Attention towards energy: How were European Council attention patterns shaped on energy policy between 1975-2014?

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Attention towards energy: how were European Council attention patterns

shaped on energy policy between 1975-2014?

BSc - Thesis

Student name: Victor Peet Student number: s1850962

Supervisor: Dr. I.L. Elias Carrillo

Course: Agenda Setting and Policy Making in the European Union Course number: BAP6, 9980

Date: 02-06-2020

Bachelor: BSc. Internationale Betrekkingen en Organisaties Word count: 7807 words

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1. Introduction

The European Union (EU) is a unique political and economic partnership between 2[7] countries (IEA, 2014). This has been evolving over the years with several treaties which have shaped the institutions of the EU. With this partnership, the EU is one of the largest economies in the world measured by gross domestic product (GDP) (IEA, 2014). This large GDP is partly due to the enormous amount of exported services and goods from the EU. However, when it comes to energy the EU is highly reliant on import. The EU imports around 53 per cent of the energy that it consumes, and this number of import dependency is likely to increase in the future (IEA, 2014). Topics on energy policy have varied over time in the EU. Topics of main importance have been economic competitiveness, security of supply and environmental sustainability (IEA, 2014: Helm, 2012).

Before decisions can be made on policy, however, there has to be attention to issues by decision-makers. In scholar debates, most studies focus on decision-making as one object for study. However, agenda-setting can be seen as a necessary condition for decision-making and therefore deserves research in its own right (Princen, 2009). In the past there has been a rise in the number of studies on setting in other political systems. Most early work on agenda-setting has been focused on the United States. This eventually spread towards other political systems. However, in the EU agenda-setting still received little attention (Princen, 2009). In investigating agenda-setting one tries to understand why certain issues are considered by political actors, while others are not (Alexandrova et al., 2014). The study of agenda-setting in the EU is important for understanding the policy process of the EU. Agendas are the outcome of highly political processes and often have political consequences (Alexandrova et al., 2014). In existing literature on the EU, most studies tend to focus on the Commission, the European Parliament or the Council. However, despite its role as the effective agenda-setter of the EU, the European Council has received rather little attention from scholars as compared to the Commission or the European Parliament (Alexandrova et al., 2014). Alexandrova et al. (2014) point out that the European Council has an informal character which complicates research on its output. Also, European Council meetings are held behind closed doors which also complicates the study on the European Council (p. 154). The research that has been done on agenda-setting in the European Council often does not consist of systematic longer time analyses on the content of the European Council agenda (Alexandrova et al., 2012). Also, research on energy policy in the European Council is limited. Nowadays, policy on energy

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comes to policymakers under different frames (Biesenbender, 2015). Challenges like global warming and energy security demand policy from the EU.

The European Council is today the highest political and leading body of the EU (Werts, 2008, p. 37). In the European Council the heads of government and heads of state of all Member States are brought together and thereby representing the Member States at their highest political level and therefore having an enormous political clout (Lelieveldt & Princen, 2015: Tallberg, 2008). This gathering of the heads of state marks its importance (Alexandrova et al., 2014). However, the competences of the European Council are in fact rather limited. Only in a few areas the European Council is allowed to take formal decision (Alexandrova et al. 2014). This is because the European Council is not a legislative institution of the EU. Instead, the European Council sets the EUs policy agenda by adopting ‘conclusions’ of the European Council meetings (Council of the European Union, 2018). This providing of political direction in the EU is one of the main tasks of the European Council. In this task, the European Council sets the agenda for the internal policies and the Common Foreign and Security Policy for the EU (Lelieveldt & Princen, 2015). This is the agenda-setting role which is written down in article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (Lelieveldt & Princen, 2015).

This thesis will try to investigate the attention towards energy policy by the European Council and will try to explain the attention patterns. This will be done by using the punctuated equilibrium theory (further: PET). According to PET, the attention towards issues on the policy agenda is alternated between incremental, stable policymaking and major shifts in attention (Jones & Baumgartner, 2005). Therefore, this thesis will try to elaborate on the question: how were attention patterns shaped in the European Council on energy policy? These attention patterns will be assessed over the timeframe between 1975 and 2014. The starting point of 1975 is chosen because in this year the first meeting of the European Council took place. Also, by using the same timeframe as the work of Alexandrova and Timmermans (2015) on which this thesis tries to contribute, new statistical findings can be added to the academic debate. Following the assumption of PET, the expected outcome of this research is that the attention of the European Council regarding energy policy both consists of periods of stable, incremental attention and major shifts of attention towards energy policy.

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2. Theoretical framework

Previous work

As mentioned in the introduction, the European Council is an object of study in the EU that has received rather little attention from scholars in the past. However, this does not mean that there has not been any research at all regarding the European Council. Previous studies tended to focus on the development of the European Council as an EU institution. Also, studies have focused on the sources of the agenda-setting power of the European Council which often had a focus on the role of the presidency of the European Council (Alexandrova et al., 2012).

