This book seeks to explain outcomes of EU decision-making. It aims at identifying the factors most relevant for such explanation. For this purpose, the study analyses the interplay of the various supranational, governmental and non-governmental actors involved in decision-making along with supranational, domestic and international structures influencing the process. In the last decade many researchers have shifted their attention to questions such as the nature of the EU political system, the social and political consequences of the integration process and the normative dimension of European integration. However, the issue of explaining outcomes of EU decision-making, which has occupied scholars since the 1950s, is still a very important one. The ongoing salience of this question partly stems from the continuing disagreement among analysts as regards the most relevant factors accounting for the dynamics and standstills of the European integration process and certain segments of it. In addition, this question is of particular interest since the integration process is moving into areas which are commonly referred to as ‘high politics’, spheres that some researchers had factored out of their theories.

Political processes cannot be viewed in a theoretical vacuum since our analysis is always based on certain assumptions and concerns. Hence, empirical findings are always inspired by some theoretical perspective, perhaps without the researcher being aware of it. Theoretical frameworks structure our observations and are useful in terms of choosing variables and collecting data for conducting empirical research.