alignment seem to be of less relevance for the success of enlargement than efforts to strengthen administrative structures. Moreover, our results indicate that the peculiarities of national bureaucracies might play a central role in shaping processes of Europeanization and implementation of EU policies in general.

Notes 1

For the purpose of this article, we refer to all of the following countries as EU candidate countries in the period 1998-2004, notwithstanding changes in the official status of their application: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. 2

The Commission's regular reports on progress towards accession are accessible at URL (accessed 25 April 2006): http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_11_98/index.htm#report. The conclusions of the regular reports, which are executive summaries with already reduced data, are used. 3

See [START_REF] Weber | Basic Content Analysis[END_REF] for the advantages and shortcomings of this approach. 4

The data were accessed at URL (consulted January 2006): http://www. management.wharton.upenn.edu/henisz/. 5

We take these numbers from the CIA World Factbook series, accessible at URL (consulted January 2006): http://www.theodora.com/wfb/ abc_world_fact_book.html 6

These data are provided in the appendices to the Commission's regular reports, accessible at URL (consulted January 2006): http://europa.eu.int/ comm/enlargement/report_11_98/index.htm#report. 7

A negative binomial regression could also be performed because data on reforms and the passing of legislation could also be considered to be count data. However, we prefer to include the intensity dimension in our indicator since success and failure vary greatly in the Commission report. Therefore, we use the index of implementation progress discussed above and take country years as units of analysis. We thus assume that our data are ordered on an interval scale, which is of course disputable.

Figure 1

 1 Figure 1 Mean alignment performance, 1999-2003.

Table 1

 1 Results of the regressions

	Candidates' performance in implementing	Model 1	Model 2
	EU policy (candidatesperformance)	(n = 65)	(n = 65)
	Political constraints index (polconIII)	78.21**	76.85**
		(28.04)	(28.30)
	Financial capabilities (government expenditures in	0.06	-0.03
	US$ million per capita) (financialcap)	(2.30)	(2.40)
	Gross domestic product in thousand €, PPP,	1.75*	1.82
	per capita (GDPpc)	(1.03)	(1.24)
	Bureaucratic strength (bureaustrength)	25.86***	25.63***
		(5.15)	(5.48)
	Government's position (govposition)	0.99	0.97
		(0.63)	(0.63)
	Level of democracy (polityIV)	-	-0.11
			(1.64)
	Wald-chi-squared	173.16	169.97
	Prob > chi-squared	0.00	0.00
	Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses.
	* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.

European Union Politics 7(4)

Hille and Knill 'It's the Bureaucracy, Stupid'

8

In a Woolridge test, the hypothesis that there is no serial correlation could not be refuted, with an F-statistic significant at the 0.5 level only.


Thomas König

Brooke Luetgert

Tanja Dannwolf

Quantifying European

Research on European legislative decision-making has entered a stage of quantitative analysis. The quantitative approach promises to advance the current dialogue by allowing for the evaluation of competing approaches across multiple policy domains and over time. At the same time, the quantitative study of EU decision-making introduces a number of drawbacks: it is difficult to identify one definitive source for legislative information, and case-level data are not directly accessible in a machine-readable format. In order to identify the most crucial pitfalls and provide a reliable data source, we evaluate the most frequently cited, publicly available EU legislative database, CELEX, and compare it with a less publicized legislative database referred to as PreLex. We find that CELEX documents legislative events, whereas PreLex records inter-institutional activities in the legislative process. Unsurprisingly, each of these databases has particular advantages, and we discuss which of the two might be better suited for the analysis of specific research questions.

Legislative studies in the European Union

Research on legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU) has entered the stage of quantitative analysis, and this step promises to advance the current dialogue by evaluating and controlling for competing approaches (Jupille et al., 2003: 29). 1 After numerous case studies and intense theoretical debates, rich and systematic data analyses on the process of legislative decision-making may help in answering some of the most important questions raised in the controversies between rational choice analysts [START_REF] Moravcsik | The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht[END_REF]Schneider and Aspinwall, 2001) and constructivists [START_REF] Checkel | Constructing European Institutions[END_REF][START_REF] Risse | Let's Argue!: Communicative Action in World Politics[END_REF], between cooperative [START_REF] Felsenthal | Myths and Meanings of Voting Power[END_REF][START_REF] Hosli | The Creation of the European Economic and Monetary Union[END_REF] and non-cooperative game theorists [START_REF] Garrett | Even More Reasons to Resist the Temptation of Power Indices in the EU[END_REF][START_REF] Steunenberg | Strategic Power in the European Union: Evaluating the Distribution of Power in Policy Games[END_REF][START_REF] Tsebelis | Legislative Politics in the European Union[END_REF], and among rational choice scholars themselves [START_REF] Crombez | Legislative Procedures in the European Community[END_REF][START_REF] Crombez | Institutional Reform and Codecision in the European Union[END_REF][START_REF] Moser | The European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter: What Are the Conditions?[END_REF][START_REF] Steunenberg | Decision Making under Different Institutional Arrangements: Legislation by the European Community[END_REF][START_REF] Tsebelis | The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter[END_REF][START_REF] Tsebelis | Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work[END_REF]. Has the EU moved towards majority voting, and to what extent does the European Parliament (EP) influence legislative decision-making? And what are the crucial factors influencing the process and outcomes -is the number of veto players decisive, or do we have to take other factors into account such as the kind of legislative instrument, the policy sector, the packaging or even the sequencing of proposals?

