http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org Current articles from Living Reviews in European Governance. Living Reviews in European Governance is an entirely web-based, peer-reviewed journal, publishing reviews of research on core themes relating to European Integration and Governance. LREG is published by ECSA Austria (European Community Studies Association Austria) at the Institute for European Integration Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:21:34 -0000 en ePublishingToolkit (http://dev.livingreviews.org/) contact.lreg@livingreviews.org admin@livingreviews.org Oliver Treib Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:00:00 -0000 Europeanisation in the Domestic Spheres http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-5 lreg-2008-5 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This essay takes stock of the literature on how European Union policies are being put into practice by the member states. It first provides an overview of the historical evolution of the field. After a relatively late start in the mid 1980s, the field has meanwhile developed into one of the growth industries within EU research. The paper identifies three different waves of EU implementation scholarship. The first wave considered implementation primarily a problem of institutional efficiency. In the second wave, the degree of compatibility between European demands and domestic policy legacies took centre stage. However, many second-wave scholars complemented the basic "misfit" argument with a set of additional explanatory factors to account for deviant cases. In the third wave, some researchers began to stress the role of domestic politics, while others re-discovered the importance of administrative capabilities. As an attempt to synthesise some of the partial explanations presented by earlier research, one group of scholars pointed to the existence of culturally-shaped country clusters, each with its own typical style of complying with EU legislation. After this historical overview, the paper summarises the most important theoretical, empirical and methodological lessons to be drawn from existing studies, and it discusses promising avenues for future research. First, most scholars seem to agree on the basic set of factors that may have an impact on transposition processes. The main task to be accomplished by future research is to establish under which conditions which configurations of factors prevail. While we already know that there are country-specific patterns, the importance of sector-specific patterns will need to be explored further. Second, greater research efforts will have to be devoted to the neglected area of enforcement and application. In theoretical terms, going back to the insights of traditional domestic implementation research seems to be most promising for this type of studies. Third, the paper cautions against the poor quality of the data employed by the growing number of quantitative compliance studies. Unless the problems with the data can be solved, scholars are well advised to rely on comparative case studies, at least in addition to statistical analyses. To increase the number of cases to be covered by qualitative research, the paper makes the case for crafting collaborative qualitative research projects as a viable alternative to quantitative research. Rainer Eising Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:00:00 -0000 The Making of EU Governance http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-4 lreg-2008-4 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ There is a plethora of studies on interest groups in the European Union. While these studies have generated a wealth of insights, it is not actually clear what they have accomplished. This Living Review seeks to identify those areas of interest group studies in which our knowledge is fairly consolidated and in which major research gaps or major controversies can be noted. I argue that these research gaps and controversies stem from both the empirical variance in the interest group landscape and the theoretical segmentation of EU interest group studies. These have been shaped by influences from Comparative Politics, International Relations, Policy Analysis, and Democratic Theory. I suggest that future research should engage to a greater extent in cross-cutting theoretical debates in order to overcome the pronounced demarcation of research areas and in more rigorous theory testing than has sometimes been the case. The article starts by discussing the problem of conceptualizing interest groups before moving on to the fissured theoretical landscape. Thereafter, major research themes are discussed. First, I review the relation between EU institutions and interest groups. Here, I look both into multilevel governance and Europeanization studies that focus on the vertical interaction and into analyses that stress the horizontal segmentation of the EU system in different institutions and sectors. Second, I analyze core themes of EU and comparative interest group studies, namely the issue of collective action, the access of interest groups to policy-makers and their influence on EU policymaking. Arthur Benz and Christina Zimmer Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0000 Constitutional Issues http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-3 lreg-2008-3 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This Living Review deals with the division of competences between the EU and its member states in a multilevel political system. The article summarises research on the relations between the EU and the national and sub-national levels of the member states. It provides an overview on normative and theoretical concepts and empirical research. From the outset, European integration was about the transfer of powers from the national to the European level, which evolved as explicit bargaining among governments or as an incremental drift. This process was reframed with the