New Modes Of Governance In The European Union

Based on the research of the EU-6th framework funded research consortium on 'New Modes of Governance in the European Union', this volume explores the roots, execution and applications of new forms of governance and evaluates their success.

The Transformation of Governance in the European Union presents a theoretically informed typology of modes of governance which is tested in a careful selection of comparative country and policy studies.

Having realized that its traditional mode of coordinating--essentially issuing regulation--no longer commands sufficient political support, the European Union (EU) has turned to what are increasingly referred to as 'new' modes of governance, which rely upon different actors working together in relatively non-hierarchical networks. This book provides the first extended account of how effective they are at addressing 'wicked' policy problems which simultaneously demand greater levels of horizontal and vertical coordination. Taking, as an example, the thirty year struggle to integrate environmental thinking into all areas and levels of EU policy making, it offers a stark reminder that networked governance is not and is unlikely ever to be a panacea. In doing so, it strips away some of the rhetorical claims made about the novelty and appeal of 'new' modes, to reveal a much more sober and realistic appraisal of their coordinating potential.

The emergence, execution and evolution of new modes of governance across several policy fields - and encompassing all three pillars of the European Union - are mapped, analyzed and evaluated. In particular, the expert contributors focus on the ways in which these innovative mechanisms and practices interrelate, how they relate to ?old' methods of governance, and what their implications are both for the effectiveness and efficiency of policymaking. Conclusions are drawn in the form of an integrated new framework that explains the dynamics of EU governance with an ?integrative spiral' driven by the interrelation between the legal and the living architecture of the EU. Linking research on modes of governance to the analysis of the basic legal, institutional and procedural features of the EU up to the Lisbon Treaty, this book will prove essential reading for scholars, researchers and policy makers in the fields of European studies, law and economics, and political science and theory.

This book advances a novel interpretation of EU governance. Its central claim is that the EU's regulatory successes within-and increasingly beyond-its borders rest on the emergence of a recursive process of framework rule making and revision by European and national actors across a wide range of policy domains. In this architecture, framework goals and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those of others pursuing different means to the same general ends. The framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures are themselves periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. The editors' introduction sets out the core features of this experimentalist architecture and contrasts it to conventional interpretations of EU governance, especially the principal-agent conceptions underpinning many contemporary theories of democratic sovereignty and effective, legitimate law making. Subsequent chapters by an interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars explore the architecture's applicability across a series of key policy domains, including data privacy, financial market regulation, energy, competition, food safety, GMOs, environmental protection, anti-discrimination, fundamental rights, justice and home affairs, and external relations. Their authoritative studies show both how recent developments often take an experimentalist turn but also admit of multiple, contrasting interpretations or leave open the possibility of reversion to more familiar types of governance. The results will be indispensable for all those concerned with the nature of the EU and its contribution to contemporary governance beyond the nation-state.

"While the constitutional development of the European Union appears to be stymied, new modes of governance have sprung up in the interstices of formal institutions. This book digs beneath the treaties and formal institutions to inquire into the possibilities, and limits, of new, more flexible, methods of decision making which involve the diffusion of authority to private or public actors beyond and beneath the central state. The authors succeed in deepening our understanding of new modes of governance and their effectiveness, but they also critically assess the challenge of making such arrangements accountable to European citizens. In short, this book is a most welcome and timely contribution to our understanding of European politics."--BOOK JACKET.

This book looks at policy steering modes in other words, governance of one particular Community policy area, namely structural/cohesion policy. The study analyzes the governance modes of this policy at the European Union (EU) level and its implementation in eight new member states, putting special emphasis on the usage of 'new modes of governance' in this policy field. In the broad sense, the term 'new modes of governance' is understood as a range of innovations and transformations that have occurred, and continue to, in the instruments, methods, modes, and systems of governance. New approach to governance involves such concepts as a web of non-hierarchical relations between actors, voluntary consensus-building, the application of soft measures, and more flexibility in implementation. This new approach has increased in importance in the EU during the last ten years (i.e. the Amsterdam Treaty, the Lisbon agenda, and the European Commission's White Paper on Governance). Within Europe