Member States and international institutions: Institutionalizing intergovernmentalism in the European Union

Article abstract:

The article proposes an alternative principal-agent-based approach for explaining the development of the relation between Member States and the European Union (EU). It argues that existing accounts have drawn excessively on information-based models of delegation derived from American domestic experience, which leads them to underplay both the significance of distributional conflict between member state 'principals' and the nature of states as actors. The article proposes an approach which, emphasising the particular nature of Member States as principals, leads to a different conceptualisation of the relation between Member States and EU institutions. Building on this, it goes on to outline and explain the dynamic nature of this relationship, which culminates in what is here referred to as the institutionalisation of intergovernmentalism within the EU.