explaining the institutional foundations of european union negotiations

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Explaining the institutionalfoundations of European UnionnegotiationsJonas TallbergPublished online: 21 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Jonas Tallberg (2010) Explaining the institutional foundations ofEuropean Union negotiations, Journal of European Public Policy, 17:5, 633-647, DOI:10.1080/13501761003748559

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Explaining the institutionalfoundations of European UnionnegotiationsJonas Tallberg

ABSTRACT European Union (EU) negotiations take place within the frameworkof a set of formal and informal institutions. Member states negotiate in the organiz-ational context of the Council and the European Council, take decisions throughalternative procedures and decision rules, and sustain a set of norms for theconduct of negotiations. While the effects of these institutions on negotiation behav-iour and outcomes have received extensive attention, the question of why these par-ticular institutions have been established or evolved remains underexplored. Thiscontribution makes an argument in favour of systematic attention to the design ofnegotiation institutions in the EU, and suggests that we should draw on generaltheoretical approaches to institutional design for these purposes. Moreover, ratherthan engaging in the exercise of trying to prove or falsify theoretical approaches,we should exploit the potential for explanatory complementarities in concreteempirical domains. To this end, the paper advances a domain-of-applicationapproach to institutional design and illustrates its applicability to EU negotiationinstitutions through four empirical illustrations.

KEY WORDS Domains of application; European Union; institutional design;institutional theory; negotiations.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, the dynamics of negotiation in the European Union (EU)has emerged as a prominent sub-field in the study of EU politics. Some scholarshave sought to explain the patterns of legislative negotiations between the EUinstitutions (e.g., Thomson et al. 2006), or the outcomes of treaty-revision nego-tiations between the member governments of the EU (e.g., Moravcsik 1998).Others have addressed the sources of bargaining power (e.g., Bailer 2010), themodes of negotiation (e.g., Elgstrom and Jonsson 2000), the patterns of coalitionformation (e.g., Naurin and Lindahl 2008), the scope for leadership (e.g., Tall-berg 2006), the impact of norms on negotiation behaviour (e.g., Lewis 2005),and the EU as an external negotiator (e.g., Meunier 2005). Drawing ongeneral negotiation theory, a range of edited volumes have explored the specificsof negotiations in the EU (Elgstrom and Jonsson 2005; Elgstrom and Smith2000; Meerts and Cede 2004; Naurin and Wallace 2008).

Journal of European Public PolicyISSN 1350-1763 print; 1466-4429 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis

http://www.informaworld.com/journalsDOI: 10.1080/13501761003748559

Journal of European Public Policy 17:5 August 2010: 633–647

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A common and central theme in this literature, in all its diversity, is the extentto which the patterns and outcomes of negotiations in the EU are shaped by theinstitutional context in which bargaining takes place. That ‘institutions matter’is not a claim in this literature; it is an analytical starting point. Formal organ-izations, rules and procedures define the arena, the actors and the rules of thegame, while informal norms and understandings prescribe and proscribealternative forms of negotiation behaviour. Yet, given this causal importanceassigned to institutional context, existing research is surprisingly silent on thesources of these formal and informal institutions. Why have these particularorganizational frameworks been established, decision-making procedureschosen and informal norms evolved? In short, what explains the institutionaldesign of negotiation institutions in the EU?

This study speaks in favour of systematic attention to the sources of insti-tutional design in EU negotiations. More specifically, it advances two particularclaims. First, I suggest that there is much to benefit from drawing explicitly ongeneral theoretical approaches to institutional design for purposes of explainingthe framework governing EU negotiations. While functional institutionalism,sociological institutionalism and power-oriented institutionalism offer generictheoretical tools that have informed the literature of international institutionsgenerally, as well as the study of the EU’s supranational institutions, theseapproaches have so far made less headway in research on the EU’s institutionsfor interstate negotiations.

Second, I propose a domain-of-application approach for the analysis of EUnegotiation institutions. While often presented as competing in their generaltheoretical statements, these three approaches can be complementary in termsof explanatory power when deployed in a problem-driven, empirically-orientedway. More specifically, I claim that functional demands for an institution bestexplain its creation, while ideational diffusion is a central determinant ofthe specific form that it takes, and relative power differentials best accountfor its distributive terms. The applicability and promise of the domain-of-application approach is illustrated through four examples of institutional designinvolving four different kinds of institutions in EU negotiations-the EuropeanCouncil (organization), qualified majority voting (rule), the rotating Presidency(procedure) and consensus decision-making (norm)-suggesting an agenda forfuture research centred on theoretical complementarities.