The legislative arena is the centre of European integration as the Commission, the member states and the EP adopt binding decisions that affect the lives of roughly 450 million citizens. Numerous legislative studies ask how EU institutions matter for these decisions, and whether institutional involvement varies across policy fields and procedures. In the past 15 years these institutional provisions have been modified several times, and the current European constitutional debate has centred around the distribution of voting weights, the involvement of the EP and access to the Commission in legislative decision-making [START_REF] König | Policy-making Processes and the European Constitution: A Comparative Study of Member States and Accession Countries[END_REF]. Quantitative analysis may shed light on the extent to which inter-institutional involvement and specific procedural rules affect legislative outcomes. We may look for changes in the application of particular procedures or voting rules in specific sectors and identify general trends in the quantity and type of legislative decisions over time, while considering the effects of treaty revisions and the accession of new members.

Although we possess a great deal of theoretical insight on these effects, the quantitative study of inter-and intra-institutional decision-making can provide cross-sectional and intertemporal evidence for many important claims about EU legislative processes. This evidence is not just required for EU legislative scholars. Implementation studies also suggest that the legislative process may influence correct and timely compliance with Community directives, and thus, in the event of non-compliance, further infringement processes and decisions of the European Court of Justice [START_REF] Giuliani | Europeanization in Comparative Perspective: Institutional Fit and National Adaptation[END_REF]König et al., 2005b;[START_REF] Mastenbroek | Surviving the Deadline: Transposition of EU Directives in the Netherlands[END_REF][START_REF] Mbaye | Why National States Comply with Supranational Law[END_REF]. Furthermore, the current debate on European constitution-building needs empirical support for normative claims about the impact of EU legislation on actors' constitutional preferences and the reform of the institutional framework [START_REF] Tsebelis | Assessing the Contributions of the DOSEI Project[END_REF]. For example, studies on public support assume that EU legislation 'hits home', even though the amount and extent of new EU legislative activities have significantly receded in recent years [START_REF] Börzel | When Europe Hits Home: Europeanization and Domestic Change[END_REF][START_REF] Gabel | Interests and Integration: Market Liberalization, Public Opinion, and European Union[END_REF].

We do not believe that quantitative analyses will satisfactorily answer all of these questions or supersede further questions and debates on EU legislative decision-making. However, considering the large number of casestudy insights, it is time for EU scholars to evaluate competing views from a more general perspective by including cases from multiple policy domains and over time [START_REF] Franchino | Control of the Commission's Executive Functions: Uncertainty, Conflict and Decision Rules[END_REF][START_REF] Gabel | Who Is Afraid of Cumulative Research? Improving Data on EU Politics[END_REF]. At the same time, we acknowledge that the quantitative study of EU legislative decision-making introduces a number of risks and pitfalls to which we would like to draw particular attention. In the few available empirical studies, we find, for example, very different reports of EU legislative activity. 2 For EU scholars interested in quantitative research, it is often difficult to identify one definitive source for this information, and case-level data are not easily accessible in a machine-readable format. Using different and sometimes incompatible sources of information may increase confusion rather than clarifying the different views on EU legislative research.

Our goal is to facilitate systematic research on EU legislative decisionmaking. To avoid the most crucial pitfalls and to provide a reliable source of quantitative information, we combine and evaluate the most frequently cited, publicly available EU legislative database, CELEX, and compare it with a less publicized but equally valuable legislative database known as PreLex. These data sources were developed independently by the Commission and a private provider, respectively, to fulfil different purposes; a fact that is also reflected in their unique structures. 3 Briefly stated, we find that CELEX documents legislative events, whereas PreLex records inter-institutional activities in the legislative process. Unsurprisingly, each of these databases -the eventoriented CELEX and the process-oriented PreLex -has particular advantages, and we would like to discuss which of the two might be better suited for the quantitative analysis of specific research questions. We also evaluate the reliability of these sources, although we would contend that most irregularities are user related.

