| The dissertation employed a rational choice institutionalism to study the European Union's waste packaging directive. The approach considers elements of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism important, accepting intergovernmentalism's emphasis on member state preferences and power and neofunctionalist arguments which stressed the role of supranational actors and organized supranational interests operating in the Union's decision making process. Rational choice institutionalism stressed the important role that formal and informal rules play in the Union's decision making process. They operated as more than "neutral" organizing principles and could be used by actors to achieve their preferences. The dissertation argued that the major actors involved in the packaging directive wanted solutions based on the operation of the internal market. Their preferences, when combined with institutional pressures in the Union's decision making process designed to create an internal market based on the free flow of goods, services, capital and people, made it very difficult for high environmental standards to be written into directive.; Specifically, I posited an agenda setting role for the Commission of the European Union, arguing that its privileged place in the decision making process allows it to set the rules that set the parameters for discussion of the waste packaging directive. The Commission, it was theorized, could achieve its preferences by using (and manipulating) formal and informal rules, capitalizing on informational asymmetries, constructing transnational alliances and exploiting differences amongst members during Council negotiations. The "ideal" circumstances for Commission agenda setting did not exist in the case of the packaging directive, when key actors are national and supranational civil servants who work to solve disputes in a non-political manner. However, the Commission was able to construct, through the use of its formal and informal powers, a directive that highlighted its most immediate concerns, that of protecting the internal market, but one that also underscored its secondary concerns, upgrading the Union's environmental regulations. |
