Absolute and Relative gains in European Constitution building – and Why?
Thomas König and Stephanie Daimer
Paper for presentation at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops 2005,
Granada, April 14-18
Please do not quote without authors’ permission
Abstract: How does the European constitution provide for change, and why do some states
gain more from the outcome than others? Why do these states accept a reform which changes
the balance of power in the Council, modifies the access to the Commission, distributes
differently the seats in the European Parliament, shifts competences to the EU and changes
the “rules of the game” for specific policy areas? While the broader scholarly debate centered
around the impact of absolute and relative gains for cooperation, we ask whether the multistage dynamics of the constitution-building process, the principal agent-problem and the twolevel nature of constitutional bargains and the elements of the bargaining/deliberating
environment can explain actors’ relative and absolute gains?
This paper is a first attempt to explore reasons for actors’ absolute and relative gains in the
European constitution-building process, which included actors from the domestic and
European level. Using data on the positions of the 173 actors involved in the various stages of
constitution building and the outcome of the constitutional text signed in June 2004, we
confirm previous work: conflict in the domestic arena and ratifyers with status quo-bias tend
to promote absolute and relative gains, while the size of a member state, GDP per capita and
membership duration can hardly explain winning and losing. Most importantly, actors win
when they are located close to the bargaining mean and are supported by actors in their own
stage. While being close to British positions increases an actors’ absolute gains, a lucky
position close to one of the big states does not help for winning in relative terms.
Research Institute for Public Administration, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Str. 2, 67324 Speyer, Germany
tkoenig@dhv-speyer.de daimer@foev-speyer.de
1
Introduction
The creation of the European constitution is one of the most significant today’s real scale
political events. Although this constitution has still to be ratified, the adoption of a draft by
the Laeken Convention and the signing of the constitutional text by all 25 governments has
already been a great surprise and success for all supporters of European integration. The
Laeken Convention started a reform process, which has almost reached completion. In June
2004, the 25 heads of state and governments agreed on a constitutional text which proposes to
change the institutional framework of the European Union (EU) by abolishing the voting
weights for qualified majority voting in the Council, introducing a long-term Council
president and a Minister for Foreign Affairs, reforming the Commission and strengthening the
European Parliament (EP), further integrating the Common Foreign and Security Policy and
extending qualified majority voting to a number of important policy fields (see König et al.
2005, Tsebelis 2005).
But how does this constitution provide for change, and do some states gain more from
the outcome than others in absolute and relative terms? And which states do profit from a
reform which changes the balance of power in the Council, modifies the access to the
Commission, distributes differently the seats in the EP, shifts competences to the EU and
changes the “rules of the game” for specific policy areas? While the broader scholarly debate
has centered around the question whether absolute or relative gains can explain constitutional
outcomes (Buchanan and Tullock 1961, Waltz 1979, Snidal 1991a, 1991b), we ask whether
the multi-stage dynamics of the constitution-building process, the principal agent-problem and
the two- level nature of constitutional bargains and the elements of the bargaining
environment, such as the support by other members, the role of the supranationals and the
closeness to the status quo can explain actors’ absolute and relative gains?
The findings may have important implications for research on cooperation among
states in general, and EU constitution building in particular. By exploring the reasons for
absolute and relative gains, we hope to provide empirical evidence to relevant theoretical
claims highlighted in the prominent controversy between the realist and institutionalist
schools of thought (Waltz 1959, 1979 Grieco 1993, Keohane 1984) as well as between voting
power (Hosli 1996, Felsenthal et al. 2001) and spatial analysts (Tsebelis and Garrett 2001,
Albert 2004). We begin our study by introducing into the EU constitution-building process,
which suggests that various actors with different power resources were involved in the
drafting, amending and deciding stage leading to a constitutional text. We then derive
expectations on three different explanatory factors: bargaining environment, domestic arena,
2
and multi-stage nature of the process. Before we statistically analyze their relative explanatory
power, we describe our data of actors’ positions on key reform constitutional issues. We find
that bargaining environment is the most important explanatory factor and that closeness to the
three big states does not necessarily support an actor’s success. Only being close to UK
positions increases an actors’ absolute gains, while a lucky position close to one of the large
countries does not promote relative gains. Moreove r, conflict in the domestic arena and
ratifyers with status quo-bias tend to promote absolute and relative gains, whereas the size of
a member state, GDP per capita and membership duration hardly explain winning and losing.
We confirm previous research which has revealed the importance of the domestic
arena for explaining EU outcomes. Our results point to considering not only the positions of
the actors involved but also the nature of the process which provides the actors’ with different
power resources. Although we find that actors participating in the later stages of the process
were more successful, the delegates of the Laeken Convention were however able to set the
agenda for constitutional change. Understanding EU constitution building thus seems to
require considering the positions of all actors involved, and the focus on one stage risks to
bias findings. This suggest that a two- level multi-stage conception can accurately explain EU
constitution building. The remainder introduces into the EU constitutio n-building process,
derives expectations on absolute and relative gains, presents the data and the statistical
analysis.
