Issues in European Integration and Governance

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Issues in European Integration and Governance

• Simon Bulmer
• University of Sheffield

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1. Looking back at the early literature on
institutions and policy.

• The early theoretical literature was essentially
  concerned with the dynamics of integration.
• The theoretical apparatus for analysing the EC up
  to the 1970s was almost wholly based on
  international relations.
• Institutional studies were overwhelmingly
  configurative and atheoretical or situated in the
  integration theory literature.

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2. From integration theory to policy-making and
institutional analysis

• Opening up the study of policy and institutions
  Lindberg and Scheingold (Europes Would-Be
  Polity).
• The emergent policy and policy-making literature
• In-depth institutional analysis emerges
• 1980s academic incrementalism while integration
  regains momentum

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3. The governance turn in the 1990s

• A broad transformation of the academic debate in
  1990s
• An explosion of the academic literature on the
  European Union. It became more difficult to
  maintain an overview of EU studies.
• The growth of journal articles as the medium of
  publication
• Research initiatives on the EU the single market
  and One Europe or Several programmes in the UK,
  counterpart developments in Germany (DFG)
• The growing understanding of the EC/EU as a
  political system to be analysed using the
  comparative politics toolkit
• The governance turn, which took different forms
  in different national academic contexts.
• The growing impact of the EU on the member
  states political systems led to a re-shaping of
  political science specialisms.
• EU studies became much more mainstreamed.

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4. Why the governance turn?

• The international penetration of domestic
  politics (e.g. because of globalisation) and the
  role of the EU in this development.
• The shift in the character of state power away
  from rowing to steering, e.g. as reflected in
  privatisation, the growth or regulatory agencies,
  the development of a more networked form of
  governance and so on.
• A slightly different variant of the argument was
  that the state was being hollowed out from both
  above and below. EU structural funds as avehicle
  for this development.
• Kohler-Koch and Rittberger identify a more
  normative influence associated with good
  governance but this came late with the
  Commissions 2001 White Paper on European
  Governance.
• Inter/relationship with changing analytical
  toolkit.

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5. The analytical toolkit for understanding EU
governance

• The new institutionalisms rational choice,
  historical and sociological
• Constructivism
• Policy network analysis/network governance
• Multi-level governance
• Regulatory politics (Majone)
• Constitutionalism
• Politics like any other Simon Hix
• Miscellaneous approaches, e.g. Wolfgang Wessels
  fusion thesis anthropological approaches
• and liberal intergovernmentalism.