European Union: Power and Policy-Making

actors, explaining the process of preference-formation through empirical observation, examining the nature of the actors involved (to what extent may they be characterised as rational actors, for example?), and by identifying the relationship between the policy environment and the taking of major constitutional decisions (Cram 1994, Wincott 1995). The policies which emerge from the policy-making process, moreover, and the impact on the various actors of their participation in this process, may be critical factors in determining the role which national governments play and the positions which they adopt in the negotiations on the future of the EU. Thus, by altering the environment in which the dominant actors (member states) take critical 'history-making' decisions, the activities of the institutions and other interests may also have had a major impact upon the integration process. A crucial insight of the early integration theories has largely been overlooked in recent years: namely, that in understanding the outcome of negotiations at the 'constitutional' level of EU decision-making it is crucial to take into account the learning and adaptation processes, which iterated contact between the various actors in the policy-making process has made possible, and to filter this into any theoretical account of the integration process.

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