From unanimity to consensus: An analysis of the negotiations at the EU's constitutional convention

World Politics

Volumn 58, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 413-445

  König, Thomas ^a   Slapin, Jonathan B ^b  

^a Deutsche Universität für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM; EUROPEAN UNION; INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL INTEGRATION; POLITICAL POWER; VOTING BEHAVIOR;

BENELUX; EURASIA; EUROPE; FRANCE; NETHERLANDS; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33847025305     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.2007.0002     Document Type: Article

References (147)

1. After the negative popular votes in France and the Netherlands, seven countries announced their ratification processes, while Latvia, Cyprus, Malta, Luxembourg, and Estonia ratified the proposal. Finland signed in autumn 2006. The German presidency is expected to consider possible solutions to revive the process after the French and Dutch elections in 2007.
2. Thomas König, "Measuring and Analysing Positions on European Constitution-building," European Union Politics 6, no. 3 (2005).
3. George Tsebelis, "The European Convention and the Rome and Brussels IGCs: A Veto Player Analysis," in Thomas König and Simon Hug, eds., Policy-making Processes and the European Constitution: At Comparative Study of Member States and Accession Countries (London, New York: Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science, 2006).
4. There was some formal structure, however. For example, the presidency split the process into three phases and established a system of eleven working groups, which hindered trading across issues
5. see Thomas König, Andreas Warntjen, and Simone Burkhart, "The European Convention: Consensus without Unity?"
6. and George Tsebelis, "Agenda Setting in the EU Constitution,"
7. both in König and Hug (fn. 3).
8. Thomas König, "The Dynamics of the Two-Level Process of Constitution Building: Setting the Agenda by Agenda Setting," in Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann and Wolfgang Wessels, eds., The Making of a European Constitution: Dynamics and Limits of the Convention Experience (Wiesbaden: VHS, 2006).
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10. König, Warntjen, and Burkhart (fn. 4)
11. and George Tsebelis (fn. 3).
12. Moravcsik (fn. 6).
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119. Milner (fn. 31).
120. Duncan Black, Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
121. Charles Plott, "A Notion of Equilibrium and Its Possibility under Majority Rule," American Economic Review 57, no. 4 (1967).
122. For example, Mayer (fn. 52)
123. Milner (fn. 31)
124. Tsebelis (fn. 51, 1995).
125. Morgan (fn. 52, 1984, 1990, 1994)
126. Morrow (fn. 52).
127. Hug (fn. 48).
128. For example, Schneider and Cederman (fn. 42).
129. Tsebelis (fn. 4).
130. Moravcsik (fn. 6)
131. Moravcsik and Nicolaidis (fn. 24).
132. For a complete description of the data collection process, see König (fn. 2).
133. For the governments of the EU15 member states, the proportion is 88.9 percent, and for the accession country governments it is 79.5 percent. And 92.9 percent of the countries include one answer from a governmental and a parliamentarian delegate, which means that the data set contains the two institutional positions from all EU15 member states and from 84.6 percent of the accession countries. Furthermore, the data cover 50 percent of the Commission's positions and 81.2 percent of the positions of the European Parliament, including members from all political parties.
134. Construct validity of the questions has been confirmed by the scientific adviser of a German Convention member, Professor Dr. Oppermann, and the high response rate of the interviewees.
135. Even though for some issues the status quo and median are the same, the correlation between our distance to the status quo variable and distance to the median variable is not particularly high (r=0.27).
136. In addition, we run a second probit model where we code the dependent variable one if the delegate prefers change and change occurs and zero if the delegate prefers the status quo and the status quo remains. Because this model is very similar to the first probit model, we report the one model.
137. Population data obtained from Eurostat (August 7, 2002).
138. Out of 1800 possible saliencies (20 issues multiplied by 90 delegates), 106 are missing - approximately 6 percent. In these few cases, we replace the delegate's missing saliency with his or her average saliency across the remaining issues.
139. For a list of these ratification procedures by member state, see Appendix 2.
140. EB60.1 covers EU15 member states while CCEB 2003.4 asks respondents similar questions in the accession countries.
141. We have also run the OLS model with panel corrected standard errors, which produces very similar results. In addition, we have run the models including both question and delegate fixed effects, and again the results do not change.
142. Tsebelis (fn. 4).
143. Geoffrey Garrett and George Tsebelis, "An Institutional Critique of Intergovernmentalism," International Organization 50, no. 2 (1996).
144. Hosli (fn. 25)
145. Hug and König (fn. 13)
146. Slapin (fn. 13).
147. Simon Hug and Tobias Schulz, "Using Mass Survey to Infer Political Positions," European Union Politics 6, no. 3 (2005).