George

1
George Bache Politics in the European Union

• Chapter 2 Theories of EU Governance

2
The Study of the EU as Comparative Politics

• Academic debate still dominated by the
  intergovernmental-supranational debate
• Hix (1994) advocated analysing the EU as a
  political system using concepts from Comparative
  Politics
• Two influential sets of approaches new
  institutionalism and governance and networks

3
New Institutionalism

• Reaction to the behavioural approaches that had
  come to dominate political science in the 1960s
  and 1970s
• New institutionalism argued that the reaction
  against the old, formal institutional analyses
  had gone too far institutions matter

4
New institutionalists VS Behaviouralists

• Behaviouralists
• formal institutions are neutral arenas within
  which different societal actors struggle for
  influence
• New institutionalists
• formal institutions are not neutral, since their
  structures and rules bias access to the political
  process in favour of some societal groups over
  others
• Institutions could be autonomus political actors
  in their own right

5
Rational Choice Institutionalism

• Rational choice institutionalism focus on
  constraints imposed on actors by institutional
  structures
• e.g. the activities of interest groups reflect
  the procedures that prevailed for the passage of
  the legislation that affected them, the access
  points that where available to them in that
  process, and the previous relationships that they
  had established with key decision makers
• Applying what is known as principal-agent theory,
  rational choice institutionalists pointed to the
  difficulties of principals (the national
  governments) in keeping a check on the activities
  of their agents (the central institutions)

6
Historical Institutionalism

• Decisions structured by pre-existing
  institutional relationships path dependence,
  values and norms
• Path dependence forces will be mediated by the
  contextual features of a given situation often
  inherited from the past (Hall and Taylor 1996)
• In extreme cases, path dependence can turn into
  lock-in (Pierson 1996) where other avenues of
  policy are entirely blocked off by the bias
  towards the existing route that is built into the
  system

7
Sociological Institutionalism

• Closely linked with the constructivist turn in
  the study of the EU and international politics
• The definition of what constitutes an
  institutions is considerably broader than in
  the other approaches
• Cultural approach to the relationship between
  institutions and indivisual action
• Institutions are often created and developed
  because they contribute to social legitimacy
  rather than efficiency

8
Policy Networks and Epistemic Community

• Richardson (1996) argued for the application of
  two concepts policy networks and epistemic
  communities.
• Policy networks sets of resource dependent
  organizations, meaning that each of the groups
  that makes up the policy network needs something
  (i.e. organizational, political, financial
  resources) that the others have in order to
  fulfil its own objectives (Rhodes 1998)
• Epistemic Communities networks of professionals
  with recognised expertise and competence in a
  particular domain and an authoritative claim to
  policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or
  issue-area (Haas 1992)

9
Policy Networks and the Study of the EU

• Kassim (1994) argued that EU processes were not
  settled enough to allow policy networks to emerge
• Peterson (1995) saw relevance for some levels of
  the policy-making process

10
Multi-Level Governance

• a system of continuous negotiation among nested
  governments at several territorial tiers
  supranational, national, regional and local
  (Marks 1993)
• Strong antecedents in neofunctionalism
• Emphasis on supranational and subnational actors
• EU institutions develop autonomy
• Transgovernmental and transnational networks and
  alliances promoted by Commission

11
Supranational Governance

• Origins in neofunctionalism, but also draws on
  transactionalism and new institutionalism
• Sees EU as a series of regimes
• Transactions produce a transnational society
  which works with autonomous European institutions
  to promote supranational rules