Member state agents are more or less constrained when they act on behalf of their principal in the EU Council. Constraints stemming from the setting in which the negotiators find themselves and that are based on the principal’s desires, institutional rules and public opinions. It is widely acknowledged that the room for negotiators to act during negotiations has an impact on their ability to influence outcomes but the direction of that impact is issue for controversy. Some argue that domestic constraints are a disadvantage and point to the risk of actors getting isolated when they are not able to act with some flexibility. Others, mainly basing their argument on Thomas Schelling’s ‘paradox of weakness’, instead point to the potential benefit of having domestic constraints in reaching desired outcomes. This claim is based on the tacit assumption that domestic constraints affect behaviour and credibility, which in turn leads to outcomes that are favourable to the constrained actor. Empirical studies of the paradox of weakness in the EU Council have found some support for the theory in what can be labelled grand bargains but not in legislative decision-making. However, the behavioural component of Schelling’s claim is largely neglected in previous research, which the paper addresses by suggesting an attention shift to this intermediate variable. In particular, the paper describes domestic constraints usage as a signalling game where actors’ signalling behaviour is of primary concern. Empirically, the paper relies on responses from a small number of explorative vignette interviews with working party representatives from different EU member states. The interviews have been conducted in a pilot round and the results are foremost methodological but some preliminary substantial findings are also presented.
