Resume

Mads Christian Dagnis Jensen is a PhD researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy .  He obtained a Master’s degree in Political Science (candidata scientiarum politices) from the University of Copenhagen and a Master’s degree in Politics and Government in the European Union from the London School of Economics. Mads has taught courses in General and Comparative Politics and has been a research assistant at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Furthermore, he has worked in the Danish Ministry of Finance and has been an intern at The Permanent Representation of Denmark to the European Union in Brussels.

Key research interests

·      The Institutions of the European Union (Council of Ministers, European-Parliament, Commission)

·      Policy-making in the EU

·      EU Law and the role of the European Court of Justice

·      Europeanisation

·      Comparative Politics with a focus on Western Countries

·      Comparative Public Administration

·      Political Communication

·      International Relations with a special interest in international negotiations

PhD project

Member states of the European Union (EU) are represented in the Council of Ministers where they are expected to send representatives who are authorised to commit the government of that member state in the negotiations (follows from article 203 in TEU). These national representatives usually act in accordance with instructions from their national government. In order to develop such instructions for their representatives, all member states have established an EU coordination system. An EU coordination system can be defined as a structure containing interlinked governmental units whose function is to coordinate national EU-related activities so that a national negotiation position can be presented in the Council of Ministers. Identifying the key explanatory factors that determine how national EU coordination systems are organised and function is highly important, as the systems are the key device for projecting national preferences into the EU system. As such, the coordination systems are the interlocker between the national political system and the EU system which has to accommodate the particularities of both systems. The thesis hypothesises that the organisation and functioning of the coordination systems can be predicted to some extent based on the constellation and number of veto players in a political system. Based on veto player theory, the thesis develops different hypotheses which are empirically assed by comparing the EU coordination systems in Germany and Denmark by means of three questions: (1) How have member states’ coordination systems changed over time, (2) What explanatory factors determine the organisation of EU coordination systems, and (3) How do the coordination systems operate?

Other

Editorial board member and reviewer at the Danish Journal ‘Politik’: www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk

Convener of the Working Group on Comparative Politics at the European University Institute

Contact

Mads Christian Dagnis Jensen

PhD Research student

European University Institute

Department of Political and Social Science

Badia Fiesolana

Via dei Roccettini 9

I-50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI)

E-mail: Mads.Dagnis@eui.eu

Cell phone: (+39) 3294528509

ITALY