Research on agenda-setting in the European Council from a quantitative approach became more easily to conduct following the work done by Alexandrova and colleagues (2014). Their dataset which coded all (quasi-) sentences in the European Council conclusions from its foundation until 2014 made it possible to research the attention patterns of all policy domains which are discussed by the European Council. The systematic study of agenda-setting in the European Council virtually started with the work of Alexandrova, Carammia and Timmermans (2012). Their research focused on the policy punctuations and issues diversity on the European Council agenda. In their research they used PET to explain the agenda dynamics of the entire agenda of the European Council. In this research they found strong evidence of PET when applied to the entire European Council agenda. At the times that the core-issues in the European Council were less salient, agenda space was left for other issues (Alexandrova et al., 2012, pp. 84-85).

The link between PET and the domain of energy in the European Council remains to receive little scholar attention. The main contribution on this domain was done by Alexandrova and Timmermans (2015). Alexandrova and Timmermans (2015) studied the agenda dynamics on energy policy in the European Council. In their research, using the dataset provided by Alexandrova and colleagues (2014), they studied the attention that was given towards energy in the European Council and how the European Council dealt with the policy domain of energy. Their main findings are that the attention towards energy by the European Council consists of spikes which travel up and down and that attention is usually rather low-key (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). This thesis tries to build on the research as done by Alexandrova and Timmermans with renewed data and will try to strengthen the research on PET with statistical evidence on the distribution of attention by the European Council, as this is not done before on this domain.

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Agenda-setting in the European Council

The agenda is “the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying serious attention at any given time” (Kingdon, 2014, p. 3). Important in this definition is that the agenda is about the attention given to issues (Princen, 2009). Therefore, the agenda of the European Council is the list of issues that receive attention by the European Council. Political institutions usually have more time and manpower to deal with issues compared to individuals. However, time and manpower still remain limited (Princen, 2009). When focusing on the EU, several institutions have bureaucratic arrangements to expand the carrying capacity of the agenda. For example, the Council of Ministers consists of nine different configurations to deal with topic specific issues, which are prepared by the permanent representatives of each Member State (Princen, 2009). An important notion when dealing with the agendas of the EU institutions is that the carrying capacity of the agenda and issue competition varies between the institutions (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). The institutional profile of the European Council which acts as an agenda-setting institution for matters with a more dramatic context makes the carrying capacity more limited as compared to institutions that deal with more low-key issues (Alexandrova, Carammia & Timmermans, 2012, p. 73). Also, when we talk about issues on the agenda it is not merely about issues being on or off the agenda, but the debate is more about the political struggle of moving issues higher up or pushing them down on the agenda (Princen, 2009).

The entrance for issues to the EU policy agenda are distinguished in two ways by Princen and Rhinard (2006). First, issues can arrive on the EU agenda ‘from above’. In this case, issues are placed on the agenda by heads of state trough for example the European Council. This can be seen as the ‘high politics route’ (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). The European Council can be seen as an institution of ‘high politics’ because it consists of the heads of state of all Member States of the EU (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). Second, issues can reach the agenda ‘from below’. This means that officials and experts working in low-level groups, like Commission Expert Groups, and working parties which formulate new policy place the issue on the agenda. This is called the ‘low politics route’ (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). The ‘high politics route’ can be considered as a more political route, while the ‘low politics route’ is regarded as a more technocratic route (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). However, issues often require a focusing event, or the occurrence of a shared political problem in order to be crashed onto the agenda from above (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). When dealing with these shared

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political problems the European Council will discuss the broad outlines of the common approach and will eventually delegate the issue to lower level institutions to precisely work out the policies (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). Here we see the role of the European Council for outlining the policy direction of the EU. The first hypothesis for this thesis is the following:

H1: Drastic increases in attention on energy policy by the European Council are due to focusing events.

Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

Punctuated equilibrium theory began with the work of Baumgartner and Jones (1993). In their research on the United States’ policymaking they saw that there was both stasis and great leaps in policymaking and issues emerged and receded from the public agenda (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). These punctuated equilibria were particularly strong in US institutions. They found that American political institutions were designed to resist rapid change and that mobilization of interest was necessary to overcome established interests (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). Interest mobilization, interaction of political institutions and bounded rationality are key concepts in PET. Another formulation of PET can be found in the work of Alexandrova et al. (2012). Alexandrova et al (2012) state that “PET posits that agenda setting and policymaking show periods of stability and small adaptations but also involve larger shifts in which the agenda is reset more radically” (p. 72).

