Determinants of Bargaining Satisfaction across Policy Domains in the European Union Council of Ministers

This research is about the extent to which the policy outcomes in the European Union decision-making process represent the policy preferences defended by member states. Few studies have systematically analysed bargaining satisfaction within the Council. This research uses as a measure of bargaining satisfaction, the salient weighted distance between a member state’s policy preference and the decision outcome. This is the first analysis to frame European Union member states’ satisfaction using the content of the issues and distinguishing among policy domains. The analysis also includes a substantive number of cases from the post-2004 enlargement. The empirical analysis shows, in contrast to previous work, that the level of variation of fulfilment in the decision-making within the Council is considerable across policy domains. The main determinants of bargaining satisfaction are related to both structural and agency factors.