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Abstract

This chapter re-examines the original joint-decision trap (JDT) model in light of this author's later work and the research presented by Gerda Falkner and her colleagues in this volume. Pointing out that a focus on the joint-decision mode was not meant to deny the existence of other modes of EU policy-making, it is nevertheless argued that the mechanisms identified in the JDT model continue to shape the possibility, quality, and direction of EU legislation. But in order to increase its explanatory power, the model should be extended to take explicit account of the impact of judicial law-making and Commission strategies on bargaining constellations in the Council. Even then, however, the model cannot provide complete explanations. Thus the chapters in this volume have indeed identified empirical influences on the perceptions and preferences of policy actors, and hence on the chances of agreement, that should be explained within a ‘constructivist’ frame of reference, rather than by reference to a ‘rational-choice’ bargaining model.