One of the main pillars of PET is bounded rationality. Bounded rationality is a notion which comes from the work of Simon (1985). Simon (1985) argues that an individual has a limited processing capacity in the mind. The human mind can only attend a few things simultaneously. These limits can be broadened a bit by using ‘time sharing’, which is the periodically switching of attention. This narrow attention span accounts for a great deal of the human unreason (Simon, 1985, p. 302). This notion also applies to human organizations. However, organizations are somewhat more flexible in allocating their attention (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007, p. 158). This bounded rationality of organizations creates a “bottleneck of attention” where there is a distinction between serial and parallel processing (Elias & Timmermans, 2014). Serial processing refers to handling one or a few issues at a time, while parallel processing refers to the capacity to handle many issues simultaneously (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). Political subsystems are used within political systems to allow for parallel

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a subsystem much more issues can be considered. When we look at change in political subsystems, we see that it is incremental because of bargaining among interest and marginal moves because of changing circumstances, this is what True, Jones and Baumgartner (2007) call politics of adjustment (p. 158). However, issues cannot always be processed in a parallel manner. Sometimes issues demand serial processing. It is possible that issues move from lower level agendas onto the higher political agendas for serial processing. In this case, new participants become involved, there is a changed environment of issue definition, and broader media and public attentiveness occurs (Jones, 2004, p. 185). It is then that major changes tend to occur (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). It is thus that an issue shifts from a micro-political level, for example a political subsystem, towards the macro-political level. Therefore, access to the agenda is a precondition for major policy punctuations (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007).

As mentioned before, the carrying capacity of an agenda-setting institution for dramatic matters is more limited than for institutions that deal with issues that are more low-key (Alexandrova et al., 2012). We see that political decision-makers often process issues serially, thus one by one. This is due to the limited carrying capacity of the agenda but also attention is scarce (Elias & Timmermans, 2014). Attention is allocated selectively because policymakers in macro-political institutions have to discern among issues (Elias & Timmermans, 2014). However, the attention regarding specific issues is never fixed. When looking at the attention given to issues, Elias and Timmermans (2014) argue that the issue arrives high on the agenda episodically and the attention is therefore rising and declining over time (p. 163). These rises can be smooth, and display spikes up and down when information comes to the policymakers (Elias & Timmermans, 2014). The bottlenecks of the attention in institutions become visible when issues arrive at the top of the agenda. When issues are sensitive to focusing events, they can drive out other problems (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). This driving out of problems from the top of the agenda displays the serial character of political institutions. These organizational limits of the institutions make them to ignore information about new problems for as long as possible which maintains the incremental state until a point has been reached where new information is so strong that response is inevitable (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015).

The European Council does attract these dramatic matters. Its multiple roles in the political system of the EU does not only demand attention to many issues and policy coordination, it also needs quick response to focusing events which make certain matters highly urgent (Alexandrova et al., 2012, p. 74). The institutional complexity of the European Council

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limits its possibilities to handle issues in a parallel manner. It is not possible for all issues to obtain a highly urgent status in a complex institution like the European Council where friction in information processing and the costs of making decisions on priorities is high (Alexandrova et al., 2012, p. 74). Studies on national agendas have showed that “core issues” often condition the attention which is allocated to “non-core issues” (Jennings, Bevan, Timmermans, et al., 2011). Here we see competition among issues for entrance on the agenda and the allocation of attention. The “non-core” issues have to compete among themselves to receive attention from the European Council, but they have to compete for entrance with the “core issues” in the first place (Alexandrova et al., 2012). In the sense of the European Council agenda, this would mean that “core issues” like international affairs and foreign aid and macroeconomics would condition the attention for a “non-core issue” like the domain of energy (Alexandrova et al., 2012). This theoretical line leads to the second hypothesis:

H2: The “core issues” on the European Council agenda condition the attention that is allocated towards energy policy.

PET was originally created for policymaking in the United States. However, the increase in comparative studies of agenda-setting allowed for broader systemic analysis of the conditions of PET (Alexandrova, et al., 2012). Increasing friction in the policy process makes agendas more suitable for punctuated equilibrium, as it reinforces episodic changes between stability and change (Alexandrova et al., 2012). This friction can be described as political costs for changing attention. This can come from institutional rules on for example decision-making. These are often constitutionally designed, as we saw with the US institutions that were deliberately designed to resist rapid change and needed interest mobilization (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). The European Council is concerned with both policy input as policy output according to Alexandrova et al. (2012). The policy input aspect in the European Council is its role as the voice of the EU where the European Council initiates policies, this involves low threshold for change. The policy output aspect of the European Council is its role as policy coordinator, conflict arbiter and task delegator towards other institutions, this involves high threshold for change (Alexandrova et al., 2012). In its role as policy coordinator therefore, there are high thresholds for change. Because of the high thresholds, change occurs less frequent but when it happens the intensity is stronger (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). This leads to the third and final hypothesis:

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H3: Change in attention towards energy policy in the European Council does not happen frequently, but if it occurs, high peaks in attention are visible.

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3. Methodology

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the attention pattern of the European Council on energy policy. To answer to this goal data has to reflect to which extent the European Council gives consideration towards energy policy and therefore we have to measure attention. Attention, therefore, is the occurrence of an issue on the agenda of the European Council. The pattern refers to the way an institution gives attention to issues over time (Elias, 2019). The pattern of attention towards energy therefore is the occurrence of energy on the European Council agenda and the way in which the European Council gives attention to energy policy.

