ABSTRACT
This case study of decision making in international organizations focuses on a regional European organization, the Council of Europe, which, it will be argued here, from its establishment in 1949 operated with an important element of relative autonomy as an arena of decision making. It thus presents an intriguing exception to the predominant mode of decision making within international organizations set out in the introduction to this volume, and to the general thesis presented there concerning the timing and causality of change in this ‘hierarchical’ model of dominance by member governments.
