RESUMEN
From the mid nineteen-eighties onwards, the European Union has celebrated six Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) with the objective of revising the communitarian treaties. How can we explain the results produced by this chain of negotiations? In this paper, I propose that the way in which negotiations are conducted influences the results of IGCs. In particular, a series of procedures and practices followed in these negotiations facilitate the achievement of agreements. Based on the neoinstitutionalist literature, I derive three major functions of the procedures and practices prevalent in IGCs: to structure the negotiations, to distribute information and to define the role of the mediator in the bargaining processes. Using some examples from the IGCs celebrated in the nineteen-nineties, I demonstrate the plausibility of this argument..