"Reforming the Council - Modeling facets of a multi-actor system"

Maurer, Andreas. (2003) "Reforming the Council - Modeling facets of a multi-actor system". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (2140Kb) | Preview

Abstract

This paper investigates the Council of Ministers and the Convention's/IGC's dossier on the Council's system. Acknowledging that supranational influence is contingent upon both the context and actual strategies employed by supranational actors in an IGC, I focus on an issue where the member states strategic positions are under review. I argue that the Nice IGC's outcome is the product of a trend of member states who already during the Maastricht reforms started to base their preferences on a non-agreed type measure. Budding on the findings about the Nice IGC, the paper moves on to discuss different readings of the Council system and to analyze their empirical validity. I then systematically look at the ongoing debate about the Council's reform. Focusing on the Franco-German contribution of January 2003, I sketch two extreme variants for the future development of the Council, its presidency, its separation into a legislative and an executive/governing Count and its visibility with regard to Foreign Policy. The paper concludes that both extreme visions-the federal and the intergovernmental type-do not correspond to the reality of the Council. Nor do they help to reduce the Council's deficiencies with regard to efficiency, transparency, visibility and coherency. However, both extremes help to forecast the possible outcome of the Convention: a more presidential system which will be compensated by the set up of a truly legislative Council.

Actions (login required)