s Using a dyadic approach to explore voting behavior of European Union (EU) member states in the Council of the EU, we investigate the similarity in voting behavior of governments on three policy dimensions: left-right, authoritarian-libertarian, and pro-/anti EU. These policy dimensions are of interest also in other contexts, such as decision-making in international or regional organizations other than the EU. Our dependent variable is based on a new data collection covering the time 2010–2021. Our analysis, employing random effects binary and ordinal logistic regression applied to relations between EU states, confirms that larger distances of governments represented in the Council on these policy dimensions combined are related to larger distances of their vote choices. Larger distances affecting different vote choices within dyads are also confirmed for the pro-/anti EU policy dimension. Moreover, we find that closeness of member states in terms of their budget positions and of domestic public opinion on the EU are related to voting similarities. Member state differences in terms of voting power, by comparison, lead to less divergence of vote choice, for decisions based on the qualified majority voting rule. The length of EU membership, however, does not affect vote choice similarities.

中文翻译：

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一种调查欧盟理事会投票行为的二元方法


s 使用二元方法来探索欧盟 （EU） 成员国在欧盟理事会中的投票行为，我们调查了政府在三个政策维度上投票行为的相似性：左翼-右翼、威权主义-自由主义和亲/反欧盟。这些政策维度在其他情况下也很有趣，例如欧盟以外的国际或区域组织的决策。我们的因变量基于涵盖 2010-2021 年的新数据收集。我们的分析采用应用于欧盟国家之间关系的随机效应二元和序数 logistic 回归，证实在这些政策维度上，理事会中代表的政府距离越远，其投票选择的距离就越大。影响二元组内部不同投票选择的较大距离也证实了支持/反对欧盟政策维度。此外，我们发现成员国在预算立场和国内公众对欧盟的看法方面的接近程度与投票相似性有关。相比之下，会员国在投票权方面的差异导致基于合格多数投票规则的决策的投票选择分歧较小。然而，欧盟成员国的长短并不影响投票选择的相似性。