Neither Goethe nor Bismarck : on the Link between Theory and Empirics in Council Decision-Making Studies

Abstract

In a spirited attack Dorothee Heisenberg takes issue with the emerging field of quantitatively oriented European Union politics in general and the formal modelling tradition in studies on the Council of Ministers (CM) in particular. Drawing on constructivist scholarship and her important article on the culture of consensus (Heisenberg 2005) she argues in her contribution to this volume that rationalist scholarship is incapable in enlightening the whealing and dealing that characterises decision making within the intergovernmental legislative body of the European Union.<br />I will demonstrate that the "culture of consensus" that DH advocates is in perfect line with the rationalist scholarship as some of the extant bargaining models, which are barely mentioned, explicitly assume that actors have an inherent interest in cooperation.