We provide a very different way to think about how consensus may arise. We deliberately skimp on the micro-processes of persuasion usually emphasized in constructivist accounts, instead highlighting the structural aspects of the cross-national networks through which experts communicate with each...

Current approaches to the understanding of institutional change in the European Union have difficulty in understanding how intergovernmental bargaining and day-to-day institutional change interact. This article develops a theoretical framework to understand this interaction, and applies it to...

In this article we explain how actors' ability to bargain successfully in order to advance their institutional preferences has changed over time as a function of the particular institutional context. We show how actors use their bargaining power under given institutional rules in order to shift...

We examine the sources and processes of institutional change in one important aspect of EU politics-the legislative procedure of codecision and show how interstitial change of institutions emerges between formal Treaty revisions and under specific conditions may be formalized in subsequent...

The concept of path dependence is being used in highly deterministic ways in neo-institutionalist analysis, so that studies using this framework have difficulty in accounting for, or predicting, change. However, the original Polya urn model from which path dependence theory draws predicts that...

While an economy is always ‘embedded’ in society, the relationship between the two is undergoing profound changes in Europe, resulting in widespread instability which is emphasised by the current crisis. This book analyses these changes, and in particular pressures of intensifying...

Much recent international relations scholarship has argued that states are unable to control e-commerce, so that private actors are coming to play a dominant role. However, this body of literature fails to account for emerging “hybrid institutions,” in which states create general frameworks...