Policy-Making Processes and the European Constitution

Abstract

This new book presents a wealth of new data documenting and analyzing the different positions taken by European governments in the development of the European constitution.Understanding how constitutional decisions are taken in the EU is of great societal and scientific relevance. This volume examines how these decisions have substantial effects on the sovereignty of nation states and on the lives of citizens, independent of the ratification of a constitution.Few efforts have been made to document constitution building in a systematic and comparative manner, including the different steps and stages of the process. This book examines European constitution building by tracing the two-level policy formation process from the draft proposal of the European Convention until the Intergovernmental Conference, which finally adopted the document on the constitution in June 2004. Following a tight comparative framework, it sheds light on reactions to the proposed constitution in the domestic arena of all the actors involved. The volume includes a chapter on each of the original 15 member states and the ten accession states, plus chapters on the European Commission and European Parliament.Building a clear understanding of the affects of constitutional decisions, the book will be of strong interest to scholars and researchers of European Union politics, comparative politics and policy making.

Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data

“…Thurner et al., 2002); others select a limited number of issues from a proposal by applying certain selection criteria to the full population of issues (see e.g. König and Hug, 2006); and still others confer the task of contested issue selection upon external experts, notably political decision-makers or administrative staff working at national ministries, member states’ permanent representations, or EU institutions (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita and Stokman, 1994; Thomson et al., 2012).…”