The term institutional design is used here in a theoretically neutral way todenote the process whereby institutions are created or emerge with a specificset of properties, and is thus open to both intentional and spontaneoussources of institutional design (Goodin 1996).

EXPLAINING INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN

In recent years, issues of institutional design have become increasingly prominentin the study of international institutions (Simmons and Martin 2002). Threeapproaches are commonly distinguished, each privileging a specific set of

634 Journal of European Public Policy

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factors hypothesized to explain institutional design. In this section, I introducethe main tenets of functional, sociological and power-oriented institutionalism,and explain why these approaches generate explanatory complementarities.1

Three approaches

The first approach, functional institutionalism, emphasizes functional efficiencyas the driving concern in the design of international institutions. The analyticalbedrock is the proposition that institutions are created and designed to addressshortcomings in the market or the political system as a means of producingcollectively desirable outcomes (Weingast and Marshall 1988; Williamson1975). Typically, the origin and form of international institutions has beenexplained with reference to their capacity to help states overcome collective-action dilemmas, related to high transaction costs, information asymmetriesand enforcement problems. Recognizing that not all areas of governance aresubject to the same dilemmas, or dilemmas of identical intensity, rationalchoice institutionalists have introduced the nature of co-operation problemsas a factor explaining variation in international institutional design. In thestudy of international co-operation, this explanation has been deployed toexplain, for instance, the demand for international institutions (Keohane1984), the delegation of power to international institutions (Hawkins et al.2006), and the shape of international rules and organizations (Koremenoset al. 2001). In research on the EU, this approach has so far been most influen-tial in analyses of member governments’ delegation of power to the EU’ssupranational institutions (Pollack 2003; Tallberg 2002).

When applied to the context of EU negotiation institutions, this approachgenerates the expectation that member state considerations with functional effi-ciency will determine the choice and design of organizations, rules, proceduresand norms. More specifically, we would expect organizations to be establishedin response to demands for long-term negotiation forums that can reduce thetransaction costs of bargaining; procedures to be chosen in view of their capacityto enhance decision-making efficiency; and norms to emerge that can structurethe behaviour of states and offer stable equilibria for their interaction.

The second approach, sociological institutionalism, privileges norms and ideasas explanations of institutional design decisions in world politics. This approachdirects our attention to processes of diffusion and institutional mimicking as thesources of institutional design. Its analytical foundation is the notion that insti-tutions reflect broadly shared ideas and norms of what constitutes appropriatemodes of governance (March and Olsen 1989; Powell and DiMaggio 1991).Actors adopt certain procedures and practices, not necessarily because theyare the most efficient, but because they constitute collectively legitimated insti-tutional models. The result may be isomorphism-the diffusion and homogeniz-ation of institutional models across functional domains.

In the ‘thick’ version of this argument, norms and ideas work through pro-cesses of socialization and internalization; in the ‘thin’ version, actors adapt

J. Tallberg: Explaining the institutional foundations of EU negotiations 635

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strategically to broadly known norms and ideas of legitimate institutionaldesign. In the study of International Relations (IR), this explanation has beenused to explain, for instance, the growth in international non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) (Boli and Thomas 1999), the diffusion of central bankindependence as an institutional model (McNamara 2002), and the dysfunc-tionality of international institutions (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Inresearch on the EU, this approach has informed analyses of the role of ideasand legitimacy concerns in the design of the supranational institutions,notably, the European Parliament (Rittberger 2005) and the EuropeanCentral Bank (McNamara 1998).

When applied to the context of EU negotiation institutions, this approachgenerates the expectation that states will adopt organizations, rules, proceduresand norms that are broadly considered legitimate, by reference to establishedinstitutional models and ideational patterns. More specifically, we wouldexpect negotiation organizations to be modelled on pre-existing institutionaltemplates, procedures to mirror specific normative ideas and principles, andnorms to reflect broadly held conceptions of appropriate negotiation behaviour.

