Just to be clear? Strategic vagueness of the European Parliament in EU policy negotiations

Abstract Vague legislative language can facilitate law adoption and implementation but reduce policy effectiveness and application uniformity. So, when do legislators employ it? Building on policymaking and responsiveness theories, we argue that legislators use vague language to overcome institutional conflict and public opinion constraints but avoid it when they seek to assert their positions in legislative output and policy outcomes. Empirically, we study the conditions under which the European Parliament (EP) introduces vague amendments to European Union (EU) legislative proposals using dictionary-based content analysis of EU legislative negotiations between 2009 and 2019. The results show that EP sticks to more concrete positions when inter-institutional conflict threatens its policy goals but employs vagueness to maintain a broad appeal and avoid public backlash given public opinion divisions and contentiousness. These results add to our knowledge of legal text formulation, EU law making, and EP representation.