Rule application in EU and US conciliation committees

Important rules regulating conciliation committees in the EU and the U.S. look similar but are applied very differently in practice. This article examines why rule application is different in the two systems. In accordance with insights from recent institutional literature, the results show that differences in rule application can be explained on the basis of variation in rule ambiguity between the two systems, and how much bargaining power the actors interested in strategically selecting between or modifying the rules have. They also add to the literature by underlining the fact that ambiguity in which rule to apply, or how to interpret a given rule, is not a necessary condition for these procedural choices. The results are thus not only relevant to scholars interested in bicameral bargaining, but also to scholars with a general interest in rule application.