The third approach, power-oriented institutionalism, emphasizes the expecteddistributional implications of international institutions as the most prominentfactor in design decisions. In its general analytical formulation, this approachdirects our attention to how asymmetrically held power resources shape bargain-ing over new institutions (Knight 1992). In its IR version, it suggests thatinternational institutions constitute reflections of the distribution of statepower in world politics (Mearsheimer 1994/5; Waltz 1979).

In this view, international institutions are created at the initiative of the mostpowerful states in the international system, and designed to disproportionatelyserve their interests. Organizations, rules, procedures and norms safeguard andadvance, rather than challenge and circumscribe, the interests of the dominantparties. International institutions are thus epiphenomenal to state interests, andconstitute arenas for acting out power relations, rather than independent con-straints on state behaviour. In the study of international co-operation, thisapproach has been advanced to explain, for instance, the distributional termsof global communications regimes (Krasner 1991), the capacity of the foundingstates of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the EuropeanMonetary Union (EMU) to dictate the terms of co-operation (Gruber 2000),and the dominance of the United States (US) and the EU in international regu-latory regimes (Drezner 2007). In research on the EU, this approach hasinformed analyses of the disproportionate influence of the EU’s large memberstates in negotiations on institutional reform (Garrett 1992; Moravcsik 1993)and enlargement of the organization (Moravcsik and Vachudova 2003).

When applied to the context of EU negotiation institutions, this approachgenerates the expectation that organizations, rules, procedures and norms willbe structured in favour of the most resourceful member states. More specifically,we would expect negotiation organizations to be established at the initiative of


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the most powerful member states, procedures to institutionalize power asymme-tries, and norms to help legitimize the exploitation of the weak by the strong.

Exploring theoretical complementarities

In the meta-theoretical debate about institutions in political science, theseapproaches are typically presented as alternatives, each departing from assump-tions and offering perspectives on the state of the world that are incommensurablewith those of other approaches. This paper joins the growing body of literaturethat finds this meta-theoretical debate unproductive (Fearon and Wendt 2002;Jupille et al. 2003; March and Olsen 2006; Schneider and Aspinwall 2001).Rather than engaging in the illusory exercise of trying to ‘falsify’ or ‘prove’ theor-etical approaches, we should explore complementarities between approaches inaccounting for institutional design, change and development.

This is not an uncontroversial agenda. In ontological and epistemologicalterms, there are real and extensive differences between rationalist and construc-tivist approaches. While functional institutionalism and power-oriented institu-tionalism depart from self-interested actors engaged in strategic choice and reston a positivist epistemology, sociological institutionalism assumes sociallyembedded actors and spans across the positivist/post-positivist divide. Yetthese differences are too often taken to mean that research on institutions isbest performed within the one or the other approach, precluding dialogue. Ifwe shift from the meta-theoretical-level to the operational and problem-driven-level of empirical inquiry, however, these approaches are not necessarilyincommensurable, but offer theories with causal mechanisms that may becomplementary in terms of accounting for observed processes and patterns.

A number of models for theoretical dialogue have been suggested: competitivetesting; additive explanatory power; domains of application; and incorporation(Jupille et al. 2003; March and Olsen 2006). In the first model, the purpose is toassess the explanatory power of competing hypotheses in a given empiricaldomain, in order to identify the single most important explanation. In thesecond model, the ambition is to add theories and causal factors in order toarrive at the greatest possible combined explanatory power, much like in multi-variate quantitative analysis. In the third model, the purpose is to provide acomprehensive explanation of an empirical process or phenomenon bydrawing on theories with alternative home domains and comparative strengths.In the fourth model, the ambition is to incorporate one theory as a subset toanother, thus arriving at greater explanatory power.

I suggest that a domain-of-application approach may be particularly promis-ing for purposes of explaining the design of EU negotiation institutions.Departing from the assumption that all theories have scope conditions, thisapproach seeks to specify the respective ‘home domains’ of theories, and toidentify ways in which they may subsequently complement each other inexplaining a larger empirical picture (Jupille et al. 2003: 21-3). Theories arecomplementary in substantive terms when they best explain different parts of


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a broader political phenomenon, for instance, major constitutional bargains andeveryday decision-making in the process of European integration. But theoriesmay also be complementary in a temporal sense when they best explain differentphases in a sequential process, for instance, preference formation and strategicbargaining as two stages in the process of international co-operation. Itshould be clear that the intention in the domain-of-application approach isnot to synthesize theories into one super-model, but to exploit their comparativeexplanatory advantages as autonomous theoretical constructs.

