Ratifying Maastricht.
Parliamentary Votes on International Treaties and Theoretical Solution Concepts
Thomas König
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
Simon Hug
Université de Genève and University of California, San Diego
Abstract:
When signing the new Treaty on European Union in Maastricht the governmental leaders of the twelve member-countries of the European Communities had accomplished a significant step towards economic and political union. Before taking effect the draft proposal had, however, to be ratified according to the procedures of the twelve member-countries. We discuss and analyze these different ratification procedures by focusing on the parliamentary stage. Applying the two-level game concept of international cooperation we show that a two-dimensional representation of the Maastricht draft treaty sufficiently explains the domestic events that occurred during the ratification process. Besides extending the Maastricht negotiation win-set linking different objectives, the two-dimensionality particularly increased the twelve governments' likelihood to survive the ratification constraints in their domestic arena. Using spatial solution concepts from social choice theory as tools, we attempt to illustrate with empirical data how 'big' the domestic win-sets of the twelve were in the parliamentary ratification.