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From Unanimity to Consensus: An Analysis of the Negotiations at the EU's Constitutional Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Thomas König  and
Jonathan B. Slapin
Thomas König
Affiliation:
German University, [email protected]
Jonathan B. Slapin
Affiliation:
University of California, [email protected]
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Abstract

In spite of the recent failure of two referendums, the drafting of a constitution for the second biggest economic power in the world, the European Union (EU), remains a major event in the history of European integration. Whether the constitution or a revised version of it will come into force or not, several important questions emerge. How did an increased number of twentyfive member states reach a conclusion, whereas a lower number of fifteen had failed at previous intergovernmental attempts? In particular, how did the constitutional convention differ from previous intergovernmental conferences (iGCs) at which the EU exclusively bargained its treaty documents in the past? How can one explain the outcomes of the convention, which proposes redistribution of power and resources among twenty-five or more member states? This article uses the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules. The authors use theoretical insights from a spatial model and new survey data to determine the implicit voting rule used at the convention. They find that the convention differed from previous IGCs because the convention was governed by consensus, whereas previous EU bargains on treaties had always required unanimous support. The level of consensus was higher than simple majority rule but lower than unanimity. Since this threshold impacted who won and who lost at the convention, the authors also examine the sources of bargaining power, such as delegates' distance to the status quo, distance to the median, population size, and domestic constraints. The results confirm several findings in the EU bargaining and two-level game literature, for example, that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states. The findings on the irrelevance of domestic constraints also indicate why the popular votes in France and the Netherlands failed.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , April 2006 , pp. 413 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2006

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References

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61 For a complete description of the data collection process, see Konig (fn. 2).

62 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.

63 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.

64 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).

65 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.

66 Population data obtained from Eurostat (August 7, 2002).

67 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.

68 For a list of these ratification procedures by member state, see Appendix 2.

69 EB60.1 covers EU1S member states while CCEB 2003.4 asks respondents similar questions in the accession countries.

70 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.

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