For this thesis the European Council conclusions will be investigated by a content analysis. The European Council conclusions are the main source of output for the European Council. The conclusions are prepared by the president of the European Council ahead of every European Council meeting. After being prepared, the conclusions are discussed by the General Affairs Council, and later adopted at the European Council meeting by consensus (European Council, 2020). The conclusions are formal evidence of the issues that are being discussed at the meetings. It is the most reliable source of data for long-term analysis (Alexandrova et al., 2014). The contents of the European Council conclusions are of a generic nature which contains all sorts of issues (Elias, 2019). Because the European Council uses the conclusions to communicate their opinion on issues towards other EU institutions, the EU public and expresses their ideas for action on these issues, it makes the conclusions suitable to use in this analysis.

The European Council conclusions dataset is developed by Alexandrova, Carammia, Princen and Timmermans (2014). This dataset contains all European Council conclusions from March 1975 until December 2014. All sentences in the conclusions have been coded until the (quasi-)sentence level. Consequently, even sentences with more than one statement are coded accordingly (Alexandrova et al., 2014). In total the dataset contains 132 conclusions, and 48.322 quasi-sentences (Alexandrova et al., 2014, p. 157). Every (quasi-)sentence is coded with a Comparative Agendas Project Issue Code (CAPIC). The CAPICs refer to the domain to which the policy issue can be allocated. In total, the dataset consists of 21 CAPICs. For example, the domain of Energy is coded with CAPIC 8. The number 8 refers to the main topic. Apart from the main topic the (quasi-)sentences are also divided into the subtopics which belong to the main topic. These subtopics are the two digits following the first digit. For example, CAPIC 806 refers to Alternative and Renewable energy in the main topic Energy.

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The European Council dataset uses the same approach as the Comparative Agendas Project dataset which brings together scholars from different countries (Alexandrova et al., 2014, p. 155). The use of this approach to measure attention and the structure of policy agendas brings several advantages in its use over alternative data collection strategies, like interviews and surveys. First, it allows for retrospective reconstruction of agendas. Second, the standardized coding scheme makes it possible to compare the European Council agenda over time. Third, it enables scholars to study the relative attention of all issues on the agenda (Alexandrova et al., 2014, pp. 155-156). Apart from these advantages there are also several things to bear in mind when using this dataset. The data do not contain information about policy positions. Also, because it is an analysis of the text that is mentioned in the conclusions, the data do not contain tone. Therefore, it is possible that the data contains purely symbolic mentions of discussions. However, as Alexandrova et al. (2014) state, this is most likely to occur in the lower ranges of the agenda (p. 156).

This thesis investigates the attention patterns by the European Council on energy in the timeframe between the years 1975 and 2014. The choice of this timeframe has been made due to two reasons. First, this thesis builds on the previous work of Alexandrova and Timmermans (2015) who have researched the same timeframe. In order to contribute with more statistical findings, the same timeframe helps to transfer findings. Also, a large timeframe provides a better overview of punctuations that might or might not have taken place in the time that the European Council has produced policy output. Therefore, the year that the European Council officially gathered as such has been chosen as starting point. The year 1974 is the last year that contains coded European Council conclusions in the European Council dataset.

This content analysis of the European Council conclusions will consist of three parts. First, the attention patterns of the European Council towards energy policy relative to the entire agenda will be investigated. In particular there will be a focus on explaining the attention patterns as such. The attention pattern of the European Council on energy enables us to spot potential peaks in attention to support our theoretical expectations following PET. To be able to obtain the attention pattern of the European Council towards energy policy relative to the entire agenda several steps have to be taken. For each year, the total sum of (quasi-)sentences produced by the European Council has been measured. This number is the size of the entire European Council agenda in a given year. Also, for each year every (quasi-)sentence which belongs to the main topic Energy with CAPIC 8 has been measured. With these numbers the relative attention from the European Council towards energy on the entire agenda for each year can be calculated with the following formula:

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𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 = 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 (𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑠𝑖 −)𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑙 (𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑠𝑖 −)𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠

Second, by the use of a kurtosis analysis this thesis will try to provide statistical data on the actual level of variation in the attention towards energy relative to the entire agenda. A kurtosis analysis can provide information about the degree of change in a frequency distribution and it provides information about the “peakedness” of the distribution (Elias, 2019: Pallant, 2016). The kurtosis analysis allows us to understand the effect of the design of the European Council and its overall carrying capacity. The method of this kurtosis analysis will be a ‘percentage-percentage’ method. This enables us to measure the change in attention towards energy relative to the entire agenda for a given year compared to the previous year. Therefore, we can investigate the degree in change whenever it being an increase or a decrease. To summarize, the situation in the given year t1 is compared to the situation in the previous

year t0. In the data the first year with a change score is the year 1976. This is due to the fact

that the year 1974 does not exist in the data of the European Council conclusions and therefore there is no increase or decrease in the year 1975, it is the starting point. The change scores of the years will be calculated with the following formula:

