Shared hesitance, joint success: Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in the European Union policy process

This paper analyses the roles of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in the area of EU legislative decision-making. After reviewing the literature, a research design is presented which incorporates information on the policy preferences of these three political states for seventy recent EU legislative decisions. The findings of the analysis are that the positions of the Nordics are quite similar and that these three states are rather successful. Denmark is doing slightly worse than Finland and Sweden Sanneke Kuipers, Department of Public Administration, Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. email: kuiperss@fsw.leidenuniv.nl