“Situating Decisions: The Puzzle of the British ‘No’ to Schengen”

Wiener, Antje. (1999) “Situating Decisions: The Puzzle of the British ‘No’ to Schengen”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, PA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The paper proceeds in four steps. The first section briefly introduces basic information about the Schengen Convention and defines the current conditions with a view to compliance with Schengen rules. The second section identifies the puzzle of British exceptionalism from a sociological constructivist perspective. The third section argues that while supranational norms do condition the behaviour of domestic actors, the role of constitutive norms within domestic framework must not be underestimated. By distinguishing between sociological and Wittgensteinian constructivist approaches, the fourth section develops an explanation for based on the situatedness of decision-making. It suggests that constitutional culture has a significant impact on decision about core policy areas, such as, for example, border politics. The paper offers an insight into a larger ongoing research project on compliance with “European” rules under supranational conditions and national norms. The major goal is not to produce an explanation for a puzzle, but to identify the puzzle by way of situating the case properly in various layers of constructed contexts.

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