Consensus, compromise and “inclusive agreement”: Negotiating supranational governance

Negotiated “policy-arrangements” and their institutionalization are at the heart of global governance. This chapter focuses on the European Union (EU) as one particular arena that produces binding decisions beyond the nation state. For scholars of global governance, the EU constitutes an interesting but idiosyncratic case: the EU’s system of decision-making and enforcement is highly institutionalized; the EU covers a broad policy-remit, touching upon core areas of national sovereignty such as monetary policy or border control; and the EU is exceptionally intrusive and effective, producing binding laws that are widely complied with in its member states. At the same time, the nature of supranational governance – famously described as “less than a federation, more than a regime” (Wallace 1983) – remains open and undefined. For scholars of argumentation, deliberation and persuasion, the European Union is an equally fruitful object of study: the EU’s deliberative decision-style is used to explain compliance with European law (Neyer 2004); the EU is conceptualized as an actor that projects “normative” rather than military power (Manners 2002) and the supranational decision-process serves as testing ground for theories of deliberation (Eriksen and Fossum 2000; Joerges and Neyer 1997a, 1997b), argumentation (Naurin 2010), problem-solving (Elgström and Jönsson 2000), rhetorical action (Schimmelfennig 2001) and judgment (Kornprobst 2008)