The Process of European Constitution building
The process of constitution building in the EU has almost reached completion. After the
disillusioning treaty revisions by the Amsterdam (1996) and Nice (2000) IGC, there was little
hope that the member states would agree on a reform of the EU’s obsolete framework
following the accession of ten Eastern and Southern European countries. 1 The macroeconomic indicators of the 25 new and old member states suggested that their interests in
European integration will differ widely (König and Bräuninger 2004). Even the FrenchGerman collaboration, for a long time the motor of European integration, stagnated. Despite
these unfavourable conditions, the enlarged EU adopted a draft text on a constitutional treaty
in June 2004, which had been prepared by the Laeken Convention under the Presidency of
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The Laeken Convention worked out the key reform issues for a
1
Both intergovernmental conference have been marked by last minute agreements on a package boiled down to
the lowest common denominator. At the Amsterdam IGC, for example, the most controversial issues on
institutional reform were simply removed from the bargaining table (Hug and König 2002), the Nice IGC ended
with a compromise over the qualified majority voting threshold, which was even more complicated than it was
before (see Tsebelis and Yatangas 2002):
3
constitutional treaty including the basic principles of the EU, the regulation of material policy
competencies and a reform of the institutional framework. This reform proposes a change in
the power balance among the member states of the Council as well as between the Council,
the Commission and the European Parliament (EP).
The Laeken Convention has been a new method for drafting reform proposals of a
widening and deepening EU. The Convention was composed of 207 members 2 and 13
observers, of which only 66 had the right to vote on the final document. In anticipation of the
following stages, the representatives of the 15 member states sent one governmental and two
parliamentary representatives, and the accession states’ delegates were invited to discuss the
draft without having a voting right about the text. After the first listening phase, the
Presidency initiated a second so-called study phase in September 2002 establishing a system
of eleven working groups. In spring 2003, the Convention came into the decisive phase,
which was called the drafting period. In the end, the delegates adopted a draft constitutional
text after hectic and intensive debates on 13 June 2003 (König et al. 2005).
Like previous reforms, the adoption of the constitutional draft text required IGC
consensus. Intensive pre-coordination processes began in the 25 member states and accession
countries as well as in the Commission and the EP (for details, see König and Hug, 2005). In
preparation for the summit in mid-December 2003, these 27 collective actors had to formulate
their positions on the issues central to the constitution. They circulated the draft text among
core (domestic) actors, held hearings and discussions on particular topics, and evaluated
strategies for the upcoming summit (König 2005). In many countries, the institutional reform
was especially contested, in particular the modification of the Council voting rules, the modus
of the Presidency and the Commission appointment procedure. Smaller countries feared
losses in their agenda setting, discretionary and veto powers (Tsebelis 2005). Large countries
offered concessions to smaller countries in terms of the number of Commissio ners, but Spain
and Poland blocked the adoption of the text in December 2003. In Poland, the Sejm had tied
the hands of the unpopular minority government Miller, which was forced to vote for the
status quo regulations of the Nice treaty. However, after the surprising deselection of the
Spanish conservative government in the course of the Madrid terrorist attacks, Poland could
no longer withstand the collective pressure, and the Irish Presidency presented a compromise
that was accepted in June 2004.
These events indicate how challenging is the analysis of relative and absolute gains in
the process of EU constitution building. The process has involved a large number of actors
2
This number includes the 102 alternates for the full members. There were no alternates for the 3 members of
the presidency.
4
from the European and domestic level, and discussions included a large set of issues. In
opposition to intergovernmentalist claims (Moravcsik 1998), smaller countries seem to have
had a decisive say, and the positions of delegates from the same country on the constitutional
text also diverged at times. Some actors – such as the Spanish and Polish governmental
delegations – have changed positions over time; others revealed different standpoints at the
domestic and the European level. This points to the collective and strategic nature of actors’
positions which resulted in an agreement on the constitution after intense preparation and
summit negotiations. The entry into force of the constitution still depends on the support of
ratifying parliamentarians and populations, and we still do not know whether the ratifying
principals will diverge from their delegated agents who signed the text in June 2004.