What, then, are the expected complementarities of the three institutionalistapproaches in accounting for the design of EU negotiation institutions?Conceiving of institutional design as a process consisting of three components,I suggest that functional institutionalism offers a powerful explanation ofinstitutional creation, while sociological institutionalism is particularly apt atexplaining the form of the institutions created, and power-oriented institutional-ism enjoys comparative advantages in accounting for the distributive terms of thesame institutions. These are expectations partly grounded in existing comparisonsof institutionalist approaches in political science (Hall and Taylor 1996; Heritier2007; Peters 2005).

Through its emphasis on expected collective benefits, functional institution-alism offers a potent explanation of institutional creation that recognizes theextent to which states deliberately establish institutions in order to solve jointproblems. Efficiency concerns are most likely to influence institutional creationwhere functional problems are clearly identifiable and the potential benefits ofan institution are high, at the same time as the transaction costs of negotiatingthat institution are low. Yet, functional institutionalism is relatively less apt atexplaining (a) why the institutions established take a particular form, where afunctional problem may be addressed through multiple institutional designs,and (b) why the institutions established are designed with some distributionalterms rather than others.

By focusing attention on the processes whereby those developing new insti-tutions borrow from the existing world of institutional templates, sociologicalinstitutionalism can help to address the first weakness. Where multiple insti-tutional designs are equally efficient, the choice of what institutional form toadopt may be influenced by the existing menu of institutions and notions ofwhat models are collectively considered legitimate and appropriate. Likewise,once a particular institutional form has been adopted, it may spread throughoutand beyond an organization through social processes of diffusion. Institutionalborrowing and diffusion are most likely to shape institutional design wherefunctional problems do not prescribe a particular institutional form, andwhere institutional models are readily available and collectively accepted.

By highlighting that actors frequently have asymmetric bargaining resourcesand benefit unequally from specific institutional designs, power-oriented insti-tutionalism can help to address the second weakness in the functionalistaccount. While functional institutionalism emphasizes the overall collectivebenefits that result from the establishment of an institution, and neglects its


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distributive dimension, power-oriented institutionalism can explain whyprocedures and rules may be biased in favour of the most resourceful parties.Distributive concerns are most likely to influence institutional design wherethere are clear differences in both the distributional consequences of particularinstitutional designs and clear differences in the distribution of power amongthe negotiating actors.

In the remainder of this contribution, I demonstrate that this interpretationof the relative advantages and combined explanatory power of functional, socio-logical and power-oriented institutionalism is promising for understanding thedesign of EU negotiation institutions.

EXPLAINING EU NEGOTIATION INSTITUTIONS: A DOMAIN-OF-APPLICATION APPROACH

For purposes of illustrating the explanatory potential of a domain-of-applicationapproach, this section provides four brief empirical illustrations of institutionaldesign, drawn from four different kinds of institutions in EU negotiations: theEuropean Council (organization); qualified majority voting (rule); the rotatingPresidency (procedure); and consensus decision-making (norm). These illus-trations offer preliminary support for the proposed explanatory complementa-rities, and suggest that the domain-of-application approach may provide a morecompelling account than any approach in and of itself.

The establishment of the European Council

The European Council was created in 1974 as a permanent, informal nego-tiation body outside the treaties, at the initiative of French President ValeryGiscard d’Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and following adecade of ad hoc summits between heads of state and government.

Notions of functional efficiency loom large in explanations of the establish-ment of the European Council. In the standard historical account, internationaleconomic and political pressures in the early 1970s, in combination withstalemate in the Council of Ministers, translated into a demand for politicalleadership provided through the creation of the European Council in 1974,next to a strengthened role for the EU Presidency (Bulmer and Wessels 1987;Werts 1992). The subsequent development of the European Council, froman informal forum of collective leadership into a formal body of collectivedecision-making, may be explained in similar terms. As deficiencies in the func-tioning of the Council hampered decision-making and EU co-operation movedinto policy areas requiring guidance or endorsement at the highest politicallevel, the European Council saw its decision authority strengthened over time(Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 2006).

