To what extent the decision-making in the European Union (EU) is responsive to national democratic representation? The answer to this question has profound implications for understanding how the EU works in practice and for assessing it normatively. The contributions to this special issue examine key aspects of national representation, including national public opinion, elections and partisan government control. They do so with a shared theoretical approach and a newly updated common dataset (DEU III), which alongside the other DEU iterations allows EU scholars to develop an extensive range of research questions regarding EU legislative policy-making in the period 1999 to 2021 (Arregui & Perarnaud, 2021; Thomson R., Stokman F., Achen C. & König, T., 2006; Thomson R., Arregui J., Leuffen D., Costello R., Cross J. , Hertz R., & Jensen T. , 2012).

Despite seismic political changes in many national arenas, authors find that EU decision-making is marked by more continuity than change. The evidence indicates that EU decision-making does respond to national democratic processes, but in ways that are highly conditional. For instance, member states' negotiating positions in the EU are shaped by public opinion and national parties' positions, but this responsiveness is conditioned by the presence of Euroscepticism, the timing and competitiveness of national elections and coalition politics.

The list of articles can be found below, as well as in the section of the webpage which compiles all publications of the JMC center.

• Arregui, J., & Perarnaud, C. (2021). A new dataset on legislative decision-making in the European Union: the DEU III dataset. Journal of European Public Policy, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1991983

• Kleine, M.; Arregui, J., & Thomson, R. (2021). The impact of national democratic representation on decision-making in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1991988

• Perarnaud, C. & Arregui, J. (2021). Do Member States’ permanent representations matter for their bargaining success? Evidence from the EU Council of Ministers, Journal of European Public Policy, https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1991981

• Huhe, N., Thomson, R., Arregui, J., & Naurin, D. (2021). Intergovernmental cooperation networks, national policy positions and partisan ideologies: longitudinal evidence from the Council of the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1991980

Please note that DEU III references should also include previous iterations (DEU I and DEU II), namely:

• Thomson R., Stokman F., Achen C. & König, T. (eds) (2006). The European Union Decides. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Thomson R., Arregui J., Leuffen D., Costello R., Cross J. , Hertz R., & Jensen T. (2012). A new dataset on decision-making in the European Union before and after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements (DEUII). Journal of European Public Policy, 19(4), 604-622