Understanding European Union Institutions

Alex Warleigh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415242134
• eBook ISBN: 9781134548064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Understanding the institutions of the European Union is vital to understanding how it functions. This book provides students with a user-friendly introduction to the main institutions, and explains their different roles in the functioning and development of the European Union.Key features: * introduces and explains the functions of all the main institutions dividing them into those that have a policy-making role, those that oversee and regulate, and those that operate in an advisory capacity
* provides students with an overview of the history of the European Union and the development of its institutions and considers their continuing importance to the success of the European Union
* clearly written by experienced and knowledgeable teachers of the subject
* presented in a student friendly format, providing boxed concepts and summaries, guides to further reading, figures and flowcharts, and a glossary of terms.

Part I
HOW DOES THE EU WORK?

1 Introduction: institutions, institutionalism and decision making in the EU
ALEX WARLEIGH

Chapter 1
Introduction
Institutions, institutionalism and decision making in the EU

Alex Warleigh

Why study the institutions of the EU?

‘New institutionalism’ and EU theory

Decision making in the EU: complexity, coalitions and the lobbying imperative

How to use this book

Notes

References

Why study the institutions of the EU?

In order to understand how any political system works, it is necessary to understand its institutions and how they interact. Institutions act as forums in which actors cooperate, argue, deliberate and make the decisions which eventually constitute public policy. Institutions can also shape the values and belief systems of those who work within them. As a result, they influence not just what actors do, but often also how they view the world in which they live as well as the people and ideas with which they must engage in order to realise their goals.¹ This is no less true for the European Union (EU; the Union) than for its member states. Indeed, given the fact that EU institutions are to some degree independent of the Union’s member states and often try to represent – or construct – a ‘European’ interest, their activities have long been of considerable importance to scholars of European integration (Haas 1964,1968). In a basic but vital sense, the Union’s institutions are a necessary part of EU studies because they supply most of the actors who are engaged in the policy-making process. Moreover, institutions are key variables in understanding how the EU works because the integration process itself is shaped by their patterns of contestation and cooperation; that is, by the way they interact. The aim of this book is thus to show how the Union institutions both shape integration in Europe and reflect its problems, pressures and possibilities for reform.

Institutions can be defined in both limited (or formal) and broad (informal) ways (Hall and Taylor 1996; Peters 1999). Formal definitions concentrate on physical or legal structures, such as the European Parliament or the Treaty on European Union. Informal definitions add to this an understanding of more abstract factors such as ideas, values and behaviours. In this latter view, institutions both shape and reflect the thinking and behaviour of those who work and live within them. Indeed, ideas, values and practices (routine behaviours) can become institutions themselves: collective understandings of values or legitimacy frequently become an entrenched point of reference in debates about policy development, often shaping perceptions of what should or can be done about a policy problem just as much as the material resources and power that can be brought to bear upon it. For example, concerns about the concept of national sovereignty – the ability of a state to make its own decisions without imposed deference to the wishes of another state – often shape responses to proposals for institutional change in the EU both at popular and elite levels. In this book, the focus is on more formal definitions since the aim is to provide a clear and thorough understanding of how each of the official bodies which shape EU legislation operates; that is, their respective powers, purpose and role in the EU system. However, this should not be taken to mean that informal institutions are unimportant. As Charlotte Burns in particular makes clear in her chapter on the European Parliament (Chapter 4), it is often through using informal means that EU actors have been able to wield their greatest influence. Moreover, decision making in the Union centres not just on the various institutions (and the actors within them) ‚ but also on the networks they create in order to assemble the necessary resources and overcome obstacles placed in their way by actors whose concerns oppose their own (see below). However, in order to establish how each institution ‘matters’ in EU decision making it is necessary first to focus on the rules which govern them and the functions they are prescribed by Treaty in the integration process.²

It must, however, be recognised at the outset that there are certain factors which oblige the student of the EU to acknowledge limits to the use of institutions as an analytical tool if they are understood too crudely. Individuals can matter just as much as institutions; in the absence of a leader (or ‘entrepreneur’) able to take the initiative and broker deals with other actors in the policy-making process, institutions can lose much of their influence. This has famously been the case with the Commission, for example, whose influence under the leadership of Jacques Delors has not been matched since (see Cini, Chapter 3, this volume). Institutions can thus be of variable influence over time. Inside EU institutions, individuals are free to take up different positions on any issue, and sub-institutional factors may mean that it is important to know which part of an institution an actor works in. For instance, committees of the European Parliament often take different views about the same issue, and even within these committees there is usually a majority view rather than a unanimous one. It can thus be misleading to think only of ‘institutional’ positions on a given issue, and indeed cross- and intra-institutional alliance building between actors sharing similar concerns is usually the key to making the EU system work (see below).