This article presents the (dis-)similarities between CELEX and PreLex, describing their goals and distinctive composition. For the purpose of comparison, we examine the period from 1984 to 2003, when the Nice Treaty came into force. Prior to this period, the official CELEX user's manual as well as the minimal number of documented initiatives and adoptions suggest that these databases are incomplete [START_REF] König | Pivotal Politics in European Legislation: An Event History Analysis of the EU Legislative Decision-making Process from 1984 to 1995[END_REF][START_REF] König | Convergence or Divergence? From Ever-Growing to Ever-Slowing European Decision-making Process[END_REF][START_REF] König | The Efficiency of Legislative Decision Making in the European Union: An Event-History-Analysis of EU Decision Making Speed[END_REF][START_REF] Schulz | Institutional Reform and Decision-Making: Efficiency in the European Union[END_REF]. Our censored CELEX data set includes 11,974 Commission proposals for binding legislation initiated between 1984 and 2003, while PreLex documents 9832 legislative processes for the same period. In the next section, we combine the process-and event-related information contained in both databases to cross-validate the documented cases and variables. Finally, we present the combined data set and describe the most important variables, such as the applied legislative procedure, the voting rule in the Council and the sector specification. The appendices document the technical transformation process from full-text internet resources to machine-readable data. 4

PreLex -CELEX: Similarities and differences

In an effort to increase transparency in the EU legislative process, CELEX was launched in 1980 with the goal of making full-text documents publicly accessible. The database is divided into 12 sectors, each devoted to a different type of document. For example, sector 1 contains the EU treaties, sector 3 binding and non-binding legislation, sector 5 preparatory acts of all kinds, and sector 7 national implementation measures for Community directives. All sectors include detailed information on relevant dates, the legislative basis, the document title and related documents. In order to construct a data set containing all Commission proposals and the subsequently adopted legislation, we downloaded the Commission proposals in sector 5 (hereafter referred to as CELEX5) and binding secondary legislation -decisions, regulations and directives -in sector 3 (CELEX3).

PreLex systematically covers the period after 1976 and was designed to monitor inter-institutional procedures. According to the PreLex Information Guide, the database 'follows all Commission proposals (legislative and budgetary dossiers, conclusions of international agreements) and communications from their transmission to the Council or the EP'. The PreLex website provides a timeline for each Commission proposal, with the dates of different legislative and consultative stages, including references to all involved institutional actors. In addition to detailed information on the dates of transmission and adoption by different institutions, the user finds information on the applied legislative and voting procedures, the legal basis, responsible Directorates-General (DGs), links to all documents passed by the different institutions, dates of all readings, the request for and decision of any concil-iation committee, and decisions made by the EP and the Commission at each stage in the legislative process. Furthermore, PreLex includes identification of each proposal as an A or B item in the Council, which indicates whether the act was adopted at the Council meeting without debate, after an agreement had already been reached within the Committee of Permanent Representatives (A Items), or was adopted with continued debate (B Items). 5 At first glance, PreLex appears to contain more specific and policyrelevant information for EU legislative research. In fact, only PreLex documents the entire legislative process through all relevant stages and related institutions. CELEX, by contrast, seems to contain more detailed information on the treaty basis and titles of both the proposals and legislative acts, but the two CELEX data sets must be merged in order to identify the adoption date and transposition deadlines (where applicable) of Commission proposals. Although the merging of adopted legislation as contained in CELEX3 and Commission proposals documented in CELEX5 is possible, information about inter-institutional processes, such as the involvement of a conciliation committee in the co-decision procedure, is available only in PreLex. Furthermore, in CELEX we lack information on Commission proposals not identified in the CELEX3 data on adopted legislation (i.e. whether they were withdrawn or rejected). CELEX, however, also contains proposals from institutions other than the Commission as well as all binding and non-binding secondary legislation. These documents also include tertiary Commission legislation, which is frequently initiated through Commission White and Green papers. This suggests that using CELEX may be particularly advantageous for the analysis of legislation where no inter-institutional procedure (i.e. involvement of multiple institutions) is applicable.

For EU legislative research, we believe that a more detailed description of the two data sets is necessary. We have worked intensively with these data sets since the mid 1990s and have identified several advantages as well as a few perilous pitfalls in using them. Since most of the irregularities are user related, we hope that our experience will help EU scholars to conduct their analyses and test their claims. Note that both data sets are missing information for some important variables, such as the voting rule or the legislative procedure, which we may be able to supplement with information on the legal basis. However, in order to confirm the reliability of these data and our respective assumptions, we propose comparing these two independent online resources, which requires noteworthy technological expertise to transform them into a machine-readable data set. Whereas CELEX provides access to legal documents, PreLex reconstructs the inter-institutional legislative process; therefore, we must take different approaches in constructing comparable data sets.

