For a long time our textbook knowledge of what is happening in the Council of the European Union - the major decision forum of the EU - was to a large extent based on limited interview-based evidence. One reason for that was the closed nature of the Council. In a very few years, however, thanks to new transparency rules and increased efforts by scholars, we have seen a whole range of superb qualitative and quantitative data collections as well as more convincing theorizing. EU researchers are better equipped than ever before to analyze the decision-making processes of the Council and to test conventional wisdoms. The effect will be important, not only with respect to our knowledge of the Council itself - and therefore of EU politics in general - but also because this research is advancing general theories about how governments interact in international institutions, for which the Council is a particularly fruitful object of study. This book covers the most contentious areas and important debates in the present research, focusing in particular on conflict dimensions, modes of interaction and power and leadership in the Council
Introduction: From Rags to Riches; D.Naurin & H.Wallace
PART I: COALITION-BUILDING
Voting and Coalitions in the Council after the Enlargement; M.Mattila
Voting, Statements and Coalition-Building in the Council from 1999 to 2006; S.Hagemann
East-North-South: Coalition-Building in the Council Before and After Enlargement; D.Naurin & R.Lindahl
PART II: CONSENSUS
Veto Players Theory and Consensus Behaviour; T.König & D.Junge
The Mechanisms of Consensus: Coming to Agreement on Community Asylum Policy; J.P.Aus
PART III: DELIBERATION
Deliberation and Bargaining in the Article 113 Committee and the 1996/97 IGC Representatives Group; A.Niemann
Risk Regulation, GMOs, and the Limits of Deliberation; M.A.Pollack & G.C.Shaffer
Strategic Bargaining, Norms, and Deliberation; J.Lewis
PART IV: LEADERSHIP
The Power of the Chair: Formal Leadership by the Council Presidency; J.Tallberg
Steering, but not Dominating: The Impact of the Council Presidency on EU Legislation; A.Warntjen
The Facilitator of Efficient Negotiations in the Council: The Impact of the Council Secretariat; D.Beach
The Relative Power of Member States in the Council: Large and Small, Old and New; R.Thomson
PART V: METHODOLOGICAL DEBATE
How Should we Best Study the Council of Ministers?; D.Heisenberg
Neither Goethe nor Bismarck: On the Link between Theory and Empirics in Council Decision-Making Studies; G.Schneider