However, the establishment of the European Council also involved aspects ofinstitutional mimicking and ideational diffusion that supplement the function-alist account by helping to explain why Giscard d’Estaing and Schmidt


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promoted this particular institutional form. Both had in their previous positionstaken part in, and come to greatly appreciate, the informal ‘Library Group’ ofAmerican, British, French and German finance ministers, and conceived of thisas an appropriate model for the informal discussion forum between heads ofstate and government that they proposed (Westlake and Galloway 2004:174–5). It has also been suggested that the strictly intergovernmental designof the European Council was influenced by the joint scepticism of Giscardd’Estaing and Schmidt toward further supranational integration – a positionconformant to the Gaullist conception of Europe (Bulmer and Wessels 1987:9; Moravcsik 1998: 485).

Power-oriented institutionalism, for its part, helps to shed light on the distri-butive aspects of the European Council’s establishment. The fact that it wasFrench and German ideas that became institutionalized in the design of theEuropean Council is understandable in view of the combined clout of thesemember states in the European Community at the time. Moreover, the creationof this body outside the formal framework of the treaties specifically favouredthe large and resourceful member states by introducing a political domain inEuropean co-operation where power could rein unfettered by the mediatinginfluence of the Community institutions. These distributional terms andeffects also help to explain the staunch opposition of several small memberstates, notably the Benelux, which feared increased Franco-German dominance(Werts 1992).

The extension of qualified majority voting

While the introduction of qualified majority voting as decision principle in theCouncil initially had been planned for the mid-1960s, this was postponed as aproduct of the empty-chair crisis and the Luxembourg compromise of 1966(Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 2006: 263–8). The principle was instead effec-tively introduced through the 1986 Single European Act, and its scope hassubsequently been extended in every new treaty.

There is much to suggest that the move over time towards qualified majorityvoting constitutes a reform that answers to demands for more efficient decision-making in the Council. In a situation where the risk of deadlock increasesbecause of the growing number of member states, the shift toward majorityvoting helps to maintain a Council capable of reaching decisions. The efficiencyargument in favour of qualified majority voting has been fundamental in reformnegotiations, and resulted in the gradual extension of this principle to the largemajority of decisions taken in the Council. Individual governments’ support forthis principle has reflected a cost–benefit analysis, where the efficiency ofcommon decisions has been weighed against the desire of individual countriesto reduce political risks by retaining the veto (Moravcsik 1998).

Sociological institutionalism supplements this functional account by high-lighting the role of ideas in the adoption of majority voting as institutionalform. Historically, the principle of majority voting has constituted a central


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component of the federalist vision of the EU (Burgess 2000). This vision hasmobilized the Benelux states in favour of the introduction and diffusion ofthis principle in Council decision-making at consecutive intergovernmentalconferences. Conversely, France under Charles de Gaulle resisted the scheduledshift to qualified majority voting in the 1960s, largely because of its federal over-tones, bringing about the empty-chair crisis of 1965–66. Similar scepticism onideological grounds traditionally has characterized the position of the UK,especially under Margaret Thatcher.

Yet, the design of the system of majority voting in the EU also involved veryparticular distributional terms, best accounted for by power-oriented institu-tionalism. On functional and ideological grounds, majority voting could havebeen organized in multiple ways, including the option of one state-one vote,which constitutes the basic and dominating principle in international law. Inthe EU, however, the member states instead opted for a system of majorityvoting that rests on a principle of differentiated voting weight, and thus institu-tionalizes asymmetric formal influence of the EU’s larger member states overnegotiated outcomes. When introduced in the European Economic Commu-nity (EEC) in 1957, the specific weighting of votes was designed to makesure that France, Germany and Italy, when acting together, could not beprevented from moving forward against the combined opposition of theBenelux countries (Westlake and Galloway 2004: 242).

The design of the rotating Presidency

The procedure of a rotating chairmanship in the Council was part of the EU’sinstitutional design from the very beginning, and subsequently extended to newareas of co-operation initially outside, but later incorporated into, the treaties.Over the years, the Presidency has grown from a purely administrative taskinto a political function.