competence issue entering the agenda of constitutional policy. It now concerns the shape of the European multilevel polity as a whole, in particular the way in which powers are allocated, delimited and linked between the different levels. The article is structured as follows: First of all, normative theories of a European federation are discussed. The section deals with different concepts of federalism and presents approaches of the economic theory of federalism in the context of the European polity. The normative considerations conclude with a discussion of the subsidiarity principle and the constitutional allocation of competences in the European Treaties. The next section covers the empirical issue of how to explain the actual allocation of competences (scope and type) between levels. Integration theories are presented here only in so far as they explain the transfer of competence from the national to the European level or the limits of this centralistic dynamics. Normative and empirical theories indeed provide some general guidelines and conclusions on the allocation of competences in the EU, but they both contradict the assumption of a separation of competences. The article therefore concludes that politics and policy-making in the EU have to be regarded as multilevel governance. The main theoretical approaches and results from empirical research on European multilevel governance are presented before the article concludes with recommendations for further discussion and research in the field. Following Fritz Scharpf, it is recommended that research on the vertical allocation of competences and the application of shared competences in the European multilevel governance should stop searching for holistic approaches (grand theory) explaining unique features of the European political system; instead, research will best succeed when relying on a variety of simpler theories and models to describe European governance modes. Klaus H. Goetz and Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0000 Europeanisation in the Domestic Spheres http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-2 lreg-2008-2 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This article reviews the by now extensive literature on the Europeanisation of the political systems of the EU-15, with an emphasis on parliaments and executives (i.e., governments and ministerial administrations). The Living Review highlights apparently contradictory effects of integration: de-parlamentarisation re-parlamentarisation; bureaucratisation politicisation; and centralisation diffusion. These diverging assessments of the effects of integration do, in part, reflect diversity in the EU-15; in part, they are, however, also a result of differences in the specification of variables, research designs and theoretical approaches. Work that inquires into patterns of Europeanisation - across institutional domains, countries, regions and time - and which seeks to tackle the `methodological nationalism' of the Europeanisation literature promises a clearer picture of the institutional consequences of European integration than we possess at present. Matthew Loveless and Robert Rohrschneider Wed, 21 May 2008 10:00:00 -0000 Public Perception and Acceptance of EU Governance http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-1 lreg-2008-1 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ Since its inception, the European Union has stimulated many vigorous debates. This Living Review provides a state of the field perspective on the academic work that has been done to address the question of the perceptions of the European Union as a system of governance. It takes a broad scope in assessing the efforts of scholars and highlights significant theoretical and empirical contributions as well as identifying potential avenues for research. In order to understand perceptions of the EU, scholars have employed national-level frameworks of popular support, particularly partisanship and instrumental self-interest. As the number of members has increased, further research has taken a broader scope to include national identity, institutions, and attitudes regarding the normative and empirical function of both national and EU institutions. Additional works address political intermediaries such as parties, media, and elites. Finally, all of the works are fundamentally concerned with the supportive popular sentiment that underpins the EU’s legitimacy as a political institution. While there are far more works that can be practically included in this Living Review, we have attempted to construct an overview based on the dimensions that define this research as set out by significant contributions at the core of this literature. Claes H. de Vreese Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:00:00 -0000 Public Perception and Acceptance of EU Governance http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2007-3 lreg-2007-3 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This Living Review takes stock of our current theoretical and empirical knowledge with respect to a European public sphere. It first provides a discussion of the notion of a public sphere and the virtual incompatibility between the notion of a public sphere in the nation state and the current state of European integration. It is then argued why a notion of a (Europeanized national) public space for debate between citizens and with power-holders is important for the legitimacy and accountability of the EU. A three-fold typology is proposed that organizes previous research on the European public sphere: the Utopian, the Elitist and the Realist perspective. The diverging conclusions stemming from extant research are reviewed in the light of the methodological pluralism in the studies. It is demonstrated that most signs of Europeanization of national public spheres stem from studies focusing on the quality broadsheet press, whereas studies focusing on the popular press, television and new media provide