1 6. Avoiding Deadlock in European Trade Policy Andreas Dür ___________________________________________________ The proposition that a positive relationship exists between the degree of policy stability and the number of veto players in a political system has become widely accepted (Tsebelis 1995, 2002). Veto players, defined as those actors that can block a change of the status quo, reject all decisions that would impose net costs on them. By simple deduction, then, the more such actors exist, the less likely is a move away from the status quo. An analysis of the achievements of the European Union (EU) in international trade negotiations, however, suggests the need to amend this finding at least when applied to specific policy fields. A complex institutional structure, which allows many actors to veto decisions that suppose a change in the status quo, characterises the EU. Nevertheless, since its creation, the EU has been able to provide far-reaching concessions to foreign trading partners in a series of international trade negotiations in the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In these negotiations, the EU has agreed to substantially reduce its external tariff and to restrict the use of non-tariff barriers such as quotas and standards. What explains the EU’s capacity to avoid protracted internal deadlock – and thus the prolongation of a highly protectionist trade policy – despite the presence of a large number of veto players? In a nutshell, my argument is that institutional features that facilitate issue linkages within a political system can offset the policy stability introduced by a high number of veto players. Such linkages connect two or more policy issues and thus allow for agreements even if on an individual issue at least one internal actor would use its veto power to block a move away from the status quo. Two problems, however, often inhibit the effective linking of different issues. First, since in politics only in very rare cases actors can use monetary side payments to win over a veto player, finding appropriate alternative side-payments can be a difficult task. Second, when the exchange of concessions does not take place at the same time, or when the benefits of the exchange accrue to the different parties at different times, problems of enforcement inhibit issue linkages (Weingast and Marshall 1988). Not all