Political Multilevel Negotiations and Issue Linkage During an EU Intergovernmental Conference: An Empirical Application

Due to the growing interdependence of countries, international multilateral, multiple issue negotiations become increasingly important. Since there is a quasi-absence of hierarchy and majority voting in international relations, linkage politics is considered to be the mechanism of collective decision making and conflict resolution par excellence. We argue that the linkage metaphor can be neatly conceptualized with the political exchange model of James Coleman. Empirically, we provide an application to an EU intergovernmental conference on treaty reform. Descriptively, we focus on the interdependencies of actors and issues. Analytically, we test whether within-governmental conflicts weaken or strengthen the domestic supply chain (political support, credibility) for international negotiation delegations.