The centrality of consensus and Deliberation in Contemporary EU Politics and the new intergovernmentalism

Abstract:

This article builds on the analysis of institutional change in the European Union as projected by two closely related approaches: deliberative and new intergovernmentalism. Consensus and deliberation play a pivotal role within these perspectives. The two concepts are seen as key for understanding institutional change within the European Council and Council environment. Euro crisis decision-making, which by several authors is seen as evidence of either hard intergovernmental bargaining or as a transformation of consensus politics into domination, thus may undermine a core assumption of the new intergovernmentalism. Even though persisting asymmetries between creditor and debtor countries and dominance on part of one or a small number of powerful member states are understood as a threat to consensus politics, the euro crisis is not seen to have fundamentally changed the overall role of consensus and deliberation as a defining feature of the post-Maastricht era.