CELEX

In order to transform the CELEX documentation into a machine-readable data set, we downloaded and combined information from sectors 5 and 3. Because different search commands and downloading dates can dramatically affect the sample size, we describe our downloading process in the appendix.

As previously mentioned, many variables of interest for EU legislative research are not documented in CELEX. The information on relevant dates, policy fields and cited legal basis is extracted directly. As indicated in Table 1, the document title clearly indicates the number of actors involved in passing the legislation (CELEX3) as well as the type of legislation. Note that, although our search was restricted to binding secondary legislation, we encountered a surprising number of corrigenda and tertiary Commission legislation that, by definition, are not found in the data on Commission proposals and amending drafts (CELEX5). Although the title of the adopted legislation (or draft proposal in the case of pending legislation) may be used to identify the application of co-decision, we are unable to distinguish among the procedures classified as Council legislation.

In order to infer the specific applied legislative procedure, we used the treaty basis. After generating a list of all treaty references mentioned in CELEX3 and CELEX5, we identified the legislative procedure associated with each legal base as recorded in sector 1. 6 We do not differentiate between the agreement and the consultation procedure in this analysis because both refer to Council legislation passed without EP participation. For cases in which several treaty articles were mentioned, or multiple procedures may apply, all procedures were coded, and we assume application of the strictest procedure, where stricter is understood as more EP involvement. If only legislative acts were mentioned as legal bases, we infer the applicable legislative procedure from the cited legislation. The same assumptions apply to our coding of the voting rule applied in the Council; the strictest rule, or the rule presenting the highest voting hurdle, potentially prescribed in the treaty references is assumed. 7 Although information on the policy field is provided in CELEX, we also coded the legislative basis in order to obtain a classification according to the treaty chapters.

Several potential factors may contribute to missing values on these variables. First, only the legal references to standard EU treaties were coded. There are 367 cases where only an article of an accession treaty is mentioned. Second, in 214 cases no legal basis is mentioned. Finally, in 73 instances no legislative procedure could be identified for the provided legal reference (e.g. Article 130 of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community refers to the European Central Bank). Ultimately, the applied legislative procedure and the Council voting rule are inferred for 11,308 legal acts.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of adopted legislation according to the year of its adoption. Most of the legislation recorded in the CELEX data set documents regulations. The absolute amount of legislation passed each year has declined rapidly since the Maastricht Treaty entered into force in 1993. The sharp decline after 2002 is largely attributable to pending legislation.

Figure 1 Distribution of adopted legislation in CELEX (1984CELEX ( -2003)).

Notes: Illustration of data merged from CELEX5 and CELEX3 (N = 11,974). These data have been merged and censored as described in Appendix I. This figure illustrates the subsample of adopted legislation.

PreLex

In contrast to CELEX, PreLex was designed to document the entire legislative process of inter-institutional legislation. The richness of these data complicates the extraction of key characteristics, but also provides an invaluable insight into the complexity of Community legislative procedures. For the CELEX data, we merged Commission proposals with referenced passed legislation. This process leads to a rectangular data sheet documenting legislative events, where each proposal (including amended proposals) is assigned to one passed legislative act. Proposals lacking this reference remain in the data as pending legislation. In PreLex, at least seven unique legislative paths are documented. (type 1) or one proposal still pending without reference to any amending proposals (type 2), the remaining legislation contains multiple proposals and/or multiple legislative acts.

For process-oriented legislative research, the PreLex data reveal how the strategic interaction of institutional actors may result in amended proposals (types 3, 4 and 7), package deals (type 5) or multiple legislative acts (types 6 and 7). Although this typology may not be exhaustive, and individual cases may change their type over time as existing proposals are re-examined or passed, this depiction illustrates how complicated legislative processes and related documents can be identified in a manner not possible in CELEX.

One potential disadvantage in PreLex is that the treaty references, or legal bases, are in a different and less detailed format. They are not as easily identifiable (lacking the link to the cited paragraph in the appropriate treaty version as found in CELEX sector 1) and are not as coherently coded as in CELEX, and the applicable treaty version is less clearly defined. Although small coding discrepancies make automated extraction more difficult, we transformed the identified legal bases into the CELEX format, where possible, and coded the legislative procedure applying the same method as described for the CELEX data set. The document number provided in PreLex is also in a different format but is easily transformed. Since the document numbers in both data sets appear to be based on the same general numbering scheme, we convert these numbers to the CELEX format and rely on them as unique case identifiers.

