The UK and the Ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon--A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Analysis.

This paper examines the process of the UK's ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon using a liberal intergovernmentalist approach. Traditionally, in contrast to other member states of the European Union, the UK has often been hesitant to pursue European integration. And yet, over the past half century, the European Union has become a significant model of voluntary regional integration. The ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, which brought important changes to the European Union, marked a significant milestone for European integration in the early twenty-first century. This paper aims to explore the process and challenges of the UK's ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by employing a liberal intergovernmentalist analysis. Such an approach has been developed over several decades and become a major theoretical approach to the study of European integration. Liberal intergovernmentalism, which draws special attention to the processes of negotiating, signing, and ratifying the EU's major treaties, provides a suitable theoretical approach to the analysis of the UK's passage of the Treaty of Lisbon. This paper is, therefore, designed with the dual purpose of examining the empirical case study of the UK's passage of the Treaty of Lisbon, and of examining the theoretical validity of liberal intergovernmentalism against empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]