More arguing than bargaining? The institutional designs of the European Convention and Intergovernmental Conferences compared

Abstract:

Overall, the Nice Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) was not a story of success in deepening integration. Therefore, all hopes shifted to the European Convention. According to a widely shared expectation in the constructivist literature, the Convention's institutional design facilitates argumentative discourses and consensus outcomes above lowest common denominator solutions. Rationalist approaches, on the other hand, assume for all institutional settings that bargaining is conducive to compromise, often close to lowest common denominator outcomes. This article theoretically assesses the impact of institutional variables on dynamics of interactions and illustrates its claims empirically. Based on a bridge-building approach between rationalists and constructivism, it identifies scope conditions under which polity and policy variables are conducive to argumentation and consensus or to bargaining and compromise. It concludes that the most prominent constructivist institutional variables, such as transparency or plurality of actors, were less important for the achievements of the European Convention than policy variables. The comparison of institutional designs reveals that Conventions are even less conducive to argumentative dynamics than Intergovernmental Conferences.