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1、The strength of the rotating Presidency is that it keeps the Presidency weakDRAFT PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSIONDerek BeachAssociate ProfessorUniversity of Aarhus, Denmarkemail - derekps.au.dk web ps.au.dk/derekPaper presented to the UACES Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1-3 September 2021.
2、1. IntroductionOne of the most important justifications for the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon was that the introduction of a fixed President of the European Council would result in a more efficient Europe. During the negotiations serious attempts were made to strengthen the Presidency at the Coun
3、cil of Ministers level, including proposals to allow the European Council President to chair the General Affairs Council. Underlying these reform efforts is the argument that the Presidency as an institution is unable to supply effective leadership, and in particular that smaller member states are m
4、anifestly unable to lift the burdens of the Presidency in an enlarged Union.Yet is the Presidency broken? Should further efforts be made to reform the Presidency institution? Contrary to the popular wisdom, this paper questions the basic premise underlying the reform efforts by providing evidence th
5、at while the powers possessed by the Presidency are relatively weak, it is the very weakness of the Presidency that makes it an effective leader. Drawing upon recent advances in the study of informal norms in the Council and leadership theories, this paper first discusses what types of leadership ar
6、e demanded in the Council. It is argued that given the consensual and long-term iterated game nature of EU decision-making, consensual forms of leadership are the most effective at achieving maximum possible gains from cooperation. In this type of leadership, the leader manages the agenda in an acce
7、ptable fashion to all, and finds, formulates and brokers acceptable compromises. Acceptable is not the same as being neutral, and an instrumental leader can exploit its position for private gains, but it cannot be too blatant as it is in more hegemonic forms of leadership.While larger member states
8、(sometimes) believe that their great power resources enable them to adopt a more imposing style of leadership, smaller state Presidencies live under no such illusions. Smaller state Presidencies are forced by necessity to 1) adopt a more consensual style of leadership, as they lack the great power r
9、esources that could enable them to impose their preferred outcomes upon other delegations, and 2) rely more upon the Council Secretariat, as they lack the administrative and diplomatic resources necessary to fulfill all of the tasks of the Presidency. Yet relying on the Secretariat has advantages, a
10、s the Secretariat possesses a combination of unrivalled experience with finding and brokering compromises that match the consensus norms of the Council, and also enjoys a level of acceptance of their central role due to the disinterested status it has in most negotiations in the Council / European C
11、ouncil, along with their careful cultivation of a reputation for impartiality. The term efficiency is defined in this paper as achieving agreements where no significant gains are left on the negotiating table while also minimizing decision-making costs. Leadership relates to the provision of functio
12、ns aimed at overcoming collective action problems that relate to high transaction costs in negotiations. This term is similar to the term entrepreneurship as used by Young (1991) and Moravcsik (1999). Finally, I define smaller member states as those states that while they might possess many administ
13、rative resources do not have the economic and political muscle that the larger countries have. Therefore I define the Netherlands and Portugal and below as smaller member states, and larger countries as Spain and Poland and above. This dividing line is reflected in the large jump in the Nice voting
14、weights from 29 for the big five, 27 for Poland and Spain, and then 12-13 for countries like Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and Portugal. One could create a more realistic weighting of Presidencies, and also include relevant factors such as national wealth or size of administration in order to cr
15、eate a more valid measure of Presidency size, but given the quality of the data possessed on Presidency performance, these further distinctions do not make much sense at present.The argument in this paper is structured in four sections. In section two the contours of the debate on reforming the Pres
16、idency are introduced. Thereafter I introduce the theoretical justification for why Presidency weakness can in specific circumstances be a strength in terms of being able to supply the leadership demanded in Council / European Council negotiations. Two testable hypotheses are developed that relate t
17、o the effectiveness of consensual leadership styles and reliance upon the Council Secretariat. The paper then assesses whether the paradox of Presidency weakness is backed by empirical evidence. I undertake a two stage empirical analysis, where I first utilize quantitative data to assess whether sma
18、ller states are as effective leaders in terms of the legislative output of the Council of Ministers, and then investigate whether we see evidence that smaller member states utilize more consensual approaches. Given the difficulty in validly measuring the key independent variables using quantitative
19、data (leadership style adopted and reliance on the Council Secretariat) and the dependent variable (efficiency), the analysis is supplemented by a more in-depth qualitative investigation of intergovernmental negotiations within EU treaty reform negotiations (IGCs). The choice to investigate IGCs is
20、made in order to concentrate specifically on intergovernmental dynamics between governments, whereas in normal Council decision-making other supranational actors like the Commission also have a significant leadership functions. Further, while IGCs formally take place outside of the EU institutional
21、framework, governments behave in a similar manner as in normal EU business.The conclusions of the paper discuss the empirical findings that show that smaller member states are at least as effective leaders as larger member states, and in many circumstances are even more effective. These findings sug
22、gest that the attempts to fundamentally reform the Presidency have not been a product of rational institutional design concerns motivated by a need to improve the efficiency of EU decision-making, but instead should be seen as a part of the French-led strategy to create a more intergovernmental EU d
23、ominated by larger member states. 2. The debate on the need for a strong PresidencyThe debate on reforming the rotating Presidency flared up in the late 1990s as the prospect of a big bang enlargement with up to ten countries moved closer. The Trumpf-Piris report from 1999 argued that the six-month
24、rotation was a major handicap for the continuity of work in the Council, and that there often was a lack of experience and expertise amongst member state officials for shouldering the burden of the Presidency; a problem that would only be exacerbated in a Union of 25 to 30 members as the increase in
25、 the length of time between holding the Presidency would result in a lack of institutional memory. The short term period also resulted in what the report termed a rush which can lead to the adoption of makeshift decisions or a proliferation of badly drafted or non compulsory acts (resolutions, concl
