Which institutions for post-war Europe? Explaining the institutional design of Europe’s first community

Abstract:

This article addresses a question that has been vastly ignored by the political science community and the literature on institutional/constitutional choice and delegation in European politics in particular: why is the European Union governed by a specific set of institutions comprising a Commission, Parliament, Court and Council of Ministers? By linking Member States' preferences for co-operation to their preferences for institutions, this article provides an explanation of why the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community opted for a particular institutional set-up that included elements novel to the practice and study of international co-operation, i.e. supranationality and a nascent form of popular representation. It will be argued that the states' underlying economic and status- or security-related preferences for co-operation correlate with different rationales for institution-building. With regard to economic preferences, the logic of institution-building will follow instrumental calculations about the expected distributional consequences of institutional arrangements whereas status- or security-related preferences correlate with considerations of 'appropriateness' given uncertainty about the distributive implications of institutions. This article will therefore show that norm-driven and methodological individualist approaches to explain institution-building need not be mutually exclusive but can be considered as complementary.