Michael Malone's List: Integration

Feb. 13 2009: Opinion

HEY DOUCHE!
2008: West Euro. Politics

"This article examines and explains the committee system of the EU as a crucial property of the EU governance system using a database on the European Commission's experts groups. What is the extent of the expert consultative system? What is the distribution of expert groups? Are these groups best understood as loose networks or do they constitute a stable, well-established consultative system? We observe a proliferation of expert groups over time and across sectors. They have become permanent properties of the EU governance system; yet they are remarkably unevenly distributed among different policy domains. Sectoral differentiation is accentuated by weak horizontal coordination between the Directorates-General. We argue that this heterogeneity is not only a result of deliberate design attempts and differences in policy tasks, but also the result of differences in legal and administrative capabilities, as well as the gradual development of different routines and norms among the DGs."

THOUGHT: Could help illustrate the more effective nature and productivity of HLGs; legitimize claims of elitism in EU policy-making by displaying how elite groups have more say or success in dictating or determining policy adoption. 

2010: Journal of Common Market Studies

"This article analyses the role of a working group (WG) of Commissioners in monitoring and co-ordinating the implementation of trans-European networks (TENs) in transport. It argues that formally institutionalized structures for intra-College co-operation provide important arenas for creativity, entrepreneurship and consensus-building. Ultimately, the consistent and sustained political involvement of Commissioners improves the Commission's administrative co-ordination and may, ultimately, help secure better policy implementation."

General (not media-centric) run-down by scholar, Majone

Argues that EU governance needs to become more pluri-lateral--embrace more flexible, decentralized and soft modes of governance-- in order to improve efficiency, democracy. 


INTRO:
On the one hand, the Union is seen as a prototype of post-modern, multi-level, polycentric governance that is decentralized, flexible, deliberative, informal, inclusive and non-territorial... The old centralized top-down model of governance, with its rational performance standards and tight command-and-control mechanisms, is slowly giving way to a process-oriented model of governance, made operational in horizontally structured networks'

On the other hand, EU governance is still largely about securing compliance with EU laws and regulations, formal and structured decision-making, greater convergence and standardization, suppression of diversity and consolidation of the external boundary... Daniel Kelemen put it bluntly: 'The precision of EU law is backed by a coercive approach to enforcement'

The Union is larger and more complex and is struggling with the dilemma of how to maintain efficiency and order amidst growing interdependence, differentiation and unpredictability. Moreover, the impact of external shocks and pressures can make certain forms of governance prevalent or obsolete.

This article will concentrate on this last point. It will try to examine the impact of the most recent wave of EU enlargement on European governance. Enlargement is treated as an external shock to the existing governance system. Enlargement has done more than broaden the European geographic and public space. It represents an enormous injection of economic, political, legal and cultural diversity. This import of diversity will render the hierarchical mode of governance largely inadequate. The enlarged EU will have to embrace more flexible, decentralized and soft modes of governance. I call this new paradigm a plurilateral mode of governance. 

Plurilateral governance is not a panacea for all Europe's problems, but it can help the EU to cope with the pressures of globalization because of its built-in flexibility and ability for learning. It can enhance Europe's competitive edge because it pulls together vast European resources without eliminating Europe's greatest strength: its pluralism and diversity. Plurilateral governance might even be seen as legitimate by Europe's citizens because it tries to bring governance structures closer to the people and relies on incentives rather than punishments.

FACES OF EU GOVERNANCE:
Despite all this hierarchical governance is not winning. This is because mounting pressures of globalization, modernization and interdependence undermine the rationale and utility of this type of governance (Rosenau, 1997). Moreover, the one-size-fits-all solutions orchestrated by the European centre are ill-suited for coping with the ever-larger and more diversified European space. Enlargement towards eastern Europe has represented the greatest import of diversity in economic, legal and cultural terms. And although the enlargement strategy has been designed along the hierarchical blueprint there is mounting evidence suggesting that this strategy has produced perverse effects.

GOVERNANCE IN ENLARGED EU:
Finding one-size-fits-all solutions for the diverse 27 actors will be difficult. Even if such solutions could be identified and agreed upon, the chance that they would work is now smaller than was the case before. Moreover, it will not be easy to monitor compliance with policies designed by the European centre and sanction those who do not comply.

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE & DEMOCRACY:
Follesdal and Hix rightly argue that many EU regulatory policies are not politically benign and have significant redistributive consequences. What they fail to note is that these regulatory policies are often aimed at mitigating the redistributive effects of globalization over which Europeans have even less democratic control. 

CONCLUSION:
Plurilateral governance would mean a multiplication of various steered networks and hybrid arrangements with less hierarchy and enforced participation. The dominant governing principle would not be a centralization of power in the Commission, but delegation of power by both the Commission and Member States to specialized autonomous bodies operating with different degrees of centralization (Sapir et al., 2004).

THOUGHT: As integration progresses, convergence solidifies; mimics the culturally imperialistic Americanization processes, thereby speaking to the perhaps uniform impacts of globalization or integration processes. In short, European identity is solidifying independent of, yet in the mold of, Americanization-- creating a modern interpretation of traditional globalization processes, to the same effect.

ABSTRACT:
The assignment of policy competencies to the European Union has reduced the divergence of party policy positions nationally, leaving the electorate with fewer policy options.

As the policy commitments that derive from EU membership increase, parties become more constrained in terms of the feasible policy alternative they can implement when in office...

The main finding is that in policy domains where the involvement of the EU has increased, the distance between parties' positions tends to decrease. The constraining impact of EU policy decisions differs between Member and non-Member States. 

CONCLUSION:
Interestingly, the results indicate that the constraining impact of the EU affects nearly all parties in Member States. The effect is somewhat stronger for the policy agendas of larger, mainstream and pro-EU parties, but even smaller and eurosceptic parties seem not immune to EU constraints. This underlines concerns that as areas become subject to greater EU decision-making authority and become 'locked in' to certain policy alternatives, they become 'depoliticised' and increasingly insulated from domestic political debate (Mair 2000). EU policy commitments come to define the range of feasible policy alternatives for citizens in the Member States. Furthermore, national elections function less effectively as a way of translating citizens' preferences into governmental policy.

The process of European integration arguably undermines one of the primary functions of the domestic electoral process - namely to offer voters a broad range of policy alternatives. In essence, the more decisions derive from the EU as currently designed, the less distinct are the policy choices on which parties compete and citizens can vote. One worrisome implication is that there will be less open debate on policies decided at the EU level.

As long as European elections are relatively low-profile, the importance of the latter cannot be underestimated. It is therefore worrisome that our findings suggest that as EU authority increases, parties become less responsive to their electorate during domestic elections since they recognise that they would be unable to overturn EU decisions once in office.