Leadership in the European Convention

Did the Chairman of the European Convention, Valeacutery Giscard d'Estaing (VGE), shape this body's deliberation toward an outcome that would not have occurred otherwise? I contend that VGE was able to influence the form of the Convention's outcome and to some extent its content on issues of minor importance, but not its very substance on institutional matters. Drawing on functional approaches to leadership, I argue that the Convention's rules of procedure constituted an original negotiation setting that allowed the Chairman to wield influence through setting the agenda. But the more the Convention approached institutional questions, the less he was able to generate the preconditions for his leadership. The Convention ultimately turned into an IGC-like, unanimous negotiation setting without any room for the Chairman's influence

Norms, Interests and Institutional Change

This paper provides a norms-based account of institutional change. It compares two cases of attempted change, one successful and one unsuccessful. The argument advanced is that norm-based change occurs when the norms are congruent with the perceived interests of the actors who have the power to take on the decision. Norms affect the process of institutional change not only by providing legitimacy to some forms of political action, but also by shaping the actors’ perception of their interests as well their strategies. It is argued that norms, in that sense, help political actors combine Max Weber's zweckrational (goal-orientated) and wertrational (value-orientated) categories of behaviour. Empirical evidence drawn from the context of the evolving European Union supports this argument