𝑡_!− 𝑡_" 𝑡_"

The actual level of kurtosis is measured via Pearson’s kurtosis. The following formula was used:

𝑘 = ∑(𝑋 − 𝜇) 4 𝑛@ (Σ(𝑋 − 𝜇) 2 𝑛@

The level of kurtosis is “the relation between the fourth moment of a distribution and the square of its variance, which is the second moment” (Elias, 2019, p. 75: Alexandrova et al., 2012, p. 78). In the formula above, X represents the variable, so in this case the change score, μ

represents the mean of the change scores and n is the number of years. The list of change scores is provided in Appendix 1. A kurtosis of 0 means that the distribution of attention in this case is perfectly normal. A positive kurtosis means a rather peaked distribution, with data clustered in the center. A negative kurtosis implies that the distribution is rather flat (Pallant, 2016). As

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Elias (2019) states, with a model of incremental policy change, the theoretical kurtosis score of a normal distribution is 3.0 (p. 76). If the level of kurtosis is above this theoretical level of 3.0, it can be considered ‘leptokurtic’. Therefore, the distribution above 3.0 is non-normal and there is a degree of punctuation in the policy process (Elias, 2019). It indicates that very small and very large changes occur and that mediam-size changes occur less than normal (Alexandrova et al., 2012). Following our expectations from PET, we should find leptokurtosis in our data (Alexandrova et al., 2012)

Third, this thesis will provide a comparison between the relative attention towards macroeconomics, international affairs and foreign aid, and energy. The domains of macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid are used in this method because they have received the largest shares of attention by the European Council between 1975 and 2014 (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). This analysis will be done to investigate the consequences of the notion of issue competition for the domain of energy on the European Council agenda. For the topics macroeconomics, international affairs and foreign aid, and energy the relative share of the entire European Council agenda is calculated. This is done following the same formula used for calculating the agenda patterns of energy on the European Council agenda. When these datapoints are viewed together in one graph this thesis will try to formulate a statement on whether the two domains who received the highest degrees of attention by the European Council condition the entrance and degree of attention that can be allocated to the domain of energy.

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4. Analysis

Attention pattern of energy on the European Council conclusions

This analysis of the attention of the European Council towards energy in the European Council conclusions will consist of three separate parts. To begin with, the analysis will discuss the attention pattern of energy on the European Council agenda.

Figure 4.1. Relative attention to energy as a part of the entire European Council agenda,

1975-2014

Figure 4.1 displays the attention on energy policy as a share of the entire European Council agenda per year. These data contain all possible appearances of the domain energy as coded under the domain energy. For example, in the starting year 1975, the (quasi-)sentences produced on CAPIC 8 energy was 6,5% of all (quasi-)sentences in the European Council conclusions that year. When looking at the agenda pattern of energy, three trends can be distinguished.

First, the attention towards energy in the year 1979 was 31,69% of the entire agenda of the European Council which consisted of three meetings that year. This punctuation in attention was mainly due to the first and second oil crises which made the European Council think about resolving future problems with oil supply for the European Community (Alexandrova &

0,00% 5,00% 10,00% 15,00% 20,00% 25,00% 30,00% 35,00% 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 Per cen ta geo f t he en tir e agen da Energy

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Timmermans, 2015). Therefore, we see that 21% of the (quasi-)sentences in 1979 were focused on the subtopic natural gas & oil. The second oil crisis asked for sudden action, this is directly visible from the first sentence that the European Council produced in its conclusions from June 1979. “It stressed the urgent need for action in the face of the serious structural situation brought about by the development of a lasting imbalance between supply and demand for oil […] not only in the long term but also in the immediate future” (European Council, 1979). Therefore, the oil crises can be seen as a focusing event. In order for issues to be “crashed” onto the agenda from above, there often has to be a focusing event or a shared political problem (Princen & Rhinard, 2006). Here, during the second oil crisis, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) put selective embargoes on European Countries, which left European Countries reeling both economically and physically (Helm, 2012). This shared problem which required sudden action from the European Council shows the reactiveness of the European Council in this aspect with the sudden peak in attention towards energy.

Second, the attention on the European Council agenda regarding energy appeared to be rather low and incremental during the period between the years 1981 and 2005 (Figure 4.1). The domain energy even disappeared from the agenda twice (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). These disappearances occurred in the years 1984 and 1987. This low degree of attention takes account for the largest part of the data. When all (quasi-)sentences of the entire European Council agenda between 1975 and 2014 are considered, energy only accounts for 3.5% of all attention given to issues by the European Council. This can partly be explained by the fact that the institutional profile of the European Council is mainly suited for dealing with issues with a more dramatic context which constrains it carrying capacity (Alexandrova et al., 2012). Here, we see the bottleneck of attention for the European Council. The heads of State and government have to discern among issues within the limited amount of times that they come together. From our theoretical expectations, there is a claim that the European Council tends to handle issues in a serial manner. Here it becomes visible that the European Council does not allocate its attention towards energy in an equally divided manner. Episodically, as seen in the peak in 1979, energy arrives high on the agenda. After these peaks the attention towards energy tends to drift away.

