Informal procedures, institutional change, and EU decision-making: evaluating the effects of the 1974 Paris summit

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Paris summit of 1974 produced an informal agreement to renounce a previous informal agreement, the famous Luxembourg Compromise of 1966 about qualified majority voting (QMV). The dominant view within existing scholarship is that the Paris summit had no effect because the Luxembourg Compromise and its consensus norm persisted at least into the 1980s: QMV was inoperative before and remained inoperative after. Using quantitative analysis and extensive process tracing, we provide the first systematic empirical test of this conventional view and of the summit’s effects. Although superficially our null finding (no effect) appears to confirm previous accounts, it constitutes further evidence against prevailing ‘veto culture’ narratives and challenges existing theories about informal institutions and institutional change.