Getting your House in Order for EU Negotiations: When Domestic Constraints Condition Italy's Performance at the EU Level*

Abstract

AbstractDespite being one of the founding members of the European Community and the third largest economy in the EU, Italy does not stand out as a particularly influential negotiator when it comes to day‐to‐day EU decision‐making. Why is it that a country with Italy's political weight, economic resources and administrative capacity has such a patchy record in terms of negotiation success? Examining Italy's negotiation of two key EU policies (2008–16) and relying on an original set of interviews with EU officials and Italian politicians, this paper contends that the answer lies in a set of domestic factors that have largely been neglected by negotiation theory: namely, political, administrative and individual domestic constraints.This contribution explains Italy's inconsistent performance in EU negotiations, while also developing a broader theoretical framework accounting for the ways in which domestic factors moderate member states' bargaining power and, ultimately, their likelihood of achieving negotiation success.