Britain and the Negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty: A Critique of Liberal Intergovernmentalism

Abstract

This article critically examines the liberal intergovernmental (LI) approach to bargaining in the European Union. It explores its analytical and predictive power in relation to the British negotiation of three dossiers in the 1991 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on Political Union: social policy, foreign and security policy and enhancing the powers of the European Parliament (EP). It casts doubt on the LI explanation of national preference formation and contends that there are three weaknesses of the LI approach: the notion of preference formation; the assumption that governments are purposeful and instrumental actors; and the liberal intergovernmental conception of bargaining. More generally, the article casts doubt on the value of LI claims to explanatory as well as predictive value.