Looking for the relevant factors of this multi-stage two- level process, a number of
approaches and explanations circulate in the literature on EU integration, international and
comparative politics. Perhaps the most prominent approach is Andrew Moravcsik’s “liberal
intergovernmentalism”, who argues that the outcomes can be understood by examining the
socio-economic preferences of domestic actors within the EU’s three largest member states,
Germany, France, and the UK. Moravcsik (1998) explains the most important outcomes from
Messina to Maastricht, and later Moravcsik and Nicolaidis (1999) applied the approach to the
Amsterdam treaty, and Magnette and Nicolaidis (2004) to the outcome of the Constitut ional
Convention. These studies conclude that IGC outcomes result from intergovernmental
bargains, in which the large member states have the decisive say. While intergovermentalists
suggest a bargaining solution which is weighted by the power of France, Germany, and the
United Kingdom, others argue that supranational actors may have power at IGCs
(Christiansen 2002, Falkner 2002). Hix (2002) concludes that EP was a constitutional agenda
setter at the Amsterdam IGC, which has been confirmed by neither Pollack (1999) nor Slapin
(2005).
Another explanation is suggested by the two- level game literature regarding domestic
constraints. The two- level game logic supposes that bargainers benefit at the negotiating table
from having their hands tied by a high and skeptical domestic ratification constraint
(Schelling 1960, Putnam 1988). This concept has stimulated formal research examining
exactly how and when domestic constraints matter (see Iida 1993, 1996; Hammond and Prins
1999; Mo 1994, 1995; Milner and Rosendorff 1996, 1997; Pahre 1997, 2001, Schneider and
Cederman 1994). More recently researchers have begun to test these models in quantitative
studies, all of which have focused on IGCs (Hosli 2000, König and Hug 2000, Hug and König
2002, König and Slapin 2004, Slapin 2005). Their empirical results show that domestic
5
constraints explain the outcome of IGCs because EU ratification must often overcome higher
institutional hurdles than government formation and delegation do (König and Hug 2000, Hug
and König 2002, see also Schulz 2003 for the enlargement negotiations).
Although the two- level game literature differentiates between negotiators and
ratifyers, the dominant conception is a one-shot game, in which the delegated negotiator and
the ratifying principal decide simultaneously about the outcome (Hammond and Prins 1999;
Mo 1994, 1995; Milner and Rosendorff 1996, 1997). In empirical studies on the EU, only the
delegates negotiate outcomes, while the principals are constraints with single peaked positions
(König and Hug 2000, Hug and König 2002, König and Slapin 2004, Slapin 2005). Some
studies have yet tackled the problem of delegation in negotiations with references to the
principal-agent literature (Stasavage 2004, Mnookin and Susskind 1999, Segendorff 1998).3
The EU constitution-building process suggests that actors performed different principal-agent
roles in the various stages, each producing collective outcomes. The delegates of the Laeken
Convention, consisting of governmental and parliamentary representatives, were responsible
for the drafting of a text, while governmental delegates finally decided about the adoption of
the constitution at the following IGC summit. In the preparatory stage of the IGC, intensive
coordination included domestic (governmental) actors trying to amend the draft text. Due to
their different powers of drafting, amending and signing (vetoing), the question is whether the
different roles and powers of the actors are decisive for their success.
Explaining Success in the Constitution-building Process
The following study attempts to explore why some actors were more successful in the EU
constitution-building process than others by an empirical analysis of the specific reasons for
their absolute and relative gains from the constitutional outcome. For this empirical purpose,
we propose to examine how often are actors’ positions absolutely reflected in the outcome of
the contested issues, and why some actors more often hit those outcomes than others do. This
view is complemented by a realist perspective which relates the absolute hits of an actor to
those of the other actors. We want to know whether and how these factors explain gains, and
if so, to what extent do we find similar and different answers for actors’ absolute and relative
success? Our analysis of absolute and relative gains is related to one of the most important
3
Most of the delegation literature deals with American politics (e.g. Epstein and O’Halloran 1999, McCubbins
and Schwartz 1984, Bendor and Meirowitz 2004, Huber and Shipan 2002), some applications address Western
democracies (Strom, Müller and Bergmann 2003, Hallerberg and Döring 2004, Thatcher and Stone-Sweet 2002),
and most recently EU politics, where the member states are conceptualized as principals who control
supranational agencies, primarily the Commission (Pollack 1997, 2003, Franchino 2000a, 2000b, Ballmann,
Epstein and O’Halloran 2002).
6
controversies in political science between the institutionalist school of thought, which claims
that absolute gains should sufficiently condition EU constitutional cooperation, and the realist
IR literature that emphasizes the limiting effect of relative gains for international cooperation
(Aron 1973; Carr 1964; Gilpin 1975 1981, 1987; Grieco 1988, 1990, 1993; Jervis 1978, 1988;
Krasner 1976, 1985, 1991; Morgenthau 1973; Waltz 1959, 1979). 4 Instead of focusing on one
type of gains and analysing its explanatory power for cooperation, we attempt to examine
relative and absolute gains using three broad explanatory categories: those suggesting that the
bargaining environment is relevant, those referring to the domestic arena and those which
point to the importance of the multi-stage nature of the EU constitution-building process:
1. Bargaining environment. Success and power in bargaining have attracted considerable
attention in the literature on international and European politics (Black 1958: 141,
Banfield 1961: 331, Bueno de Mesquita and Stokman 1994, Thomson et al. 2006).
