Reforming the European Union: Realizing the Impossible.

• Author: Aydin-Duzgit, Senem
• Position: Book review

Reforming the European Union: Realizing the Impossible

By Daniel Finke, Thomas Konig, Sven-Oliver Proksch, and George Tsebelis

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, 227 pages, ISBN 9780691153933.

The European Union (EU) faced a stalemate of institutional reform between the signing of the Treaty of Nice in 2001 and the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. Although the provisions of the Treaty of Nice were far from resolving the institutional troubles of the EU in the aftermath of the Eastern enlargement, the process for wider reform was painstaking and long. This book explains the convoluted process through which the EU managed to achieve the much-needed, but least expected institutional reform following the Nice Treaty. Thus the major puzzle, which the book tackles, is the dynamics under which the political actors changed their positions and preferences to agree on the Treaty of Lisbon provisions for further institutional reform. In other words, why did political actors shift their preferences in the aftermath of the Treaty of Nice? What were the reasons and processes that pushed the EU towards further reform?

The authors respond to this puzzle from a rationalist-institutionalist perspective. In doing that, they focus on the strategic preferences of the political actors involved (namely political leaders, national parliaments, voters, Convention, delegates and governmental agents) as well as the procedures of Treaty revision that constrain their behaviour. They gather a wide data-set (including expert interviews) to delineate the preferences of these actors and their political strategies. The analysis of the data-set is conducted through sophisticated and innovative empirical methods including spatial modelling and game theory. The underlying argument of the book is that political reform is not necessarily achieved based on the lowest common denominator, but that one needs to take into account the interplay of interests through all stages of reform, including the European Convention, the referendums, and the inter-governmental bargaining that followed to understand how reform was finally achieved.

The analysis is conducted through seven complementary chapters where each focuses on a specific stage of the reform process. The first chapter by Tsebelis begins where the Treaty of Nice leaves off. It focuses on the differences between the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon in terms of facilitating decision making in the EU. Furthermore, it...