Functional institutionalism offers an explanation of the delegation of process-powers to the chairmanship that centres on states’ interests in avoiding problemsof unstable agendas, negotiation deadlock and representation failure in EU bar-gaining. While the European Commission in the early years of integrationhelped to meet the demand for agenda setting and brokerage in the Council,growing scepticism of the Commission’s intentions and increasing complexityin the Council, together with a new demand for a representative of theCouncil vis-a-vis other EU institutions and the external world, led EU govern-ments to confer more far-reaching powers on the Presidency from the early1970s onwards (Tallberg 2006). The search for efficient modes of negotiationand decision-making was the leitmotif of this process. Where the rotationdesign of the Presidency gave rise to problems of discontinuity, EU govern-ments sought to address these through the creation and strengthening of mech-anisms of continuity, such as the Council Secretariat and multiannualPresidency programmes.


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While functional demands for process management thus may account for theempowerment of the Presidency, notions of legitimate institutional models arebetter positioned to explain the adoption and diffusion of a rotating chairman-ship, as opposed to an elected chairmanship or supranational chairmanship. Thechoice in favour of the rotation model in the 1950s is generally attributed to theinfluence of the principle of equality between the member states, which entailedthat each state in turn would occupy the office, irrespective of size or politicalweight (Wallace 1985). When introduced in the European Coal and SteelCommunity in 1952, this principle had already been chosen for the chairman-ship of the United Nations Security Council (1945), the Western EuropeanUnion (1948) and the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (1949).Once adopted, this model subsequently spread within the EU context, to theEEC (1957), European Political Co-operation (1970) and the EuropeanCouncil (1974), as well as outside the EU, to other regional European arrange-ments, such as the European Free Trade Association (1960) and the NordicCouncil of Ministers (1971).

Highlighting the distributive aspects of the EU chairmanship, power-orientedinstitutionalism can help to explain coalition patterns and outcomes in reformnegotiations on the Presidency. While the principle of rotation ensures formalequality between states in the design of the chairmanship, recent years havewitnessed proposals for a shift toward models that would introduce or entailunequal distributive terms. In the negotiations on what eventually became theLisbon Treaty, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain advancedproposals and voiced support for a shift to an elected, semi-permanent chairmanof the European Council. The EU’s small and medium-sized countries mobi-lized against this proposal, partly because they wished to hold on to the recur-ring opportunities for influence through the Presidency, and partly because theyfeared an expansion of the room for power politics in the EU, if the EuropeanCouncil was strengthened at the expense of the Commission. Despite therequirement of unanimity and the opposition from small and medium-sizedcountries, the large member states were successful in pushing through thisreform.

The norm of consensus decision-making

Despite provisions for qualified majority voting, EU governments overwhel-mingly take decisions by consensus in the Council. In 75 to 80 per cent ofall cases where decisions could have been taken through voting, memberstates instead resort to consensus agreements (Hayes-Renshaw et al. 2006: 163).

By emphasizing how informal understandings may emerge spontaneously toenhance the efficiency of negotiations, functional institutionalism can help toexplain the origin of this consensus norm. In this account, the consensusnorm is part of a set of informal practices that facilitate decision-makingthrough issue linkage in an environment of iterated negotiations (Heritier1999). More specifically, consensus decision-making emerges as a result of


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informal vote trading between member states within the existing legislativeagenda (log-rolling) or vote swapping over time (diffuse reciprocity) (Heisen-berg 2005). It thus constitutes the product of a strategic practice amongmember states to ‘sell’ preferences not strongly held for advantages in otherissue areas or in future negotiations, which not only advances their individualinterests but also enhances the overall efficiency of decision-making.

Sociological institutionalism is well positioned to explain how this norm ofconsensus, once it has emerged, diffuses in the EU bargaining system andbecomes internalized among negotiators. In comparison to most other inter-national institutions, the EU is characterized by a relatively high degree ofcultural homogeneity, shared values and collective identity, and therefore con-stitutes a fertile ground for norms to spread and structure negotiating behaviour(Checkel 2005; Lewis 2010). Negotiators that have been part of this system for along time have become socialized to act in accordance with the norm, whicheven may have gained a taken-for-granted character (Heisenberg 2005). New-comers, by contrast, frequently diverge from this norm initially, but lateradapt to the expectations once they learn the decision-making culture (Lewis2008). Examples of the latter include Sweden’s extensive record of contestedvoting in its first year of membership, and subsequent adoption of the consensusnorm when negotiators became acculturated.