Bargaining theories are based on mean solutions, sometimes weighted by the formal
power and resources of the actors (Achen 2006). This does not mean that the support
of other actors – in other words, the size of the coalition – is irrelevant for relative and
absolute gains, whether this support includes the support across all or only the
particular stage. In some bargaining analyses, the location of the status quo also biased
the outcome (Tsebelis 2002, König and Slapin 2005, Mokken et al 2000), i.e. an actor
can receive more concessions, as she is expected to be more patient in the negotiations
(Rubinstein 1982). However, it is often difficult to evaluate whether an actor receives
gains due to her power or even luck (Barry 1980). In addition to the closeness to the
status quo, another reason thus might simply be that an actor is closely located to
another powerful actor, i.e. close to one of the large countries and/or to a supranational
actor.
2. Domestic arena. An important resource in bargains is credibility. Threats and
promises are prominent strategies to receive more concessions, and the knowledge
about the situation in the domestic arena can help to increase an actor’s credibility and
thus the effectiveness of her strategy (Schelling 1960). Such information can be
provided by the size of the core, which indicates how contested an issue is in the
domestic arena (König and Slapin 2005). In particular when the pivotal ratifying actor
is closely located to the status quo, an actor should have good arguments to receive
4
Snidal (1991a: 706) added to the widely used assumption that states would only care on either type of gains, be
it absolute or be it relative, “that states seek relative gains in combination with absolute gains, with the pure
absolute and relative gains models seen as limiting cases.” (see also 1991b as well as Grieco, Powell and Snidal
1993). Whether actors are primarily concerned with absolute or relative gains may also vary among the
negotiators (Berejekian 1997, Mosher 2003).
7
concessions (Putnam 1988). Another source of information about the domestic arena
is the public support for European integration. Compared to ratification, public support
could indicate the audience costs of an actor (Fearon 1994, Schneider and Cederman
1994). If support of ratifying actors is lacking, this might help the negotiator to receive
concessions. If public support is high, the costs of a negotiator might be lower.
3. Multi-stage process. Each stage of EU constitution-building conferred different
powers to the actors involved. They performed different roles in the drafting stage of
the Laeken Convention, the amending stage when preparing the IGC in the domestic
arena and the negotiation stage at the summit. If these stages do provide different
powers, actors may have different possibilities for being successful. If positions tend
to converge in the course of bargaining (Stokman and Thomson 2004), closeness to
the bargaining mean and high support should be particularly important in the final IGC
negotiation stage.
We additionally control for some other variables mentioned in the literature, such as
population size, GDP per capita, netpayer in the EU and duration of EU membership.
Data: Actors’ Positions on Key Reform Issues
Our data contain information about the positions of the 25 IGC member state delegates, 100
actors involved in the preparatory stage of domestic coordination and 48 delegates of the
Laeken Convention with only two governmental delegates missing. Before the completion of
each stage, we interviewed delegates (IGC and Laeken) and asked experts (domestic
coordination), which positions actors had on the set of contested constitutional issues. 5 The
data contain positions of the actors involved during the constitutional process on 36 contested
issues with mainly institutional issues (28) and some regarding the regulation in specific
policy fields (8). This set covers the highly contested issues such as the composition and
threshold for qualified majority votes in the Council, the future number of commissioners and
appointment of the Commission president, the reform of the presidency of the (European)
council, the external representation of the EU (Foreign Minister), the role of national
parliaments in monitoring the principle of subsidiarity, Council decision rules for vital policy
areas like foreign and security policy, Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, tax
harmonization as well as social policy and social security rights. Issues dealing with the
division of competences among the different levels are included for foreign policy, tax
5
The data about the domestic coordination stage have been collected in a common effort by the DOSEI
(“Domestic structures and European Integration”) research group, coordinated by Thomas König, see
http://dosei.dhv-speyer.de/.
8
harmonization, the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, and agricultural, economic,
employment and social policies.
The data enables us to relax widely used assumptions on state unitariness and one-shot
bargains, containing information on 173 actors’ positions of the following three stages: (1) the
agenda-setting stage at the Laeken Convention, (2) the stage of domestic coordination, where,
in response to the Laeken draft, official national positions were formed by national sub-units
like ministries, parties, interest groups, and (3) the negotiation stage at the IGC. Table 1
overviews our sample across countries, showing that we have almost a complete data set for
the EU-25 over the three stages. Except for Cyprus and the United Kingdom, where the
government’s delegations of Laeken are missing, our data covers two Convention delegates
from each country, one representing the national government and one representing the
national parliament, and one delegate per country for the IGC stage.. Since we asked experts
to indicate the relevant domestic actors, their number varies across countries.
