Theorizing national preference formation

Abstract

This article seeks to explain through the contextualized comparisons of a few critical cases how national preferences on an interstate bargaining issue are formed domestically. It proposes an interaction framework of national preference formation (NPF), which emphasizes the government's policy autonomy, the size of the ruling party or coalition, and the party unity in aggregating divergent domestic preferences for interstate bargaining. The framework is tested against major European Community members' preference formation on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Case studies reveal that the interaction framework quite accurately describes the national preferences of Germany, Britain, and France over EMU.

Notes

¹ Following the strategic choice approach, preference here is defined as a ranking order over alternative outcomes. National preferences are governments' preferences. NPF refers to the process by which countries/governments in interstate bargaining decide what they pursue.

² Given complex bureaucratic politics, to assume the executive branch to be a unitary entity, which is led by either the president in presidential systems or the prime minister in parliamentary ones, may be too simplistic. Nevertheless, following Milner (1997, 34), I regard the executive branch as a unitary actor for heuristic purposes.

³ Much of the recent literature, however, points out the unhelpfulness of this simple distinction between presidential and parliamentary systems in terms of aggregating social preferences (see, for example, Milner 1997).

⁴ See, for the same view, Sandholtz (1993).

⁵ Above all, joining the EMU required countries to give up autonomous monetary policies such as currency devaluation, which European governments often chose to mitigate the effects of economic shocks.

⁶ The analysis excludes the impact of international forces on NPF for two reasons. First, like Jacobsen (1996) and Milner (1997), I assume that while international forces matter, their influence on national preferences is conditioned by domestic politics. Second, explaining the impact of international forces on the dynamic interplay between divergent preferences and policymaking structures requires a theoretical framework that the limited space of this article cannot include.

⁷ The ruling coalition did not control the majority in the upper house, let alone the two-thirds that is necessary to ratify treaties that need constitutional amendment.

⁸ By referring to Major's pro-integrationist stance, I do not imply that Major had a federalist agenda. Rather, I mean that compared with Thatcher's open hostility towards the concept of the single currency, Major was relatively open to a gradual transition to EMU and favoured the option of securing a British ‘opt-in’ for the uncertain future.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Min-hyung Kim

Min-hyung Kim is an assistant professor of political science at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. His research interests include European integration, international political economy, international relations theory, East Asian security, and Asian regionalism. He has published, among others, in the Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Integration, International Political Science Review, Pacific Focus, and Asian Perspective. He was a Jean Monnet Fellow (2009–2010) in the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, Florence.