Beyond Size: Domestic Origins of Network Capital in the Council of the European Union

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines the Netherlands as a deviant case in the cooperation networks of the Council of the European Union. Drawing on seven waves of the Negotiations in the Council of the European Union dataset (2003-2021), it documents a trajectory more complex than the existing literature recognizes: a positive size-adjusted residual (overperformance) in every wave combined with a sustained decline in relative rank through 2015, followed by a sharp transformation that brings the Netherlands to the 3rd leading position in the dataset by 2021. A partner-group decomposition reveals that this aggregate pattern conceals continuous growth in cooperation from northern liberal-market states, wave-specific suppression from eurozone periphery and Visegrad states tracking identifiable policy crises, and a post-2016 recovery coinciding with the United Kingdom's departure. Through explaining-outcome process tracing, the thesis advances parliamentary accountability for Council positions as the institutional configuration most consistent with this pattern. Drawing on Putnam, Tsebelis, and the Council cooperation literature, it specifies a mechanism in which domestically anchored, publicly committed positions generate credibility among aligned partners and rigidity costs among opposed ones. The thesis traces this mechanism through a four-link causal chain, drawing on primary institutional documentation, IOB coordination evaluations, Clingendael report practitioner testimony, formation-level analysis, and Tweede Kamer parliamentary records. Coalition governance, individual leadership/diplomatic capacity and agency-based alternatives are evaluated and found insufficient. A cross-country regression across the EU-27 demonstrates that parliamentary scrutiny strength, measured by the OPAL Institutional Strength Score, predicts network capital. The thesis concludes that the domestic parliamentary accountability architecture constitutes the most plausible explanation of the Dutch trajectory, supported by cross-country evidence that parliamentary scrutiny strength predicts network capital across the Union. The thesis contributes methodologically by demonstrating that within-case decomposition reveals dynamics the dominant cross-sectional framework cannot detect. It also articulates the double-edged structure of the credibility-from-constraint logic, showing how the same institutional condition can simultaneously generate cooperation from aligned partners and resistance from opposed ones. The empirical contribution operates at two levels: the Dutch parliamentary accountability architecture for EU policy is documented in greater detail than the existing literature has produced, while a cross-country regression establishes that the institutional relationship holds across the EU member state population, robust to alternative outcome specifications, size controls, and scrutiny measures