The Role of Precision in the Deliberations of the EU Council of Ministers

• In Event: I Would Do Anything for EU Governance (but I Won't Do That)

Abstract

This study examines the role of precision and vagueness in policy debates in the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU). We hypothesise that ministers manipulate the precision of their interventions in Council debates to explain to their colleagues their (lack of) support for policy change and the voting behaviour that results in a negotiation context subject to strong consensus norms. We introduce a novel measure of precision/ambiguity in debate interventions constructed using large language models and validate these measures against human coding efforts. We then demonstrate how precision varies significantly across policy areas, member state representatives, and time. Our results provide new insights into the rhetorical structures that shape Council deliberations and the manner in which member states justify their policy positions to one another when they (dis-)agree with the policies under negotiation.

Authors

• James P Cross, University College Dublin

• Martijn Schoonvelde, European University Institute