PreLex includes detailed information on the dates and decisions made in course of the legislative process, such as the decision of the EP after its first reading. A further set of variables is of special interest because this information can be obtained only indirectly in CELEX, or sometimes not at all. These variables are the documented legislative procedure, the voting rule in the Council, the responsible Directorate-General and the Council OJ item (the Council agenda item as documented in the Official Journal). As can be seen in Table 3, only 0.4% of all cases fail to mention information on the Council OJ item where we would expect it. Unfortunately, a much higher percentage of information on the procedure and voting rule variables is either not available or missing. 8 Another defining characteristic concerns the responsibility of the Commission's DG. Table 4 shows the type and amount of adopted legislation for which selected DGs were responsible. If no adopted document is given, we differentiate between pending, withdrawn or rejected proposals and cases where an adopted document would be expected based on the events documented in PreLex (such as 'formal adoption by Council') but was not mentioned.

Although PreLex may be of particular interest for scholars studying the EU legislative process and inter-institutional interaction, we find many missing values on key variables: the legislative procedure and the voting rule. Notes: a This category identifies the cases where this information should have been provided (based on the elected legislative procedure), but was not. For example, the formal adoption by the Council is documented but no information was provided on the relevant OJ Council item.

b For these cases, we would not have expected an OJ Council item to be mentioned, owing to the elected procedure; however, despite not having encountered such a case in repeated sampling, we cannot fully exclude the possibility of minor program errors. c In addition to the common legislative procedures, PreLex also documents an 'agreement procedure'. This legislation is linked to proposals of decisions or regulations of the Council in the field of agreements and cites article 133 (Amsterdam consolidated version, previously article 113) as the legislative basis. In many cases an additional reference is made to article 300, paragraphs 1 and 2 (Amsterdam consolidated version). From these treaty references and the PreLex documentation, it may be assumed that the EP is not actively involved in the adoption of these proposals. Notes: Here we have selected eight of the most important DGs with respect to both the output and variance they represent. We combine the areas of fisheries and agriculture.

Table 4 Distribution of legislation in selected

For policy studies, however, PreLex provides specific information on the primarily and jointly responsible DG. Agriculture, trade, taxation and customs union as well as internal market dominate the Community's legislative activities. As the previous results in CELEX suggest, most Commission proposals are passed as regulations. Decisions and directives are adopted less frequently, but this trend is also sector dependent, with notably more directives being passed in the areas of industry and the internal market.

Combining PreLex and CELEX: Reliability of data

Although the decision to use CELEX over PreLex, or vice versa, might be motivated by the research question at hand, the reliability of the provided indicators may be another concern. In order to compare these indicators in CELEX and PreLex, we merged both data sets using the initial proposal and the first adopted document as the unique merging criteria. Owing to the censored nature of the data, we exclude cases initiated prior to 1 January 1984 and cases passed or initiated after the coming into force of the Nice Treaty in February 2003. Figure 2 provides an overview of the different merge processes and the resulting number of cases. Unsurprisingly, not all legislation could be identified in both data sets. One explanation for this discrepancy rests in the event-vs. process-oriented designs of the respective databases. In the following, we concentrate on the successfully merged sample of 8475 cases and leave aside further speculation about these discrepancies. 9

Figure 2 illustrates the cases we wish to compare. Recall that, for CELEX, we employed a two-stage process combining 13,001 Commission proposals from CELEX5 with the 42,903 cases of adopted legislation in CELEX3. PreLex, in contrast, documents 16,676 legislative processes, including nonbinding legislation and Commission proposals lacking the standard PC prefix (e.g. those based on so-called SEC documents, including White and Green papers). Censoring both data sets to include only binding legislation for the period under study reduces the samples to 11,974 and 9832 cases, respectively. Merging both data sets further reduces the sample to 8475 cases, because 3499 cases from CELEX and 1357 cases from PreLex could not be identified in the other data set. This does not necessarily suggest that CELEX documents a more complete sample of Commission proposals than PreLex. The difference in numbers is primarily attributed to amending proposals, which are documented as separate cases in CELEX but are counted as one legislative process in PreLex, and which are therefore not included in the merged data set.

Legislative procedure

Institutional analyses frequently focus on the impact of the legislative procedures. Whereas the legislative procedure must be coded in CELEX, this information is partially documented in PreLex. This is a valuable means of testing reliability, even though we find more than 50% missing values. According to the legal bases cited for the cases lacking a documented legislative procedure in PreLex, it is reasonable to assume no EP involvement and that these cases were adopted by the Council under the qualified majority (QMV) rule. Table 5 provides a comparison of the coded legislative procedure obtained in CELEX and the information in PreLex.

According to Table 5, reliability is limited because information for a number of cases is not available or there are coding discrepancies. This may be a result of our choice to apply the strictest criterion for coding parliamentary participation when multiple treaty articles were indicated in CELEX.

