The importance of actor cleavages in negotiating the European Constitutional Treaty

This paper aims to explore government preferences, cleavages, and pat-terns of coalition-formation among a variety of actors in the bargaining process on the European Constitution, across the range of twenty-five European Union (EU) member states. The study focuses on preferences concerning socio-economic policy-making and explores whether divisions can be discerned between preferences held by actors according to locations on the left-right policy scale, actors in older as compared to newer EU states, net EU budget positions, domestic rates of support for European integration, and smaller as compared to larger states. The analysis also controls for possible external effects, such as recent domestic macro-economic developments. Finally, the paper explores, while focusing on Article 3 of the European Constitution, which actors submitted collaborative contributions during the Convention process and whether or not they followed discernable patterns of collaborations between representatives of member states and political party groups.