Table 1 about here
Analysis: Examining Absolute and Relative Gains
With reference to previous empirical studies, we operationalize absolute gains as closeness of
an actor’s position to the outcome in the constitutional text signed in June 2004 (Bueno de
Mesquita and Stokman 1994, Hug and König 2002, König and Slapin 2005, Slapin 2005). We
have created a hitrate variable by counting how often an actor’s position hits the outcome and
dividing this number by the total number of positions of this actor. 6 The theoretical range of
our absolute gains’ indicator goes from 0 to 1 with 1 meaning, that all positions of an actor are
equal to the IGC outcome; empirically, this value varies between 0.25 and 0.83. The relative
gains estimator relates these values to the other actors’ gains. For each issue, we subtract the
absolute value of an actor using the share of other actors’ values. This procedure intends to
weight those cases higher with few winners per issue. Relative gains could also range from 0
to 1 with 1 indicating the extreme case, in which only one actor would have won “the
complete pie” of all 36 issues, i.e. all other actors would receive 0 across all issues.
Empirically, this value varies between 0.21 and 0.91 (multiplied by 100 to adjust this scale,
see table 2 below).
6
This divisor was 36 for cases without missings. Otherwise the number of missing positions was subtracted from
36.
9
Table 1 lists the average hitrate for each country’s actors in the three stages, showing that the
values are highest for actors of the domestic coordination stage. However, it is still surprising
how often the initial Laeken positions correspond to the final outcome, suggesting that the
Laeken Convention could set the agenda for the following process. For most countries
absolute and relative gains vary largely across the three stages, with highest relative gains of
the actors of the domestic coordination stage. However, only the distributions in the domestic
stage differ. According to figures 1 and 2 lower (and more) absolute gains have been allocated
to the actors in the Convention stage while actors of stages 2 and 3 have higher (and more)
relative gains. Briefly summarized, for both types of gains and across all stages winners come
from Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, and Luxembourg. Some countries’ delegates, like those from
Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Hungary, Cyprus and Malta were more successful in the earlier
stages, while German, Greek, Spanish, British, Polish and Czech actors performed better in
later stages. This indicates that the type of gains and stages might affect results on winning
and losing.
Figures 1 and 2 about here
In order to evaluate absolute and relative gains in a systematic manner, we run regression
statistics using three classes of variables. We evaluate the impact of the bargaining
environment by checking how close an actor is to the mean position (transformed to pseudometric scores) as the bargaining outcome. Values close to 0 indicate that an actor is centrally
located, while higher values express having more extreme positions. Another indicator for
bargaining environment is the size of a coalition, respectively the support for a specific
position. We differentiate between average support of an actor in her own stage and across all
stages. Empirically, these values range from 27 to 62 per cent across all stages, and from 33 to
67 per cent in the actors’ own stages (see table 2). We also consider status quo-bias and
calculate the closeness of an actor to this reference point. We use the number of an actor’s hits
with the status quo in relation to the number of possible hits, i.e. higher scores mean being
closer to the status quo. Finally, we control for being lucky by calculating the closeness to the
positions of each of the three big states (Germany, UK, France) and to both supranational
actors (Commission, EP).
Table 2 about here
10
The second class of variables estimates the impact of the domestic arena. We compute the
size of the domestic core to indicate how contested issues were among the actors of each
country (using pseudo- metric transformation we calculated the distance between the two most
extreme domestic actors across all issues, averaged by dividing through the number of issues).
This yields higher scores for countries with both non-unitary domestic positions on average
and high contestation for few issues. We consider domestic ratification restraints if a
parliamentary or decisive partisan actor in parliament prefers the status quo. For measuring
audience costs, we use Flash Eurobarometer of June 2004, which asked people about their
support for a constitution (support ranges from 50 per cent in Sweden (and 51 per cent in the
UK) up to above 90 per cent in Spain and Italy).
Taking into account the multi-stage nature of the process, we use dummy variables to
qualify actors of the Convention and from the domestic arena. They participated in the earlier
stages of constitution building which provided them with drafting power at the Convention
stage and amending power at the coordination stage. We also control for economic indicators
using a dummy variable for netpayers (based on 2002 figures of the Commission) 7 and a GDP
per capita comparison, which ranges from 0.425 for Latvia to 2.133 for Luxembourg (the EU25 average corresponds to the value 1) 8 . Moreover, we consider population size and duration
of EU membership. By using the natural log of these two variables, we assume that size and
duration matter at a decreasing rate.