Third, an increase in attention towards energy is visible in the period between 2006 and 2014. During this period the relative attention on energy promoted energy to the fourth place on the agenda of the European Council (Alexandrova, 2015). Important issues on energy in this timeframe were efficiency, energy security and sustainability. We see that sustainability increased in importance for the European Union because of the role that the EU has given itself

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to lead by example on climate action (Alexandrova, 2015; European Commission, 2019). Also, the security in supply for energy increased in urgency around the year 2009 because of the disruption in gas supply by Russia through Ukraine, this happened due to economic and political reasons by Russia. This affected a lot of Member States both directly and indirectly (Alexandrova, 2015; Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015; Helm, 2012; European Commission, 2009). Again, there was an “urgent need to establish adequate crisis mechanisms in the EU as well to work to obtain clear guarantees from suppliers and transit partners that supplies will not be interrupted” (European Council, 2009). In this sentence a parallel with the year 1979 is visible. In both years there is a disruption of the energy supply which let the European Council rethink its security of supply of energy. Here we see that the European Council is rather reactive in allocating its attention to sudden shared problems in the domain of energy.

When we regard the attention pattern of the European Council on energy, we see the pattern as expected by the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. When we look at the implication of PET by Alexandrova et al. (2012), which states that PET posits that agenda setting and policymaking show periods of stability and small adaptations, but also involve larger shifts in which the agenda is reset more radically, it becomes clear that this image is reflected by the European Council on energy. In the timeframe between 1981-2005 we see incremental, stable policymaking on energy in which the attention towards energy is low. This period of equilibrium is alternated with punctuations on both sides of figure 4.1. First, in the year 1979, there is the largest punctuation due to the second oil crisis. Secondly, there is the increase in attention due to a focus on energy efficiency, energy security and sustainability with the second largest punctuation in 2014.

Distribution of attention on energy on the European Council agenda

Now that we have seen that the attention of the European Council regarding energy shows both peaks and periods of stable, incremental policymaking, it is important to look at the distribution of attention by the European Council on energy. To measure this with statistical evidence, the kurtosis analysis is used. This displays how changing the trend of the development of attention was (Elias, 2019). The findings on the kurtosis analysis that was done on the change scores of attention towards energy on the European Council agenda are displayed in table 4.1.

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Table 4.1. Statistics on kurtosis of attention towards energy in the European Council between 1975-2014. Minimum -1.000 Mean 1.1737 Maximum 15.1333 Standard deviation 2.9509 Kurtosis 12.918

Following the data concerning the change scores the kurtosis analysis provided the statistical evidence with a positive value of 12.918. The range of the distribution of attention on energy by the European Council is between a minimum of -1 (this is due to the two times that energy disappeared from the agenda) and a maximum of 15.1333 (a 1513% increase in attention in 2006 compared to 2005). The distribution of attention on energy by the European Council can be considered ‘leptokurtic’. This is because the statistic of 12.918 is higher than the theoretical value of 3.0.

Figure 4.2. Distribution of attention changes on energy policy on the European Council agenda between 1975-2014.

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Figure 4.2 displays a histogram with the frequency of the change percentages in the bars with the normal distribution portrayed by the line. We see that the data show a strong peak in the center, this indicates that there are a great number of very small changes (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). The shoulders of the graph, which are lower than the normal distribution, indicate fewer than normal moderate changes and the two peaks on the arms indicate more than normal radical changes in attention compared to the previous year (True, Jones & Baumgartner, 2007). All in all, the attention distribution tends to change from small changes to large changes in the European Council on energy policy. This can be due to the limited processing capacities that derive from the theoretical expectations as stated by Alexandrova et al. (2012). This is also underlined by Elias (2019), she argues that the restricted processing capacities of the European Council hinders it to attend the problem of organized crime in the European Council in a balanced manner. This is also reflected in the attention distribution on energy policy as indicated above. Also, high agenda volatility appears to be consistent with the European Council as a high politics venue (Alexandrova et al., 2012, pp. 78-79). This is due to the fact that politicians in macro-political intuitions have to discern among issues. Usually, attention towards issues tends to be low until a point has been reached that new information cannot be ignored any longer. Then, response is inevitable and major shifts in attention occur. This contributes to the finding in this case that there is a large amount of incremental changes with some major changes in attention towards energy.

Issue competition on the European Council agenda

The previous sections of this analysis looked at the pattern and the distribution towards energy on the European Council agenda. It explains partly why the European Council shifted a part of its attention towards the issue of energy at certain times and it explained the leptokurtic distribution of attention. The following section will compare the attention towards energy to two main domains on the European Council agenda. These two domains are ‘Macroeconomic’ issues and ‘International Affairs and Foreign Aid’. These domains are the two that attract the most attention from the European Council in their conclusions (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). Following the (quasi-)sentences produced by the European Council between 1975 and 2014, macroeconomics attracted 14,5% of the attention and international affairs and foreign aid attracted 21,7% of the attention of the entire agenda. The following section of the analysis will examine issue competition on the agenda of the European Council and its consequences for the attention towards energy policy.

