Informal procedures, institutional change, and EU decision-making: evaluating the effects of the 1974 Paris summit
本文通过定量分析和过程追踪，检验了1974年巴黎峰会关于放弃卢森堡妥协的非正式协议是否影响了欧盟决策中的合格多数投票制，发现无显著效果，但挑战了既有的否决文化叙事和非正式制度变迁理论。
The Paris summit of 1974 produced an informal agreement to renounce a previous informal agreement, the famous Luxembourg Compromise of 1966 about qualified majority voting (QMV). The dominant view within existing scholarship is that the Paris summit had no effect because the Luxembourg Compromise and its consensus norm persisted at least into the 1980s: QMV was inoperative before and remained inoperative after. Using quantitative analysis and extensive process tracing, we provide the first systematic empirical test of this conventional view and of the summit’s effects. Although superficially our null finding (no effect) appears to confirm previous accounts, it constitutes further evidence against prevailing ‘veto culture’ narratives and challenges existing theories about informal institutions and institutional change.