Moreover, despite the fact that the EU’s institutions were created to be partially independent from the national governments, this independence must not be exaggerated. As Murray Forsyth (1981) points out, governments seeking to develop a collective system of problem resolution are obliged to allow the institutions thereby created a certain freedom in order to meet their objectives and avoid making the system stagnate thanks to constant interference from one national capital or another. This does not equate to giving such institutions carte blanche to develop the system as they see fit. Instead, as noted by scholars such as Laura Cram (1997), the EU institutions other than those which represent the national governments (the EU Council (or ‘Council of Ministers’) and the European Council) have been able to shape the process of integration in a sporadic way through the creation and pursuit of suitable opportunities. The institutions of the EU have become entrenched in a new and complex arrangement which ‘fuses’ them together with the national systems of the member states in an unusual symbiosis (Wessels 1997). In order to understand the role of Union institutions it is thus necessary to remember the considerable importance of member state governments for two major reasons. First, as pointed out by Andrew Moravcsik (1999) ‚ member governments collectively retain the ability to alter the powers of each EU institution to suit their own ends, a process often driven primarily by domestic (i.e. national) politics. Second, EU policy is implemented not by the Union institutions but by the governmental organs and agencies responsible for each policy area within each member state. Union institutions are thus competent in only part of the policy-making process.³

Nonetheless, as the process of European integration has progressed, the ‘architecture’ of the EU – its institutional arrangements – has often been re-evaluated and reconstructed, with the addition of new institutions and significant changes in the powers and functions of the foundational parts of the system. A key theme of the present book, this evolution continues today, as the often tortuous process of refining the Treaties which form the legal basis of European integration is set to continue until at least 2004, the date of the next scheduled Intergovernmental Conference. Although frustrating for federalists, this continuous if uneven process of evolution is what lends the study of the EU institutions much of its interest. If they are ‘fused’ with national governments, by the same token they do not simply replicate the institutions of the nation state, and thus serve as a kind of laboratory for those concerned with how politics can be adapted in an era in which globalisation is lessening the independence of nation states. Although begun in response to specific historical circumstances (the end of the Second World War, which brought EU states economic ruin, the loss of great power status and, eventually, the Cold War rivalry between the then superpowers, the US and the USSR), the EU is one example – albeit by far the most advanced and sophisticated – of the phenomenon of regional integration, which is currently enjoying something of a revival globally, thanks to the existence of such trading blocs as NAFTA, Mercosur and ASEAN. As such, the institutions of the EU can provide object lessons for practitioners and scholars in other areas of the globe, even at the conceptual level (Rosamond 2000). As a cautionary element in this particular story, it should however be noted that the institutional architecture of the Union is one of the major contributors to the crisis of the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ (Bellamy and Warleigh 1998). Thus there are also important normative reasons to acquire a solid understanding of the workings and problems of the Union institutions: the remedy for the image and legitimacy problem that has stained European integration for much of the past decade at least.

In sum, and despite the importance of the corollaries mentioned above, understanding the EU’s institutions is necessary for anyone concerned with or about European integration. By revealing the degree of power and nature of the tasks that member governments are prepared to delegate to the Union at any one time, the EU institutions serve as an indicator of the direction and condition of the integration process. Study of the institutions themselves, and how both they and actors from within them interact, helps us to understand the functioning of the EU system and its production of public policy, often in ways unanticipated by the member governments. Frank admission of some of the institutions’ shortcomings based on a knowledge of their history and functions can inform blueprints for reform both of each institution and of the Union system itself, particularly with regard to issues of democracy, participation and legitimacy (Bellamy and Warleigh 1998). To reiterate what has become part of the ‘New Conventional Wisdom’ in EU studies (Church 2000), institutions ‘matter’ very much in European integration. In the following section of this chapter, I explore how this significance has been expressed in terms of EU, or ‘integration’, theory.

‘New institutionalism’ and EU theory

Institutions have been returned to the centre of analysis in all fields of political science as part of a shift away from behaviouralism and its privileging of individual choice by actors in a context considered to be more or less free of important constraining factors (March and Olsen 1984,1989). Scholars realised that attention needed to be paid to the ways in which the organisational factors in political life (e.g. structures, laws, values) provide a kind of order in what would otherwise be a fairly anarchical scramble for influence between isolated actors. People do not always act according to a rational calculation of cost versus benefit. They may not have all the necessary information to make such a calculation, and thus have to make as educated a guess as possible about the most beneficial course of action. They may even make choices which are not ‘rational’, but which make sense in the context of a wider moral or symbolic framework. For example, it was highly irrational of Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat on the bus to a white person and risk imprisonment by the US authorities. Nonetheless, as an act of principle in the fight for racial equality, it was a bold gesture of great symbolic importance.