little evidence (yet) of a Europeanization trend. The review looks ahead in both theoretical and methodological terms and also assesses the consequences of the (absence of) a European public sphere and current policy initiatives in this area. Barbara Finke Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:00:00 -0000 The Making of EU Governance http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2007-2 lreg-2007-2 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ The debate on the European Union's legitimacy crisis led to the discovery of civil society in EU governance. With the waning of the permissive consensus, politicians, bureaucrats, and academics shifted their attention towards the input-oriented dimension of democratic legitimacy which results from authentic participation and governance `by the people'. Participatory democracy via civil society involvement came to be considered as a promising supplement to representative democracy and entered EU documents such as the White Paper on European Governance and the draft Constitutional Treaty around the turn of the millennium. However, the origins of the current debate on civil society in EU governance can also be traced back to interest group research which has flourished since the early 1980s and the debate on `participatory governance' that unfolded in the 1990s. These approaches are more concerned with effective political problem-solving and the output-dimension of democratic legitimacy which can, from this point of view, be improved by stakeholder participation and civil society engagement. In fact, two scholars who refer to `civil society' do not necessarily mean the same thing and this is even less obvious if journalists, politicians or public officials allude to civil society. In order to enhance the basis of the discussion, we should seek to identify the conceptions they rely on. This will help us to understand where different arguments come from. Hence, this essay seeks to identify the different layers of the current debate on civil society participation in EU governance by unfolding the traditions of thought academic and political advocates of civil society in EU affairs currently draw on. This essay will basically distinguish between output-oriented approaches which explore the contribution of civil society groups to effective governance and problem-solving on the one hand and research that is interested in input-oriented legitimacy and participatory democracy on the other. Frank Schimmelfennig Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:00:00 -0000 Europeanisation in the Domestic Spheres http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2007-1 lreg-2007-1 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This article reviews the literature on Europeanization beyond the group of EU member, ``quasi-member'' and applicant states. It uses the analysis of Europeanization in the applicant states for membership as a theoretical starting point to ask if, how and under which conditions we can expect domestic effects of European integration beyond Europe. Focusing on Europeanization effects in the areas of regionalism, democracy and human rights, the article collects findings on the strategies and instruments as well as the impact and effectiveness of the EU. The general conclusion to be drawn from the theoretical as well empirical literature is one of low consistency and impact. Ulrich Sedelmeier Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:00:00 -0000 Europeanisation in the Domestic Spheres http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2006-3 lreg-2006-3 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent and still comparatively small, but - particularly since 2003 -- a fast-growing research area. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU's eastern enlargement. More recently, a small number of theoretically informed, book-length studies of the EU's influence on the East Central European candidate countries have established the Europeanisation of applicant states as a distinctive research area. These studies fit within a common conceptual framework, which draws on the debate between rationalist and constructivist institutionalist theories in International Relations and Comparative Politics. This framework makes these studies highly compatible with analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, with which they share one key empirical finding, namely that the impact of the EU on candidate countries is differential across countries and issue areas. On the other hand, the theoretical implications of these findings appear more clear-cut than in the case of the Europeanisation of member states: rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the external incentives underpinning EU conditionality, and on the material costs incurred by domestic veto players, appears well suited to explaining variation in the patterns of Europeanisation in candidate countries. The next stage of this research agenda concerns the impact of accession on the dynamics of pre-accession Europeanisation and how durable the patterns of candidate Europeanisation are in the post-accession stage. Christopher J. Lord Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:00:00 -0000 The Making of EU Governance http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2006-2 lreg-2006-2 http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/Help/Article/ This Living Review uses concepts of aggregation to analyse what we do and do not know about the contribution of political parties to the politics and democratic performance of the European Union. It suggests that present representative structures are better at aggregating `choices of policies' than `choices of leaders'. Much more, however, needs to be done to analyse the causal contribution of party actors to those patterns of aggregation, and to understand why European Union parties do not develop further where aggregation seems to be deficient in the EU arena.