Strategic Agenda-Setting and Legislative Gridlock in the European Union

Why does the European Commission delay important legislative reforms? This paper uses a spatial model of legislative choice to analyze the delay of reforms. The main expectation is that legislative gridlock increases the time it takes the Commission to make a proposal. I test the empirical implications of the spatial model by using a novel dataset of potential legislative proposals. The findings underline that previous research may underestimate the implications of gridlock on legislative productivity.