While at first glance it may be difficult to understand why the EU’s largemember states, advantaged by the system of qualified majority voting, acceptthe practice of consensus decision-making, power-oriented institutionalism canhelp to explain this puzzle. It is possible for powerful states to respect the pro-cedural norm of consensus and simultaneously use various practices to escapethe constraints on power intrinsic to this norm. Much like the EU and the USdominate consensus decision-making in the World Trade Organization byexploiting their market size as an underlying source of bargaining power (Stein-berg 2002), the large member states of the EU can draw on their structural poweradvantages to shape agreements adopted by consensus or unanimity (Tallberg2008). Moreover, negotiations, even where they result in consensus agreements,are known to take place in the shadow of the vote (Golub 1999), which grants theEU’s large member states more extensive influence over outcomes. Rather thanchallenging differentiated influence, the consensus norm thus creates a proceduralfiction that hides and legitimizes the exploitation of the weak by the strong.

CONCLUSION

While students of bargaining and decision-making in the EU routinely assumethat institutions matter for outcomes, we have so far not done enough to system-atically explore the sources of the organizations, rules, procedures and normsthat govern EU negotiations. In this paper, I have made a general call forsuch research, and advanced two more specific propositions. First, there ismuch to benefit from drawing on general theories of institutional design forpurposes of explaining the establishment, form and terms of the EU’s


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negotiation institutions. Functional, sociological and power-oriented institu-tionalism offer generic theoretical tools that have informed research on inter-national institutions generally, as well as the EU’s supranational institutions,but can be better exploited in research on the EU’s interstate negotiation insti-tutions. Second, rather than engaging in the exercise of attempting to ‘falsify’ or‘prove’ entire theoretical approaches, we should explore explanatory comple-mentarities in specific empirical domains. In the contribution, I have advanceda domain-of-application interpretation of institutional design that privilegesfunctional demands as explanation of institutional creation, ideational diffusionas explanation of institutional form, and relative power as explanation of insti-tutional terms. Empirical illustrations from the organizations, rules, proceduresand norms that govern EU negotiations speak to the explanatory advantages ofthis strategy, compared to exclusive reliance on one institutionalist approach,and thus suggest an agenda focused on theoretical complementarities forfuture research in this area.

In the advancement of this agenda, process tracing and in-depth case studiesare likely to constitute a particularly effective methodological approach. Notonly is process tracing, with its focus on how initial conditions translate intooutcomes through causal mechanisms, specifically designed for the explorationof historical political processes (George and Bennett 2005). In addition, thisapproach is particularly open to the domain-of-application model of theoreticaldialogue, as it allows for the notion that factors hold varying explanatory powerover the course of a political process. This makes process tracing superior for thepurposes of this research agenda, when compared to methodological techniquesthat rest explicitly on competitive testing. Quantitative methods have beeneffectively used in the study of international institutional design, and may becombined with the domain-of-application approach as well. However, whendeployed for purposes of explaining the design of EU negotiation institutions,this approach risks confronting the problem of a low n, unless the number ofcases can be expanded through disaggregation.

Biographical note: Jonas Tallberg is Professor of Political Science at StockholmUniversity, Sweden.

Address for correspondence: Jonas Tallberg, Department of Political Science,Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Sweden. email: [email protected]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the editors of this volume, two anonymous reviewers andthe participants in the workshop on ‘Negotiation Theory and the EU: The Stateof the Art,’ Dublin, 14–15 November 2008, for helpful comments on thispaper.


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NOTE

1 In the general institutionalist debate in political science, historical institutionalism isfrequently presented as the third approach, next to rational choice institutionalismand sociological institutionalism (Hall and Taylor 1996). However, while offeringpowerful hypotheses on institutional development over time, emphasizing pathdependence and unintended consequences, historical institutionalism does notpresent a specific expectation as to the factors that inform the design of an institutionin the first place. In this respect, power-oriented institutionalism offers a moredistinct alternative.

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explaining the institutional foundations of european union negotiations

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