ABSTRACT
In both cases before the Court, the Council seemed to have been pushed into a corner where it had great difficulties mounting a defence against the Commission. The analysis of the dynamics of these institutional conflicts sought to make sense of the actions of the respective agents as well as of the Court’s decisions. The discursive lock-in mechanism discussed in this chapter explains the outcome of the institutional conflicts presented earlier by highlighting how the dynamics of these conflicts were conditioned by the emergence of shared understandings prior to their outbreak. It supplies a theoretical grounding for understanding a particular way in which discourses building up during longer periods of time can shape agents’ actions. The mechanism identifies how the process through which specific institutional practices emerge can shape the arguments mobilized in institutional conflicts and produce particular institutional effects.