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The carrying capacity of the agenda differs between the EU institutions (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). As mentioned previously, the European Council’s institutional profile as the agenda setter of the EU attracts matters of a highly dramatic context which makes the carrying capacity smaller compared to institutions that deal with more low-key issues (Alexandrova et al., 2012). Also, core issues tend to condition the attention that is allocated towards other matters. This is seen when core issues increase in salience, then there is little space left for other issues (Jennings, Bevan, Timmermans et al., 2011). Therefore, non-core issues need to compete for attention among themselves, but against the core issues in the first place (Alexandrova et al., 2012). In the EU therefore, the core issues condition the access of non-core topics on the agenda (Alexandrova et al., 2012). However, agenda-setting is not only about being ‘on’ or ‘off’ the agenda. It is a highly political struggle of moving issues higher up the agenda or pushing others down (Princen, 2009).

Figure 4.3. Relative attention to energy, macroeconomics, and international affairs and foreign aid as part of the entire European Council agenda, 1975-2014.

Figure 4.3 shows the attention patterns by the European Council regarding energy, macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid. For all topics the attention is

0,00% 5,00% 10,00% 15,00% 20,00% 25,00% 30,00% 35,00% 40,00% 45,00% 50,00% 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

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displayed as the percentage of (quasi-)sentences produced on the certain topic relative to the total amount of (quasi-)sentences produced by the European Council in a certain year which reflects the entire agenda of the European Council. For example, in the year 1975 the topic energy received 6,5% of all sentences produced in that year, macroeconomics received 26,8% of all (quasi-)sentences in that year and international affairs and foreign aid received 34,4% of all (quasi-)sentences produced in that year. From this graph certain trends can be observed. First, the attention pattern of energy is clearly displays lower allocation of attention compared to macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid. As previously displayed, the average attention to energy was 3,5%. This is significantly lower than the 14,5% and 21,7% allocated to macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid respectively. However, this overall significantly lower attention did not prevent energy to increase in attention compared to the other two core domains at all times. For example, in the year 1979 energy received more attention than both macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid. This increase in attention was due to the second oil crisis which impacted the EU and needed urgent action to resolve future problems with the European oil supply (Alexandrova & Timmermans, 2015). However, before this year, a downwards trend concerning the attention allocated to international affairs and foreign aid is visible. Therefore, agenda space opened up to be filled with energy. Here we see that the decrease in attention on international affairs and foreigned aid conditioned the increase in attention for energy. This appearance can be seen in several occasions on the European Council agenda. In the year 1994 slight decreases in attention on macroecomics and internatinal affairs and foreign aid occurred, which was followed by a slight increase in the attention on energy. The same occurred for the years 2002, 2006, 2011, 2013, and 2014.

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5. Conclusion

This thesis tried to show and explain the attention patterns of the European Council on energy policy and contribute to previous research on this topic. The European Council conclusions provided sufficient data to elaborate on this research question. The main findings on the attention patterns of the European Council on energy policy will be listed below after which recommendations for further research on this topic will be mentioned.

First, the attention patterns of the European Council regarding energy policy show that attention to energy usually is rather low by the European Council. Overall, energy attracted 3,5% of the attention during the timeframe between the years 1975-2014. However, the trend of incremental change sometimes is heavily disrupted by large punctuations in attention. This is in line with H3 which posits that shifts do not happen frequently, but when they happen, the changes of attention consist of high peaks. The year with the highest peak in attention was the year 1979 which was due to the second oil crisis. Here we saw that the European Council reacts on focusing events in the domain of energy which facilitate a high shift in attention. This finding is in line with the findings of Alexandrova and Timmermans (2015). Furthermore, energy does not act as a topic of main attention for the European Council and therefore overall attention was low. However, an increase in salience can be seen from 2006 onwards, from which year the domain of energy became the fourth most attended topic on the European Council agenda (Alexandrova, 2015). This increase in salience can be explained because of the increase in importance of environmental sustainability for the European Union on which it wants to lead by example. These findings fully comply with the expected pattern provided from the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. Overall, the attention from the European Council on energy shows periods of stability and small adaptations, but also shows larger shifts in which the agenda is reset more radically. However, H1 is not fully met by the findings. Focusing events are not the only reasons that facilitate shifts in attention towards the domain of energy since the recent increase in salience for environmental sustainability is not mainly due to a focusing event.

