MI Researcher presents at American Political Science Association (APSA) Conference in Seattle

DEN HAAG (PDC) -

At the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in Seattle, MI researcher Lucie Spanihelova presented the current state of data collection projects at the Montesquieu Institute (MI) as well as her own research on the public influence on international compliance.

In a short course on Policy Agendas Project, Lucie Spanihelova spoke about the progress that the MI research staff and MI's fellows have made in the collection of a number of datasets that specifically focus on the policy of attention in the Netherlands. In the past years, the research division at the MI collected detailed data on the attention to over 250 policy issues in Queen's speeches, bills submitted to the parliament, coalition agreements, oral parliamentary questions, and interpellations. In addition to collecting data on policy attention in the Netherlands, substantial progress has been made with regards to gathering data on policy attention in selected EU institutions. In collaboration with a researcher Marcello Carammia at the University of Catania and MI fellow Sebastiaan Princen, MI's Arco Timmermans and Petya Alexandrova have collected data that track policy attention in EU Council conclusions.

Lucie Spanihelova also presented her long-term research project that deals with public influence on international compliance policies of national governments. In the case of the EU her research finds consistent evidence that governments' willingness to comply with EU rules substantially changes with the amount of attention that public pays to EU affairs.