"Visibles and divisibles: Institutionalism and the Council of Ministers ten years on"

This paper first explores existing debates, identifying the particular approaches that have been used to deconstruct co¬decision. It agues that whilst the methods may be substantially and intellectually different, they are institutionalist in flavour, and actually reach similar conclusions. It distinguishes between those approaches which focus on the divisibles of co-decision-voting patterns and outputs, and those which examine the visible (or perhaps as some might argue the less visible or invisible) effects, namely structural and cultural change within and between EU institutions. This paper is part of a lager project on the legacy of co-decision, and its consequent effects upon the inter-institutional dynamics of the EU. It is significantly orientated towards the cultural and procedural changes within the Council of Ministers (Council). However, at a preliminary stage, one glaring omission from existing research became obvious. There has been a natural and predictable emphasis on the European Parliament-Council dichotomy of co-decision. Consequently, the European Commission (Commission) has been analytically sidelined. The second part of this paper identifies why it is timely to bring the Commission back into our thinking on co¬decision. The final section of this paper identifies the implications of co-decision, addressing the underlying and political factors that have enabled co-decision to evolve into an EU decisional norm, but focusing upon the implications for our appreciation of the Council and its legitimate role with the EU system of governance