Research question/goal:

Obstructive behaviour driven by populist motivations constitutes a systematic threat to consensus-building in the European Council and the Council of the European Union (EU). Yet, few studies focus on the actors who try to withstand populist obstructions and preserve the functionality of intergovernmental decision-making in the EU. This research project develops and empirically tests a comprehensive theory of the strategies, motivations, and conditions for cooperation of four groups of actors best positioned to counter populist obstruction: the President of the European Council, the rotating Council presidency, the European Commission, and the governments of the EU’s two most populous member states, France and Germany. 

Theoretically, the project distinguishes between two types of counterstrategies. Deliberative strategies aim to accommodate populist obstructions through political concessions, whereas confrontational strategies exploit interdependencies to exert political pressure. Conceptualising the decision between these strategies the project refers to two logics of reasoning well established in the literature. From a logic of consequence, actors choose the countermeasures they expect will most effectively contain the impact of populist obstructions on their own goals. From a logic of appropriateness, they will act in accordance with procedural norms and role perceptions. While theoretical expectations are often built from the perspective of one logic or the other this project assumes that, in practice, both become intertwined when counterstrategies are developed and coordinated, with actors placing different emphasis depending on the patterns of incentives by which they are driven.

In the empirical part, the project studies the strategies, motivations, and coordination of different types of actors in countering attempts by the Hungarian government to obstruct decision-making on EU initiatives supporting Ukraine. Methodologically, it employs analyticist process-tracing. This innovative method allows for a detailed analysis of the relevance and interaction of the two logics of reasoning within case-specific contexts. The empirical analysis is structured into three work packages. The first provides a full account of policies obstructed by Hungary since the onset of the Russian full-scale invasion and the adopted counterstrategies. The second work package zooms in on selected cases, examining the considerations that drove different actors in forming preferences about the right counterstrategy and coordinating with others.

The third compares the results across actors to identify the conditions under which a united front against populist obstructions can be formed. 

The project will advance the academic understanding of how different types of actors within the EU handle populist obstructions in intergovernmental decision-making. Furthermore, its findings will offer practical insights into how multilateral institutions can be better prepared against the challenges arising from the global rise of populism.