From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Processes: The Constitutionalisation of Comitology

Abstract: This article argues that the irresistible rise of Comitology is an institutional response to the deep‐seated tensions between the dual supranational and intergovernmentalist structure of the Community on the one hand, and its problem‐solving tasks on the other. Comitology has accordingly provided a forum in which problems are addressed through evolving and novel processes of interest formation and decision‐making. However, neither legal nor political science have been able properly to evaluate the workings of the committee system, both disciplines remaining trapped within normative structures and traditional methodologies ill‐suited to the analysis of these institutional innovations. As a consequence, this article advocates the trans‐disciplinary study of Comitology, and furthermore argues that the two disciplines might be drawn together by the concept of ‘deliberative supranationalism’: being on the one hand a normative approach which seeks both to preserve the legitimacy of national democracies and to set limits upon the traditional Nation State within a supranational community; and on the other, a theoretical tool which is nonetheless responsive to and accomodating of ‘real‐world’ phenomena.