Introduction

This book is about one of the most important real scale policy-making processes of our time: the formation of positions on the constitution of the second biggest economic power. In scope and significance there is perhaps only one parallel in history to the policy-making process for the “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe,” namely the creation of the American constitution in 1776. This process has been characterized by a number of critical events, the most recent being the negative referendum outcome in France and the Netherlands. Independent of the outcome – whether the constitution will be ratified or not – understanding how this treaty emerged and how this policy-making process has been carried out is of great societal and scientific relevance. The decision on the constitution affects a growing number of countries and the lives of their citizens. In case of ratification, Europe will have a constitution which defines the “rules of the game” for at least 25 member states. However, if ratification should fail, the Treaty of Nice (2003) will remain in force, leading, according to some authors, to a high risk of gridlock. Exploring and explaining the process having led to the elaboration and decision on the “Constitution for Europe” is thus an important task of political scientists in our days. The current political science literature on the EU – whether the intergovernmentalist, the two-level game, the constructivist or the (multilevel) governance school of thought – makes claims about the nature of this process, but few efforts have yet been made to document this process in a systematic and comparative manner, covering the different steps and stages.