Network Analysis

This project introduces a new form of network to the study of the Council of Ministers, which we refer to as an information network. This network represents the flow of formalised information about ongoing legislative negotiations through the different nodes in the Council. Tracking the flow of information between different nodes the Council can inform us about the relative importance of these nodes, their relative prominence, influence and gatekeeping abilities, and the way in which they interact to produce policy outcomes.

The Council information network is constructed by treating actors and committees as nodes, and information flowing between them as edges. Nodes in the network include supranational institutions like the Commission, Council Presidency, and General Secretariat, alongside the member states, and the different committees that debate legislation within the Council. One can differentiate between actor nodes such as Commission, Council Presidency, General Secretariat, and the member states on the one hand, and committee nodes such as the Ministerial level meetings, COREPER, special committees, and the working groups. Actor nodes refer to (relatively) unitary actors, whereas committee nodes contain a disparate set of representatives from member states and other institutions.

Network connections (or edges) are defined by formal legislative records exchanged between these network nodes. A network edge is formed between these nodes when a legislative record emerges from one node (the source), and is addressed to another (the target). Using these nodes and edges, we can construct a directed network that captures the flow of information between different parts of the Council. An example subgraph of this network, containing two actor nodes and four committee nodes, is shown above.

The full network that emerges can tell us a lot about the positions of different actors and committees in the Council, as we can examine how well connected each node is to the other nodes in the network. The number and intensity of network connections allows us to assess the relative positions of different actors and committees within the Council, which in turn can be seen as a source of power for said actors and committees. This network can either be analysed "statically", where nodes and edges are aggregated across all years present in the data, or "dynamically" where snapshots of the network at different times are considered.