Second, our analysis on the distribution of attention by the European Council on energy show that the attention is non-normal distributed. Following the percentual change in attention of each year compared to the previous year, this thesis provided a kurtosis analysis in order to provide statistical evidence on the changing trend of the development of attention and the ‘peakedness’ of the distribution. The findings show that the distribution of attention was leptokurtic with a kurtosis value of 12,918. This means that the distribution of attention is

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non-normal. The data provided a strong peak in the center, which shows a great number of small changes, weak shoulders, which indicate fewer than normal moderate changes on energy policy and two peaks on the arms, which means more than normal radical changes on energy policy. These statistical findings can be explained by the limited processing capacities of the European Council.

Third, issue competition and its consequences for the attention towards energy policy on the agenda of the European Council was investigated in an attention comparison between energy, as a domain of little overall attention, and macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid, as the two highest attended domains by the European Council in their conclusions. The findings suggest that a decrease in attention by the two main topics of macroeconomics and international affairs and foreign aid condition the rise in attention for energy policy. This finding is in line with H2 which posits that the “core issues” on the European Council agenda condition the entrance and attention towards energy on the European Council agenda. Generally, slight decreases of the two main topics were followed by slight increases of the domain of energy. In certain years the increase in attention for energy can be considered as major and, in these years, also a strong decrease in the attention towards the two main topics is visible.

However, there is need to be cautious when concluding purely on the (quasi-)sentences of the European Council conclusion. Every sentence counts at the same value, which means that, because of the absence of tone in the numbers, a highly emphasized (quasi-)sentence counts as heavy as a (quasi-)sentence of symbolical meaning. Also, the chapter on issue competition on the European Council agenda compared the domain of energy with the two “core issues” on the European Council agenda to investigate if the “core issues” conditioned the entrance and attention allocated towards energy. For this research, there has been no research on the competition among the “non-core issues”. However, the competition among the “non-core issues” to receive attention from the European Council is also a notion of importance to investigate the factors that contribute to the attention towards energy.

Further research

The domain of agenda setting on energy in the European Council remains to be a domain of little research. Therefore, this thesis will provide recommendations for further research on this topic. As mentioned, this thesis only elaborates on the issue competition of energy with the “core issues” but does not elaborate on the issue competition between energy and other

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“non-core issues”. Research on this topic might provide insights in how issues struggle to receive attention from a high political body as the European Council. Also, recently there is a higher political demand for an environmentally sustainable future. This thesis already pointed out that this trend is coming up in recent years. However, it might be interesting to investigate the attention towards energy on the sub-topic level of energy policy to explain attention towards perhaps more sustainability issues within the domain of energy.

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7. Appendices

Appendix 1.

Appendix 1 shows all change scores which contribute to the kurtosis analysis of chapter 4. The change score derive from every (quasi-)sentence that is coded under CAPIC 8 energy. To measure the relative attention towards energy by the European Council the number of (quasi-)sentences with CAPIC 8 energy have been divided by the total number of (quasi-(quasi-)sentences produced by the European Council in a given year. As explained in the methodology, all change scores are calculated by the following formula:

𝑡_!− 𝑡_" 𝑡_" Appendix 1: annual change scores

Year Change score

1975 1976 -0,921 1977 1,3529 1978 2,2083 1979 7,2312 1980 -0,6942 1981 -0,8504 1982 0,2759 1983 -0,227 1984 -1 1985 0 1986 4,2186 1987 -1 1988 0 1989 1,0714 1990 2,3103 1991 -0,5729 1992 1,3171 1993 0,6211

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1994 2,3571 1995 -0,7911 1996 -0,6389 1997 -0,6154 1998 3,3333 1999 1,4 2000 -0,8654 2001 4,381 2002 2,1504 2003 -0,427 2004 -0,8235 2005 1,0833 2006 15,1333 2007 -0,038 2008 -0,2809 2009 -0,4612 2010 -0,6009 2011 3,3278 2012 -0,697 2013 1,161 2014 2,3451

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Appendix 2

For the kurtosis analysis the change scores of appendix 1 are used in SPSS. The kurtosis analysis in SPSS provided the following output.

DESCRIPTIVES VARIABLES=Change

/STATISTICS=MEAN STDDEV MIN MAX KURTOSIS.

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Appendix 3

Appendix 3 shows the syntax that was produced in SPSS to build a histogram to display the distribution of change on the attention allocated towards energy in the European Council. SPSS provided the following output.

EXECUTE. * Chart Builder. GGRAPH

/GRAPHDATASET NAME="graphdataset" VARIABLES=Change MISSING=LISTWISE REPORTMISSING=NO

/GRAPHSPEC SOURCE=INLINE. BEGIN GPL

SOURCE: s=userSource(id("graphdataset")) DATA: Change=col(source(s), name("Change")) GUIDE: axis(dim(1), label("Change"))

GUIDE: axis(dim(2), label("Frequency"))

GUIDE: text.title(label("Simple Histogram of Change"))

ELEMENT: interval(position(summary.count(bin.rect(Change))), shape.interior(shape.squar e))

END GPL.

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Attention towards energy: How were European Council attention patterns shaped on energy policy between 1975-2014?