In the absolute gains’ regression model 1, two outliers cause high leverage and large
residuals: the Swedish and the Danish government delegates at the Convention (with absolute
and relative gains at the lowest ends of the scales). This model also has different variance of
the error terms across observations. 9 Deleting the two outliers from the sample solves this
problem and reveals that our findings only modestly change. According to table 2 both
models fit our data structure with about 87 per cent (model 1) and 84 per cent (model 2) of
variance. Some explanations differ for absolute and relative gains, but the findings in both
models point to the high relevance of the bargaining environment. The strongest predictors
are the distance to the (bargaining) mean and the support of an actor in her own stage, the
closeness to the status quo as well as to the French position. The closer an actor is to the mean
position, the closer an actors to the status quo and the higher the support for an actor in her
7
The accession states have been assumed to be netreceivers.
Source: Eurostat, forecast figures 2003.
9
Test results indicate that the regression results for absolute gains are indeed heteroscedastic. Breusch-Pagan /
Cook-Weisberg test: chi2=8.34 (significant at the 1 per cent level).
8
11
own stage, the higher are her absolute and relative wins. Moreover, closeness to the United
Kingdom and France as well as to the Commission and EP also matter for absolute gains.
While only actors close to the UK positions are lucky absolute winners, perhaps due to the
fact that this was the status quo-coalition, closeness to the supranational institutions and
France means losses in terms of actors’ absolute gains. 10 Only the French position matters for
relative gains, however in a negative way. Actors were also less successful when they were
close to the positions of one of the supranational actors.
Factors of the domestic arena turn out to be significant, too: the size of the domestic
core, a sceptical ratifying actor and public opinion significantly support success in absolute
and relative terms. In accordance with the paradox of weakness, domestic non-consensus (as
implied by a larger domestic core) and parliamentary or partisan actors with status quo-bias
seem credibly to tie the hands of negotiators. 11 Actors with low audience costs are also
winners in the constitutional process.
The stage variables confirm our expectation: The negative coefficients of the
Convention stage and domestic coordination stage variables underline the importance of the
latest stage of IGC bargaining for absolute wins. However, on closer inspection, the range of
the gains of IGC actors is similar to that of domestic actors. This suggests that the final stage
only modestly changed the outcome. In model 2, there is only statistical evidence for the
Convention stage. From the country-specific control variables, we find that size and the status
of a net contributor to the EU budget tend to confer some bargaining strength. However,
smaller countries seem to have won more often than larger countries. Note that 9 of the 10
new member states (except for Poland) are small, which means that small states have a large
majority in absolute numbers. 12
Table 3 about here
To illustrate the some of the important variables, figures 3 and 4 display their impact for
predicting (absolute) gains, holding all other variables at their mean (due to high similarity we
do not illustrate their effects for relative gains). A close location to the (bargaining) mean
10
Deleting the outliers reveals that being close to the German position positively explains performance on
absolute gains. Being distant to the supranational actors becomes statistically significant by the “Closeness to the
Commission” variable.
11
The status quo bias of the ratifyer turns out to be insignificant in the model without the outliers.
12
After deleting the outliers, the GDP variable performs with a small negative coefficient at a statistically
significant level. This unexpected sign (after we find the status of a netpayer with a positive relationship to
absolute gains) can be explained by the wealthy Luxembourg, which appears as an outlier on this variable, but
has not the highest gains.
12
remarkably explains higher gains. In addition, as support in the actor’s own stage increases,
absolute gains are predicted to increase. At the same time, we see how strong the argument of
the status quo is. Figure 4 illustrates the effects of the “luck”-variables, which are significant
for absolute gains, although they have less explanatory power than the variables of the
bargaining environment. Only closeness to British positions helps for winning. Similarly, as
actors are closer to the French positions and to the positions of a supranational actor, their
absolute gains decrease. The mixed results for the closeness variables to the three big states
remind us (supported by the negative coefficient of the population size variable) that we can
hardly assume that big states share a common interest against smaller countries nor should
one focus on only the three big states.
Figures 3 and 4 about here
The findings on German and French actors rather suggest that the German-French motor
sometimes stagnated. On closer inspection of this relationship, we see that these countries has
the same positions on the double majority principle for future QMV voting, the reduction of
the Commission, an elected long-term Presidency for the Council, the EU Foreign Minister
and further integration in the Common Foreign and Security Policy etc. However, in those
cases, both were less successful, while France and Germany were split in questions of further
delegation of competencies to the EU level, i.e. regarding economic or social policies. The
gains of British actors are related to the status quo-bias of the outcome. British actors have
successfully defended their “red lines”, i.e. their vetoes in foreign and security policy, tax
harmonization and social security.
Conclusion: A Two-level Multi-Stage Bargaining Process
This analysis tried to shed light on winning and losing in European constitution building.
