No matter how one evaluates the product of its work, the Convention on the Future ofEurope has marked a turning point in the history of European integration. This article is divided into three parts. The first presents the different actors who participated in the Convention and the cleavages...

This article offers an institutionalist explanation of French preferences on the future of Europe from the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 through the Constitutional Treaty of 2004. It argues that the autonomous institutional logic of the constitution-drafting exercise increasingly shaped the...

In this paper, we use data on roll-call votes by MEP’s in the five elected EuropeanParliaments (1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999) to evaluate the likely impact of current proposalsin the Convention on the Future of Europe for the appointment of the European executive. Wefind (a) that the different...

Cet article vise à combler une lacune de l’actuelle littérature sur la Convention européenne, qui n’accorde qu’une attention limitée au Secrétariat de la Convention. Il est vrai que ses membres ont eux-mêmes tendance à le décrire comme un organe neutre, qui exerçait une fonction...

This Paper studies some of the many options facing EU leaders when choosing a viable voting system for the EU25+. It provides quantitative estimates of the efficiency and power distributions of the various EU voting schemes that are being considered. It also provides intuition on how various...

This paper aims to explore government preferences, cleavages, and pat-terns of coalition-formation among a variety of actors in the bargaining process on the European Constitution, across the range of twenty-five European Union (EU) member states. The study focuses on preferences concerning...

This paper seeks to explain the varying, and sometimes intriguing, outcomes of the past three Treaty revision negotiations of European Union/Community visa, asylum and immigration policy. Regarding this policy area, I focus on the substantial constitutional issues of decision rules and...

Within the discussion on European governance and constitutional reforms of the EU polity the so-called "open method of coordination" (OMC) has gained much attention as a procedure that occupies an intermediary place between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational legislation. In this...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical research on the efficient assignment of policy tasks to different levels of government and applies the results on the delimitation of competences within the European Union. The main results are: (i) A precise derivation of an optimal degree of...