26、usions). - Trumpf-Piris report, Report by the working party set up by the Secretary-General of the Council, Operation of the Council with an enlarged Union in prospect, presented on 10 March 1999 in accordance with the conclusions of the Vienna European Council held from 11 to 13 December 1998. This
27、 report formed the basis for discussions that led to the pragmatic reforms adopted at the Seville European Council that were aimed at increasing the coordination between Presidencies. - Seville European Council, 21 and 22 June 2002, Presidency Conclusions. 13463/02. Brussels, 24 October 2002.The Sev
28、ille Conclusions did not stop the debate that continued on whether more fundamental reforms of the Presidency were necessary. - See Bunse, Magnette and Nicholadis 2007 for more on this debate. Parallel with other attempts to assert the dominance of larger member states in the Union, including inform
29、al coordination of positions between the five larger member states during the 2000 IGC, - Beach 2005:148-149. the leaders of several of the larger member states (Britain, France and Spain) raised the idea of creating a permanent president in order to inject more political leadership into the Union i
30、n the wake of enlargement. Central to the ABC proposals was a diagnosis that the rotating Presidency would be unable to supply the leadership demanded in the Union in an enlarged EU, irrespective of the changes adopted in Seville. First, they were concerned about a lack of continuity resulting from
31、a shift in priorities every six months. But more importantly, these larger member states feared that the smaller member states (and in particular mini-states like Malta and Cyprus) simply did not have the administrative and technical resources to lift the burden of the Presidency effectively, and th
32、at smaller states also lacked the political muscles that could be used to provide political leadership in an ever-more complex Union. For example, Aznar, in a speech at Oxford in May 2002 stated that, Allow me to tell you, after four months of experience of the Spanish Presidency of the European Uni
33、on, to tell you that it is necessary to modify the current system of presidencies. The present system, whereby the Member States take turns to hold the presidency for six-month periods, is beset by difficulties, but will become impracticable in the future. Studying the matter from the standpoint of
34、ensuring the effectiveness of the institutions, it seems essential to formulate a new design. I agree with those who think that a good solution to this problem would consist of the President of the European Council having a longer mandate A President elected in this way could be helped by a presiden
35、tial team made up of five or six Heads of State and Government, in accordance with a rotating system. This group of countries would be responsible for presiding over the sectoral councils, thus assuring the continuity and consistency of the work. Presided over in this way, the European Council shoul
36、d continue to be the political apex of the Union. This institution would be responsible for deciding the Unions political guidelines and strategies and for safeguarding the fundamental balance between all the institutions. Once this large state agenda (termed ABC after its proponents; Aznar, Blair a
37、nd Chirac) was on the table, it became a key topic in the Convention, where debates focused upon whether a permanent president should be created, the length of term and what powers the president, if created, would be granted; in particular whether the president would only chair the European Council,
38、 or would also chair certain ministerial councils such as the General Affairs Council, as was proposed by Tony Blair. On the other side of the issue were most of the smaller member states, who argued that rotation was a key strength of the Presidency and that creating a permanent president would res
39、ult in an EU dominated by larger member states, as the new president would most likely be dependent upon support from the larger states.The final result of the Convention and subsequent IGC was a compromise between these two positions, where a president with few formal powers would be elected to cha
40、ir the European Council and provide political leadership at the highest level, whereas the existing rotating Presidency would still exist, although with increased inter-Presidency coordination mechanisms (which need to be fleshed out in subsequent negotiations). The premise of this paper is however
41、that the larger member state agenda builds upon a false diagnosis of the problems of Council / European Council decision-making; namely that what is needed are stronger leaders with stronger powers. This paper questions this by testing whether smaller states are really ineffective leaders in the Uni
42、on. Do we see systematic evidence that shows that smaller states holding the rotating Presidency are unable to lift the burdens of the Presidency, resulting in their inability to push legislation through the Council, or their inability to secure major deals in European Councils on matters such as tr
43、eaty reforms? It is contended that the opposite is often the case due to what is termed the paradox of Union leadership, where weakness can actually be a strength when the weakness of the Presidency institution forces governments to adopt a more consensual style of leadership while at the same time
44、they are forced to rely more on the Council Secretariat for assistance. In the next section a theoretical argument for why weakness can be a strength is introduced which will be tested in the following sections of the paper.3. A theoretical explanation for why Presidency weakness can be a strengthHo
45、w can the weakness of a leader ever be a negotiating strength? The dependent variable in this paper is efficient bargaining outcomes in the Council and European Council, defined as achieving agreements that maximize the gains of cooperation while minimizing the decision-making costs. The independent
46、 variables are the two factors that determine variations in output efficiency; the demand for leadership and the ability to supply leadership. The demand for leadership in a given situation is a function of the political interests that governments have in achieving an agreement and the size of trans
47、action costs relating to collective action problems. The ability to supply leadership relates to whether the potential leader possesses the requisite resources to supply leadership and the degree to which the chosen leadership strategy matches with the consensual norms that dominate Council / Europe
48、an Council decision-making. Efficient outcomes are achieved when the supply of leadership matches the type of leadership demanded. When supply is less than demand, suboptimal outcomes are the result. The final part of this section combines these factors and provides a testable theoretical argument f
49、or when we should expect Presidency weakness to be a strength. The demand for leadership in the Council / European CouncilA necessary condition for leadership to be demanded is that governments must want some form of collective agreement in the Council / European Council. Leadership is then demanded in order to overcome transaction costs. Transaction costs can range from the costs of gathering and analyzing all of the informatio