NEGOTIATIONS AS USUAL: Putting Domestic Constraints on the Table in the Council of the European Union

The argument developed in this thesis is that negotiations in the Council of the European Union cannot be understood in isolation from the domestic politics of the member states. Building on the logic of Robert Putnam's two-level game theory, and the fact that negotiated EU agreements need to gain support from vital parts of the governments' domestic constituencies, government negotiators are constrained by their domestic political actors. These domestic constraints have also been argued to make negotiators more influential in negotiations, since it provides a commitment and prevent them from agreeing to unfavourable deals. This relationship between domestic constraints and influence in the Council of the EU is the main interest of this thesis.;The thesis focuses on the negotiation process, and the communication of domestic constraints in negotiations. If domestic constraints should make negotiators more influential, information about the domestic constraints needs to be spread to the negotiating adversaries. A crucial assumption in the domestic constraints theory is that there is a possibility to defect from concluded agreements that do not gain domestic support, which makes it possible to employ a threat of domestic defection in negotiations. A difference between EU and international negotiations is however that ex post defection from EU agreements in practice is impossible. In the thesis' first empirical section, relying on interviews with member state negotiators in the Council, it is therefore explored how domestic constraints are communicated in this setting, where a threat of defection is practically impossible. In the second and third empirical sections, which rely on a survey with member state negotiators in the Council, it is evaluated which negotiators are most likely to communicate domestic constraints, and whether frequently communicating domestic constraints leads to influence in the Council.;Two primary results emanate from the empirical analyses. First, it is shown that studying the negotiation process and communication is important, if it should be possible to make relevant inferences about the effect of domestic constraints on influence. Secondly, it is shown that domestic constraints are communicated and lead to influence, even when domestic defection is not a possibility.