ABSTRACT
The questions we are asking have to do with who decides what in European Union policy-making. If the state-centric model is valid, we would find a systematic pattern of state executive dominance. That entails three conditions. National governments, by virtue of the European Council and the Council of Ministers, should be able to impose their preferences collectively upon other European institutions, i.e. the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice. In other words, the latter three European institutions should be agents effectively controlled by state-dominated European institutions. Second, national governments should be able to maintain individual sovereignty vis-à-vis other national governments. And thirdly, national governments should be able to control the mobilization of subnational interests in the European arena. If, however, the multi-level governance model is valid, we should find, first, that the European Council and Council of Ministers share decisional authority with supranational institutions; second, that individual state executives cannot deliver the outcomes they wish through collective state executive decisions; and, finally, that subnational interests mobilize directly in the European arena or use the EU as a public space to pressure state executives into particular actions.
