Informal integration and the supranational construction of the council
By: LEWIS, Jeffrey
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ArticlePublisher: Oxfordshire : Routledge, December 2003Journal of European Public Policy 10, 6, p. 996-1019Abstract: The standard treatment of the Council considers it the institutional heart of intergovernmentalism and member-state control in the European Union. This article does not challenge that view, except and in so far as it offers only a limited and potentially lopsided perspective of the Council's design and actual operation. A more balanced and accurate view of the Council needs to account for the robust levels of informal rules/institutions, norms, and conventions that are produced during interregnum integration and mark nearly every aspect of its internal development. The result, I argue, is a composite Council system that combines the seemingly contradictory elements of both an intergovernmental and supranational construct.
The standard treatment of the Council considers it the institutional heart of intergovernmentalism and member-state control in the European Union. This article does not challenge that view, except and in so far as it offers only a limited and potentially lopsided perspective of the Council's design and actual operation. A more balanced and accurate view of the Council needs to account for the robust levels of informal rules/institutions, norms, and conventions that are produced during interregnum integration and mark nearly every aspect of its internal development. The result, I argue, is a composite Council system that combines the seemingly contradictory elements of both an intergovernmental and supranational construct.
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