LEWIS, Jeffrey <br/><br/>
Informal integration and the supranational construction of the council 

 - Oxfordshire :  Routledge,  December 2003 
<br/><br/> 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.