While the scholarly controversy centered around the impact of absolute and relative gains for
cooperation, we examined which factors explain winning and losing in both terms. Such an
analysis requires data on actors’ positions, which we gathered for the different stages of the
constitution-building process. The distribution of absolute and relative gains reveals that the
positions of actors – even from those of the Convention and domestic stages, are considerably
reflected in the outcome. However, IGC actors were more successful than actors of the earlier
stages.
13
Most significantly the bargaining environment, in particular the closeness to the mean and to
the status quo significantly explain actors’ success. Although closeness to the UK (and partly
to Germany) increases an actor’s absolute gains, we do not find evidence for
intergovernmentalist claims that country size confers power. More interestingly with respect
to ratification might be that closeness to France is reversely related to winning. Likewise, the
positions of the supranational actors are located far away from the outcome, i.e. their support
is negatively related to actors’ success.
Our analysis confirms previous findings of two- level game analyses lending credence that
domestic contestation of issues and sceptical ratifying actors can help actors reaching
concessions at the bargaining table. In fact, the results suggest that the larger the size of the
domestic core, i.e. the more contested issues are, the higher an actor wins, in particular in
relative terms.
14
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20
Table 1: Actor types and absolute and relative gains
Country
Actors in dataset
Conv.
Dom. IGC
TOTAL
Austria
2
3
1
6
Belgium
2
7
1
10
Cyprus
1
2
1
4
Czech R.
2
4
1
7
Denmark
2
2
1
5
Estonia
2
3
1
6
Finland
2
4
1
7
France
2
7
1
10
Germany
2
5
1
8
Greece
2
2
1
5
Hungary
2
5
1
8
Ireland
2
3
1
6
Italy
2
8
1
11
Latvia
2
3
1
6
Lithuania
2
4
1
7
Luxembourg
2
2
1
5
Malta
2
2
1
5
Netherlands
2
3
1
6
Poland
2
2
1
5
Portugal
2
2
1
5
Slovac R.
2
4
1
7
Slovenia
2
6
1
9
Spain
2
7
1
10
Sweden
2
3
1
6
Un. Kingdom
1
7
1
9
SUM
48
100
25
173
mean
max.
min.
per country
Absolute gains
Conv.
Dom.
IGC
0,5200
0,4815
0,5833
0,5696
0,4563
0,3611
0,5833
0,5758
0,4800
0,3344
0,5764
0,6286
0,5100
0,6111
0,4412
0,5635
0,6204
0,7778
0,5400
0,6389
0,4848
0,4486
0,5714
0,4722
0,4306
0,6222
0,6111
0,4300
0,3889
0,6111
0,5000
0,7500
0,5556
0,5083
0,6667
0,6667
0,4006
0,6597
0,5278
0,4306
0,6667
0,3889
0,4722
0,7778
0,6667
0,5556
0,6667
0,7188
0,5278
0,7500
0,4444
0,4200
0,6111
0,5882
0,3750
0,6389
0,6944
0,4722
0,5556
0,5278
0,4444
0,4583
0,4545
0,3848
0,6204
0,4857
0,3996
0,6508
0,7500
0,3889
0,6204
0,5429
0,4167
0,6151
0,6071
0,4651
0,5833
0,3344
0,6100
0,7778
0,3889
0,5628
0,7778
0,3611
country
0,5283
0,4624
0,5464
0,5131
0,5208
0,6539
0,5546
0,4974
0,5546
0,4767
0,6019
0,6139
0,5294
0,4954
0,6389
0,6470
0,5741
0,5398
0,5694
0,5185
0,4524
0,4970
0,6001
0,5174
0,5463
Conv.
0,4831
0,5441
0,6234
0,2553
0,4994
0,5591
0,4929
0,3737
0,3504
0,3614
0,4616
0,4690
0,3703
0,3620
0,4282
0,4839
0,4505
0,3645
0,3091
0,4135
0,3764
0,3227
0,3073
0,3544
0,3871
Relative gains
Dom.
