Theorising the Presidency of the Council

Research on the presidency of the Council is a vibrant sub-field of European Union (EU) studies. Not all research on the Council presidency is theory-guided or seeks to contribute to theoretical debates but a large number of contributions have exactly this ambition. This chapter introduces three study perspectives on the Council in order to channel the variety of existing contributions. The three perspectives are: the presidency as an act of delegation, the presidency and broader institutional change and, the presidency as a social field. Each perspective is marked by a central research question and offers specific theoretical options to researchers. The discussion also delineates related methodological choices including case selection and strategies for data collection. The chapter provides examples of existing contributions on the presidency for each perspective, including from this volume. The intention is to help students of the presidency to make sense of the literature and to plan future research on the Council presidency more systematically.