Legislation Against the Odds: Overcoming Ideological Gridlock in EU Decision-Making

Negotiations in bicameral settings face the risk of gridlock when veto players' preferences diverge on the ideological (left–right) dimension. In the European Union (EU), a high proportion of legislation appears gridlocked yet is nevertheless adopted. We argue that ideological gridlock is resolved through the supply of and trust in legislative concessions. These are made to uphold supranational cooperation, to use issue linkage, and under “permissive consensus” across EU member states. We test our argument using a new dataset on amendments and repeals of existing EU laws (1999–2015). Our results demonstrate that elites' preferences on supranational cooperation as well as the potential for issue linkage help explain legislative success despite gridlock. High public Euroskepticism decreases the likelihood of compromise because lawmakers fear domestic electoral backlash to EU-level concessions. We contribute to established debates about legislative bargaining under complexity and propose that politicized cooperation can diminish problem-solving capacity across federations, multi-level states, and international organizations.