To confirm reliability, we compare the values obtained by extrapolating the procedure from the legal basis in both data sets. Table 6 shows that we obtain similar results. This suggests that scholars should pay careful attention to the drawbacks of procedural indicators (e.g. missing values, assumptions, etc.).

To sum up, information on the legislative procedures is best obtained from various sources. The coding of the legal basis leads to the least number of missing values, but cross-validation with documented procedures in PreLex reveals some discrepancies. The application of co-decision is easily determined for adopted legislation according to the document title in CELEX; however, when more detailed information is required (e.g. application of consultation or cooperation procedures, particularly for pending proposals), there may be no alternative to manually coding the legal basis. Notes: Tabulation of successfully merged binding and censored PreLex andCELEX data (1984-2003). EP involvement is coded according to the mentioned treaty basis in CELEX and cross-tabulated with the procedure documented in PreLex. We again include the agreement procedure as documented in PreLex (refer to Table 3).

Voting rule in the Council

In addition to the legislative procedure, other studies also focus on the applied Council voting rule. Table 7 shows the cross-tabulation of the indicator in PreLex and the extrapolated reference to the voting rule in CELEX. The results reveal an underestimation of the application of unanimity: 55% of the cases documented in PreLex as unanimity are classified as QMV in CELEX. Owing to the phrasing of the treaties, the voting rule is more difficult to deduce from the legal basis than is the legislative procedure. As with the legislative procedure, the high number of missing values compels both PreLex and CELEX users to code the legal basis manually if information is desired on the voting rule applied in the Council.

A comparison of the voting rule inferred from the respective legal basis in both data sets again shows that similar results are obtained (see Table 8). Compared with CELEX, PreLex reveals a more consensus-oriented bias towards the unanimity rule but also contains many missing values.

Policy field

Policy studies frequently refer to the specific feature of a policy area of EU legislative decision-making. A comparison of the listed and/or extrapolated policy fields and the primarily responsible DGs may provide some crossvalidation. However, information on the degree to which DGs are responsible for legislation in given policy fields is limited. In PreLex, the only information Notes: The legal basis in PreLex is not substituted if a legal act is cited. In CELEX, we have substituted these references. After repeated sampling of the cited legal bases we note, however, that these cases are likely Council legislation approved under QMV and not subject to interinstitutional procedures.

provided on the related policy sector is the primarily and jointly responsible DG. In CELEX, the policy sector may be obtained by coding the legal basis according to the treaty chapter sub-heading or from the EUROVOC classification provided by CELEX. For a better overview, we have classified this policy sector information into five categories. Table 9 shows the distribution of the legislation in the eight most common DGs according to the classified policy sector.

For research on the legislative process conducted using CELEX, it is valuable to know that the responsible DG can be deduced relatively accurately from the policy field information. This is especially true in the area of agriculture, but may be more problematic in areas related to the common market and industry.

Table 9 indicates that the cases in the most important policy areas largely coincide. This does not mean that overlapping policy competencies result only from coding. Rather, this suggests that many proposals involve multiple competencies -a well-known problem within the Commission. For this reason, the preparation of many proposals includes several DGs.

Conclusion

Our discussion of the data sets has shown that there are pros and cons with both CELEX and PreLex. Using the PreLex data, we find that roughly 17% of EU legislation cannot be easily classified in a rectangular data sheet relating one proposal to one passed legislative act. Complicated legislative processes are better documented in PreLex because related amending proposals and resulting multiple acts are connected in individual cases. If, however, we want to trace legislative events and consider amending proposals as individual cases, CELEX may provide the more attractive structure. Either way, we have established that many of the contradictory claims about EU legislative activity may be reducible to the question of whether events or processes are counted. Furthermore, we observe differences in the period and types of document recorded in these databases.

In our view, CELEX is an integrated, highly specialized and differentiated collection of legislative documents. The direct link to the full-text documents, the treaty citation and the national implementation measures are advantageous for analysing EU legislative acts. The data also include Commission tertiary legislation as well as corrigenda and non-binding documents. This is particularly relevant for implementation studies and those analyses examining the possible impact of norms and informal rules imposed by non-binding acts. However, the need to link documents and merge characteristics to document legislative events may provide an additional source of error, if not approached systematically. The tabular structure is more straightforward in its construction and its citation of the legal treaty basis, but the need to code the legislative bases is a disadvantage that also persists in PreLex.

Researchers seeking detailed information on the inter-institutional legislative process may find PreLex more suited to their needs. Here, we have not yet explored the information on the available dates and decisions made at each reading, but this might prove to be a valuable task. Particularly for those interested in the involvement of the EP, PreLex provides references to parliamentary documents, rapporteurs and transmission dates. The unique advantage of PreLex is that the entire inter-institutional process is documented to include all actors involved and their decisions at each legislative stage.

