Negotiation autonomy in the EU Council of Ministers: A research design to define and explain the autonomy of executives from federal and regionalized member states vis-à-vis their parliament(s)

The proposed paper presents a research proposal that aims to evaluate the autonomy of governments from federal and regionalized states vis-à-vis their parliament(s) in the Council of the European Union. Based on a principal-agent model and completed by the appraoch of sociological institutionalism, this research focus is twofold. First, the specific case of federal and regionalized states implies that we have multiple principals (national and regional parliaments) scrutinizing, monitoring and controlling an agent (government in the Council). This questions on “how” a national ‘win-set’ is developed and delegated to the executive and “who” is participating in its definition. Second, the research questions how these governments deal with their national win-set and how much autonomy they enjoy, given the fact that they also have to negotiate with the other member states in the Council. The principal-agent model provides an analytical framework to understand the act of delegation between parliament(s) and government. Most of the time, the delegation act is understood as being a bottom-up process focusing on the control mechanisms available to the principals. On the other side, few articles concentrate specifically on the agent actions. In other words, how does the agent deal with his autonomy? The proposed research primarily looks at this agent perspective. In addition, the principal-agent approach will be completed by sociological institutionalism.