Socialisation and decision-making in the Council of the European Union

The complex system of decision-making in the Council of the European Union has many specific features which require explanation. This article presents a constructivist approach to this problem and focuses on the influence of socialisation. First, it explains why inquiry into the decision-making in the Council from the constructivist perspective is justified and then proposes the use of process-tracing, a method that allows to trace causal mechanisms linking the effects of socialisation and the characteristics of decision-making in the Council. Second, a typology of socialisation mechanisms and effects is presented. The third section is an attempt to use the inductive variety of process-tracing in order to explain certain qualities of decision-making in the Council. The final section outlines the theory-oriented approach to process-tracing, which could follow from the presented conceptualisation and explains the need to include the constitutive aspects of socialisation within the causal framework of process-tracing research.