Faced with an information gap, people need to have a means of interpreting the problem at hand, and making sense of the range of options open to them. For new institutionalist scholars, this form of reference is offered by institutions, which provide symbols, rituals and rules in order that actors can ‘frame’ – i.e. interpret and decide between – the choices they have. According to March and Olsen (1989:16), institutions must be seen as ‘fundamental features of politics… [which] contribute to stability and change in political life’. In other words, institutions help organise political activity and can also help provide the means of change when actors desire it. Institutions are, in a sense, the arena in which politics happens. They provide continuity, so that the political system does not have to be rebuilt with the departure of key actors. They provide a sort of resource bank comprising the experiences of people who have previously engaged with them. They are thus not neutral or necessarily benevolent; the influence of institutions can be very conservative, which is why struggles for change can be difficult. Analytically speaking, however, it is important to acknowledge that institutions can matter just as much as individual choice in shaping what an actor does, because they can govern not just what one is able to do but also what one conceives to be possible or legitimate. Institutions can limit political activity as well as shape it. Institutions, in short, are about power (March and Olsen 1989:164): they create and mould identities, define what is considered successful or legitimate, and give authority to certain actors and not others. Table 1.1 explains the three main variants of the way the role of institutions in political life has recently been conceptualised, ‘new institutionalism’.

Historical institutionalism is perhaps the most comprehensive of the three approaches.⁴ Its understanding of institutions embraces both formal and informal factors, allowing it to account for the influence of structures, practices and values/ beliefs on what actors do. It argues that institutions are important in so far as they are incorporated into the organisational system of the polity. In fact, in this way they become the primary shapers of what actors do; when faced with a choice of options, actors will decide between them by reference to the means available and accepted views of what constitutes legitimate behaviour. Through a process of accumulation, individual choices build up and reinforce conventions and structures, thereby shaping in turn the range and nature of choices available when subsequent decisions are made. This is the concept of ‘path dependency’. For example, choices about the funding of public welfare and education are heavily influenced by previous decisions about the level of taxation. Moreover, by isolating any policy area, it is possible to see how current options and decisions are affected by (the need to respond to) previous choices, such as the issue of UK higher education policy, in which the recent obligation on students to pay part of their tuition fees is a response to the under-funding of previous expansion in the university sector. Path dependency should not be taken to mean that actors have no real freedom of manoeuvre in the face of overwhelming accumulated pressures, however. Indeed, it is quite possible for actors consciously to abandon the ‘path’ either they or their predecessors have constructed. Historical institutionalists can sometimes over-emphasise the role of structures and underplay the scope for action of actors, and they are often a little imprecise about how exactly institutions shape behaviour informally (although by showing how resource dependencies constrain actors they offer a more complete account of institutions’ formal influence). However, this approach to the role of institutions in political life usefully demonstrates how individuals and institutions interact, and also helps us to understand how the legacy of past actions contributes to shaping the present context.

Table 1.1 The three new institutionalism

Rational choice institutionalism offers a very different, and arguably more limited perspective. In this view, institutions are only formal and used instrumentally – that is, purely as a tool – by actors who are in complete control of them. For rational choice scholars, it is at best highly unlikely that institutions have a significant influence over the strategic choices actors make. Instead, actors either build new institutions or use those that already exist in order to realise their objectives (which they have already determined themselves without reference to any external factor). There may of course be limits to the goals actors can realise by using institutions, but they will do so if they thereby gain more than they would from unilateral action. Similarly, institutions survive if actors consider they produce more gains than costs. There is thus no significant sense in which ideas, values or cultural context shape actors’ decisions. Rational choice approaches are parsimonious (clear, specific and well constructed), and offer persuasive explanations of how and why institutions persist over time. They also avoid over-emphasis of the role of structures, because they concentrate almost entirely on the role of the actor. However, they are rather narrow in their view of what shapes behaviour for the very same reason. Rational choice institutionalism cannot satisfactorily explain how actors’ values and choices are shaped by their fellows or the context in which they find themselves; instead, it wants to argue that such influence is at best tangential, an argument which often appears out of kilter with reality. Moreover, the relationship between actor and structure can be muc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Understanding European Union Institutions
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: How Does the EU Work?
• Part II: The Policy-Making Institutions
• Part III: ‘Policing the System’: The Oversight Institutions
• Part IV: The Advisory Bodies
• Appendix: Political Representation in the EU