When states engage in negotiations in the Council of the European Union, the position of actors relative to their negotiating partners has a substantial impact on outcomes. Those with extreme positions will experience difficulty in winning support, while those in the centre will find states more amenable to their perspective regardless of their actual negotiating power. The bulk of the literature on bargaining in the Council has tended to assume that this form of ‘luck’ will balance itself out across negotiations, but is this actually the case? Using the DEUII dataset I show that certain states consistently adopt ‘luckier’ positions than others and that this effect appears to benefit smaller states. The clear implication of this finding is that we require a better understanding of the preference formation stage if we are to capture fully the dynamics of EU decision-making.

中文翻译：

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欧盟理事会中的一些国家比其他国家更幸运吗？

当各国在欧盟理事会进行谈判时，参与者相对于其谈判伙伴的立场会对结果产生重大影响。持极端立场的人将难以赢得支持，而处于中间立场的人会发现，无论其实际谈判能力如何，国家都更容易接受他们的观点。大部分关于安理会讨价还价的文献都倾向于假设这种形式的“运气”会在谈判中平衡，但事实真的如此吗？使用 DEUII 数据集，我表明某些状态始终比其他状态采用“更幸运”的位置，并且这种效果似乎有利于较小的状态。