Although it seems plausible to combine information from both data sets, it should be kept in mind that some discrepancies remain, which may result from the different purposes of these resources. As previously mentioned, the document numbering (particularly after the hyphen) differs in some cases. Combining the two data sets may lead to specific biases; however, missing values can be minimized, the quality of some variables such as the voting rule and the legislative procedure can be improved, and additional information such as the responsible DG or related Council OJ item may be supplemented. We recommend using the merged data set, but we feel that the dangers of merging data must be carefully considered, particularly for cases involving amended proposals and/or proposals leading to multiple resulting acts.

To promote research we have released the merged data set, although we believe that all data sets presented are valuable assets for future quantitative activities. We hope that these data will help to resolve conflicts between competing theoretical strands and aid qualitative researchers in selecting representative legislation for their case studies. Our experience of more than 10 years of database management suggests that researchers usually make a number of explicit and implicit decisions when extracting and coding the fulltext information. Sometimes, missing values occur because of a mishandling of the full-text information (see, for a discussion, König et al., 2005a). Avoiding these pitfalls is a very time-consuming process, and perhaps our release of these data will help other scholars to save time and run their analyses on a common and transparent ground. It is our belief that using reliable data will support progress in EU legislative research, whether these advances are used to develop new and better theories, to test existent theories, or to improve legislative decision-making.

Notes 1

The merged data set presented in this contribution may be downloaded at: http://www.dhv-speyer.de/tkoenig/. 2 Alesina et al. (2005: 291) used a CELEX search and identified 25,472 directives, regulations and decisions for the period 1986-1995. By contrast, [START_REF] König | Pivotal Politics in European Legislation: An Event History Analysis of the EU Legislative Decision-making Process from 1984 to 1995[END_REF] refers to 5701 Commission proposals for binding secondary legislation documented in CELEX for the period 1984-95. Although other studies also cite legislative statistics according to CELEX, these studies illustrate the wide range of numbers cited by researchers using the same data source. Without easily accessible official statistics on EU legislative activity, we must ask how these differing statistics come about. In this example, we predict that [START_REF] Alesina | What Does the European Union Do?[END_REF] cite sector 3 CELEX data and that their numbers may include corrigenda, Commission tertiary legislation and (possibly) duplicate cases, whereas [START_REF] König | Pivotal Politics in European Legislation: An Event History Analysis of the EU Legislative Decision-making Process from 1984 to 1995[END_REF][START_REF] König | Convergence or Divergence? From Ever-Growing to Ever-Slowing European Decision-making Process[END_REF] as well as [START_REF] König | The Efficiency of Legislative Decision Making in the European Union: An Event-History-Analysis of EU Decision Making Speed[END_REF] and [START_REF] Schulz | Institutional Reform and Decision-Making: Efficiency in the European Union[END_REF] The appendices are available at http://www.uni-konstanz.de/eup/ issues.htm. 5

Although reference to the Council OJ items may not be the best indicator of conflict or of divergent member state preferences, it is the only indicator documented on a case-wise basis in these data. 6

The treaty references are recorded as CELEX sector 1 document numbers and identify individual treaty articles. In some instances reference is made to a particular sentence within an article, but in such cases the associated legislative process is not always easily identifiable.

7 Some may question our assumption regarding application of the strictest procedure mentioned; however, given a list of multiple legal bases, a rule of thumb must be defined. The appropriateness of this assumption is explored in the merged data set. Based on Tables 6 and7, we do not find evidence of an overestimation of the application of unanimity. 8

Owing to the nature of the PreLex data, we suspect that these missing values have a systematic explanation. Repeated sampling of the legal bases cited in these cases confirms that this category largely refers to Council legislation adopted under QMV. 9

It should be noted that several documents share the same 11-digit document number, differing only in the sub-numbering after the hyphen, and that the documents associated with these sub-numbers differ. After merging the CELEX and PreLex data, we noticed that numbering schemes for proposals after the hyphen are not identical in the two databases. Therefore, the merging of these proposals was first done according to the 11 leading digits and confirmed using the adopted document number. A comparison of dates and document titles confirms this method. Unfortunately, proposals lacking an adopted document could not be merged owing to the lack of a unique identifier.

  DGs: Tabulation of binding legislation recorded in PreLex for the period 1984-2003 Type of legislative act (adopted CELEX no. in header)

Figure 2

 2 Figure 2 Overview of the data sets.

Table 1

 1 Summary of adopted legislation documented inCELEX3 (1984CELEX3 ( -2003) )

		Type of legislation according to document title
					Council EP/
	Document type	Corrigenda Commission Council & EP	ECB/other Total
	Decision (D)	653	8666	2887	84	217	12,507
	Directive (L)	903	648	879	225	2	2657
	Regulation (R)	4475	17,135	6044	70	15	27,739
	Total	6031	26,449	9810	379	234	42,903

Note: These data include binding secondary legislation passed between 1 January 1984 and 1 February 2003. Stricter censoring criteria will be applied in the following section. The distinction between document types is made according to the document code provided in the CELEX reference number: Decision (D), Directive (L), and Regulation (R).

