ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to establish a link between the dynamics of constitutional reform in the European Union (EU) and the extent to which the process of ‘rethinking Maastricht’ can be adequately explained from a new theoretical perspective, summed up in the concept of confederal consociation (Chryssochoou 1994). The gist of the argument is that large-scale constitutional engineering, far from leading to a diffusion of state sovereignty, maintains the ability of member governments to manage the process of building transnational bodies. Indeed, the EU continues to act as a source of state strength by enhancing the domestic power base of national leaders, allowing them to influence the articulation of territorial interests via the central institutions. In this sense, the confederal consociation thesis strikes a balance between interdependence and autonomy within a common framework of power. Like Puchala’s (1972) ‘concordance system’, the model represents what we believe is ‘coming into being “out there” in the empirical world’. By ‘confederal’, we refer to the structural properties of the larger management system, and in particular to the idea that the EU rests upon the separate constitutional orders of the states. By ‘consociation’, we refer to the means for arriving at collective binding decisions within a ‘closed’ system of political interactions analogous to that depicted by Dahrendorf as ‘a cartel of elites’ (Dahrendorf 1967: 267). The question to be addressed is whether confedera1 consociation provides a clear indication of the limits and possibilities of European constitutional change.
