Cooperation and Expected Policy Compliance in the Council of the EU

Collective action among nation-states is necessary for overcoming a number of pressing cross-border challenges, such as various environmental problems, antibiotics resistance, public security and trade liberalization. The most prominent product of state collective action is the European Union, which encompasses numerous policy fields of cross-border nature. But what factors affect the likelihood of generating this collective action through joint decisions in the EU? A central tenet in collective action theory and social dilemma theory is that the prospects of generating collective action through cooperative decisions will be affected by whether that cooperation will be honoured or sustained. A key prediction is that cooperation will only be possible if there is an expectation that others will comply with agreed policies. While this is crucial for understanding individual level behaviour, whether it is also true for collective agents (i.e. member state representatives) is less understood. This paper focuses on this relation between expected (non-)compliance and cooperation in member state negotiations in the Council of the EU. It also addresses the issue of which factors that affect member state representatives’ expectations about policy compliance. The paper reports results from a newly conducted telephone survey with EU member state negotiators to the Council of the EU.