NOVAK, Stéphanie Julie

Max Weber Fellow 2010-2011

From September 2011: 

Postdoctoral Fellow
(Roman Herzog Fellowship) 
Hertie School of Governance
Berlin
Germany  

and

Associate Researcher
Centre d’Etudes Sociologiques et Politiques Raymond Aron
EHESS
Paris
France

Email Stephanie.Novak@eui.eu  / novak@hertie-school.org 

I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris (2009). My dissertation was entitled: ‘The shadow of consensus. The use of qualified majority voting in the Council of the European Union.’ In the Council, when qualified majority voting is the legal rule, ministers seldom actually vote. Instead, according to most studies, they decide “by consensus”.

In this context, my dissertation addresses two questions: Why do ministers vote so rarely? What does the ambiguous notion of consensus actually refer to? On the basisof interviews with Council members, I attempted to show that the principleof qualified majority is in fact the driving factor in the decision-making process. Yet the combination of qualified majority, asymmetric information and social norms discourages the minority from expressing its disagreement at several stages of decision-making. Consequently, most decisions seem to be made without opposition. This method enhances the legislative productivity of the Council but it raises problems of democratic accountability. 

I am a Research Assistant for Jon Elster at the Collège de France. I studied philosophy (M.A. in 2001, agrégée in 2002) and I am an alumna of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, 1999-2004) and the Panthéon-Sorbonne University. I have been a visiting fellow at the GSAS of Harvard University in 2006-2007.

Research Interests: EU institutions, sociology of collective decisions, political theory.

Full CV and list of Publications 

Novak Homepage