  Table 2 reveals that, although over 82% of the legislation documented in PreLex involves one proposal being passed as one legislative act

Table 2

 2 A typology of legislative processes identified in PreLex

		Type	N	Details
	Type 1:	One proposal	7547
		One adoption
	Type 2:	One proposal	646	235	pending
		No adoption		405	withdrawn
				6	not adopted
	Type 3:	One proposal & n amendments	1154	821	1 amendment
		One adoption		320	2 amendments
				9	3 amendments
				4	4 amendments
	Type 4:	One proposal & n amendments	172	108	withdrawn
		No adoption		4	not adopted
				60	pending
				158	1 amendment
				14	2 amendments
	Type 5:	n proposals (some with amendments)	174	174	proposals
		One adoption		c. 82	adopted acts
	Type 6:	One proposal	111	77	1:2
		n adoptions		8	1:3
				3	1:5
				20	1:6
				3	1:7-21
	Type 7:	One proposal & n amendments	28	20	2:2
		n adoptions		2	2:3
				2	3:2
				2	3:3
				1	4:2
				1	4:3

Table 3

 3 Council OJ item, legislative procedure and Council decision mode: Tabulation of binding and censored PreLex data(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)

	No.	%

Table 5

 5 Cross-tabulation of legislative procedure

		Role of EP (CELEX)
		Consultation/
	Legislative procedure	no EP			Not
	(PreLex)	involvement Cooperation Co-decision identified	Total
	Consultation procedure	2194	32	221	76	2523
	Cooperation procedure	249	167	59	21	496
	Co-decision procedure	122	9	220	3	354
	Agreement	502	1	49	0	552
	Assent procedure	35	1	57	0	93
	Consultation ECB/Social	6	0	0	0	6
	protocol
	Not available	3865	32	70	484	4451
	Total	6973	242	676	584	8475

Table 6

 6 Legislative procedure inferred using the cited legal basis: A comparison of

	PreLex and CELEX
		Role of EP according to treaty basis (CELEX)
	Role of EP according to	Consultation/			Not
	treaty basis (PreLex)	no involvement Cooperation Co-decision identified Total
	Consultation/no	4194	66	259	27	4546
	involvement
	Cooperation	230	134	45	18	427
	Co-decision	83	3	298	1	385
	Not identified	2466	39	74	538	3117
	Total	6973	242	676	584

Table 7

 7 Voting rule in Council: A comparison of PreLex and CELEX

		Voting rule according to treaty basis (CELEX)
	Last reference documented			Not
	(PreLex)	Unanimity QMV	identified	Total
	Unanimity	325	469	51	845
	QMV	148	587	41	776
	Written procedure	6	0	0	6
	Not mentioned	469	537	60	1066
	Missing	1709	3641	432	5782
	Total	2657	5234	584	8475

Table 8

 8 Voting rule in Council inferred using the cited legal basis: A comparison of PreLex and CELEX

		Voting rule according to treaty basis (CELEX)
	Voting rule according to			Not
	treaty basis (PreLex)	Unanimity	QMV	identified	Total
	Unanimity	1161	68	23	1252
	QMV	820	3263	23	4106
	Not identified	676	1903	538	3117
	Total	2657	5234	584	8475

Table 9

 9 Primarily responsible DG according to the categorized policy field

  document Commission proposals. 3 CELEX, which stands for Communitatis Europae Lex, was updated on a daily basis until January 2005, when it was integrated into the EUR-Lex framework; however, for the period under study CELEX is still freely accessible at http://europa.eu.int/celex/. PreLex is also accessible via EUR-Lex and linked to the official European Union website at http://europa.eu.int/ prelex/apcnet.cfm?CL=en. 4

König, Luetgert and Dannwolf Quantifying European Legislative Research

European Union Politics 7(4)

About the authors

Thomas König is Professor of Political Science, German University of Administrative Sciences, PO Box 1409, 67324 Speyer, Germany. Fax: +49 6232 654127 E-mail: tkoenig@dhv-speyer.de Brooke Luetgert is a research assistant at the German University of Administrative Sciences, PO Box 1409, 67324 Speyer, Germany. Fax: +49 6232 654127 E-mail: luetgert@dhv-speyer.de Tanja Dannwolf is a graduate student at the University of Mannheim, Germany. E-mail: tdannwol@rumms.uni-mannheim.de