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National Administrations in EU Trade Policy pp 63–85Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Signalling Control

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Part of the book series: European Administrative Governance ((EAGOV))

Abstract

This chapter develops a novel survey instrument that measures not only the frequency with which national representatives use a range of signalling tactics, but also the phase in the negotiating process at which such signalling takes place. Nearly forty representatives from the Council working parties filled in the survey, permitting a comprehensive analysis of national involvement in the EU’s trade negotiations. Analysis of the data confirms that there is substantive variation in the amount of control member states exert, and that variation may be explained by administrative capacity. This chapter also reveals that respondents’ signalling strategy is not determined by the size of their country but rather by the stage in the negotiating process at which they are particularly active.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Soft bargaining is characterised by co-operative or friendly behaviour, whereas hard bargaining strategies relate to conflicting or aggressive tactics. Based on this distinction Dür and Mateo were able to formulate a number of actions—or tactics—that can unambiguously be interpreted both by respondents and researchers (Dür & Mateo, 2010b).

  2. 2.

    Other scholars have often distinguished between a pre-negotiation, negotiation, and post-negotiation phase (Elgström, Larsén, & Frennhoff Larsén, 2010). Surely, the six phases can easily be aggregated by three consecutive pairs to match such a conceptualisation. The advantage of the proposed demarcation, however, enables a clear separation of a proactive and a reactive stage while at the same time allowing for the distinction between the formal and informal stages of control.

  3. 3.

    Briefly formulated, the like-minded group is an informal coalition of member states advocating a more liberal trade agenda. The “open-minded” group by contrast is more pragmatic and favours the use of trade protection when it is deemed necessary.

  4. 4.

    Influence analysis (through dfbeta’s) when studying the main hypothesis (see Chap. 7) also singled out these respondents as suspicious. More information can be found in Annex A3 (3).

  5. 5.

    The internal consistency of the different indicators revealed an alpha of 0.76, which is acceptable and close to the mean and median values obtained in past survey research (Peterson, 1994).

  6. 6.

    The items of the index were first rescaled to [0,5] by subtracting one from all values. Such rescaling also occurred in the construction of other indicators (see infra).The resulting scores were then averaged and multiplied by 20.

  7. 7.

    The indicator takes into account the latest enlargement with Croatia, values were derived from Napel et al. (2013).

  8. 8.

    These differences were significant in a matched t-test and Wilcoxon matched pairs signed rank test.

  9. 9.

    For this variable, the following formula was used: Proactive (added) = 10 . (15 + P − R)/3. A respondent will obtain a score of 100 only if she/he has given the highest value on each of the proactive stages, while attributing the lowest possible scores to the reactive stages (P = 15; R = 0). A value of 50 will occur when P equals R. Unlike the ratio based indicator, for this measure it matters whether a respondent attributed a high or low score to the different stages.

  10. 10.

    To calculate the number of required replications, one can also use the three-step approach (Andrews & Buchinsky, 2000). The minimum number of replications as reported by STATA’s “bssize” procedure (Poi, 2004) were well below 5000 in the cases tested.

  11. 11.

    Of the thirty-seven respondents that answered this question, twenty-seven responded “regularly.” Of the remaining ten, six responded “rarely,” and the final four indicated “frequently.” The other answering options were not being used.

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  1. Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Johan Adriaensen

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  1. Johan Adriaensen
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Adriaensen, J. (2016). Signalling Control. In: National Administrations in EU Trade Policy. European Administrative Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54767-5_4

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