Bureaucrats as Law-Makers: Committee Decision-Making in the EU Council of Ministers

The Council of Ministers is one of the most powerful institutions of the European Union (EU) and is supported by more than 250 working parties and senior committees. The Council'¬"s committee system plays a major role in its internal decision-making process and has a vast influence on legislative decisions in the EU. This book examines and describes the Council of Ministers committee system and its internal decision-making process. It investigates the extent to which bureaucrats in working parties and committees, rather than ministers, make legislative decisions in the EU and the implications of this for the democratic legitimacy of Council decision-making. Drawing on a wealth of novel quantitative and qualitative information, this book features six comparative case studies of decision-making processes in the areas of common agricultural policy, environmental policy and taxation. It will be of interest to students, researchers and practioners of European Union politics and policy-making, as well as scholars investigating the effects of formal and informal rules, international socialization, and issue characteristics on policy-making in domestic, European, and other international settings.