0,4093
0,3747
0,6395
0,5672
0,6507
0,6990
0,5958
0,5310
0,6170
0,3159
0,7081
0,7303
0,7113
0,6554
0,8147
0,6434
0,8321
0,5810
0,6418
0,5218
0,4267
0,5644
0,6300
0,6001
0,5842
IGC
0,5083
0,3493
0,4850
0,6116
0,4554
0,7722
0,4641
0,4007
0,6277
0,6233
0,5228
0,7411
0,4539
0,3776
0,6739
0,7664
0,3703
0,5243
0,7622
0,5638
0,5094
0,4721
0,7309
0,5012
0,6807
0,4161
0,6234
0,2553
0,6018
0,8321
0,3159
0,5579
0,7722
0,3493
in bold: Top ten winners per category; Country scores for Convention and domestic stages are means of the actors' scores
21
country
0,4669
0,4227
0,5826
0,4781
0,5352
0,6768
0,5176
0,4352
0,5317
0,4335
0,5641
0,6468
0,5118
0,4650
0,6389
0,6312
0,5510
0,4899
0,5710
0,4997
0,4375
0,4531
0,5561
0,4852
0,5506
Figure 1: Absolute and relative gains by stage
Convention stage (1)
A
B
S
O
L
U
T
E
Domestic coordination stage (2)
IGC negotiation stage (3)
G
A
I
N
S
RELATIVE GAINS
Means: Absolute gains: 0.5631; Relative gains: 0.5399
22
Figure 2: Absolute and relative gains by country
1 = Convention delegates; 2 = Domestic actors; 3 = IGC delegates
23
Means: Absolute gains: 0.5631; Relative gains: 0.5399
Table 2: Variable summaries
Variable
Independent Variables
Absolute gains (hitrate IGC outcome)
Relative gains (shares)
Bargaining environment
Distance to int. Mean
Support (across all stages)
Support (own stage)
Closeness to SQ
Closeness to Germany
Closeness to UK
Closeness to France
Closeness to Commission
Closeness to EP
Domestic arena
Size of domestic core
Ratif. actor closer to SQ (dummy)
Public support
Multi-stage process
Convention delegate (dummy)
Domestic actor (dummy)
Control variables
Netpayer (dummy)
Population Size
GDP per capita
Duration of membership
Mean
SE
Min
Max
0,5631
0,5399
0,1190
0,1488
0,2500
0,2077
0,8333
0,9089
0,1911
0,5401
0,5863
0,4687
0,6331
0,5844
0,6187
0,6015
0,6211
0,0313
0,0485
0,0526
0,1353
0,1060
0,1073
0,1308
0,1319
0,1107
0,1276
0,2665
0,3255
0,2000
0,2000
0,2800
0,3000
0,1250
0,2000
0,3329
0,6244
0,6748
0,8056
0,9722
1
1
0,9412
0,8611
0,3576
0,6012
0,7723
0,0587
0,4911
0,1278
0,2723
0
0,5000
0,4719
1
0,9400
0,2775
0,5780
0,4490
0,4953
0
0
1
1
0,4798
2,2477
0,9486
2,1195
0,5010
1,4634
0,3461
1,6941
0
-0,9238
0,4250
0
1
4,4132
2,1330
3,8712
24
TABLE 3: OLS Models for absolute and relative gains
Model 1:
absolute gains as unit of analysis
Independent variables
Bargaining environment
Distance to int. Mean
Support (across all stages)
Support (own stage)
Closeness to SQ
Closeness to Germany
Closeness to UK
Closeness to France
Closeness to Commission
Closeness to EP
Domestic arena
Size of domestic core
Ratif. actor closer to SQ
Public support
Multi-stage-process
Convention delegate
Domestic actor
Control variables
Netpayer
Population Size
GDP per capita
Duration of membership
constant
adj. Rsqu.
F / prob. F.
N
coef.
s.e.
p
Model 2:
relative gains as unit of analysis
coef.
s.e.
p
-1,8455
0,5201
0,3684
0,3031
0,0490
0,1259
-0,1921
-0,1519
-0,2330
0,3957
0,3397
0,1352
0,0423
0,0932
0,0555
0,0634
0,0887
0,1060
0,000
0,128
0,007
0,000
0,600
0,025
0,003
0,089
0,029
-2,4290
0,1497
0,3644
0,4793
0,1407
-0,0331
-0,3094
-0,3305
-0,1491
0,5569
0,4781
0,1903
0,0595
0,1312
0,0781
0,0892
0,1248
0,1491
0,000
0,755
0,057
0,000
0,285
0,672
0,001
0,009
0,319
0,1615
0,0170
0,1156
0,0701
0,0093
0,0345
0,023
0,068
0,001
0,2376
0,0320
0,1484
0,0987
0,0130
0,0485
0,017
0,015
0,003
-0,0253
-0,0194
0,0125
0,0109
0,045
0,078
-0,0439
-0,0179
0,0176
0,0154
0,014
0,245
0,0347
-0,0102
-0,0241
0,0012
0,0146
0,0041
0,0247
0,0057
0,019
0,015
0,330
0,838
0,0370
-0,0155
-0,0429
0,0071
0,0206
0,0058
0,0347
0,0080
0,074
0,008
0,218
0,377
0,4149
0,87
67,16
173
0,2116
0,051
0,7448
0,84
51,29
173
0,2972
0,013
0
25
0
Figure 3: Predicted absolute gains as closeness to bargaining mean and SQ, and support increase
Figure 4: Predicted absolute gains as closeness to large states and supranational actors increases
26