Adapting to EU Multi-Level Governance

Regional and Environmental Policies in Cohesion and CEE Countries

Panagiotis Getimis, C.J Paraskevopoulos, P. Getimis, N. Rees, Christos Paraskevopoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754645337
• eBook ISBN: 9781351960793
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The main theme of this book is the adaptation process of the new EU member states from Central-Eastern Europe (Hungary and Poland) to the multi-level system of governance in public policy, particularly in the regional and environmental policy areas. The work conceptualizes policy learning and institutional and policy adaptation within the EU system of governance and draws lessons from the experience of previous waves of enlargement-cohesion-countries (Ireland, Portugal and Greece). In doing so, the book makes an important contribution to the literature on the transformation of domestic policy-making structures, as a result of the increasing Europeanization of public policy, as well as on the conceptual tools, explanatory variables and mechanisms determining this process.

PART ONE

Theoretical Framework and Methodological Approach

Chapter 1

EU Enlargement and Multi-Level Governance in European Public Policy-Making: Actors, Institutions and Learning

Christos J. Paraskevopoulos

Introduction

This chapter discusses the transformation of the governance structures in the EU member states – with emphasis on the new prospective members of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) – as a result of the Europeanization of public policy-making, in the light of the EU’s new wave of enlargement. The underlying assumption is that although the Europeanization process plays a crucial role in the transformation of the national systems of governance and in the improvement of their institutional capacity, the success or failure in the implementation of EU public policy in general and of the regional and environment policy areas in particular, especially during the first post-accession period, is significantly dependent on the learning capacity of the pre-existing institutional infrastructure. Thus it attempts to conceptualize and exemplify the notion of institutional thickness as a fundamental precondition for social learning within the EU public policy environment, and hence to enrich and substantiate the so called ‘goodness of fit’ approach to the adaptation and Europeanization processes within the multilevel system of governance of the European Union.

Changing conceptions of governance

Governance has become a state of the art but also a popular concept in much of the contemporary debate in the social sciences. A key reason for this popularity is attributed to its capacity for capturing the multiplicity of actors, institutions and relationships involved in the process of governing, given that the narrower term ‘government’ has gradually become almost obsolete, having been outflanked by rapid technological, social and political changes of the last quarter of the century. In particular, the globalization of economic activities, information and finance, as a consequence of the rapid technological change and the gradual transformation of the technological paradigm since the late 1960s, has led to the emergence of a changing, globalizing new political economy, characterized by increasing, internationally-driven, interdependence among the actors, accompanied by high levels of risk and uncertainty, which derive mainly from technological change, knowledge and diversified information management capacities (Boyer, 1988). This, in turn, has important implications for almost all sectors of public policy, by challenging the traditional role of the state as guarantor and provider of collective (public) goods and undermining the pattern of corporatist arrangements for capital-labour relations. Both the key role of the state in the provision of public goods and the corporatist model of interest intermediation are considered intrinsic elements of the dominant – at least in Europe – regulatory regime based on mass production and state interventionism during the first post-war period. Hence, there is a debate about the diminishing role of the state in the provision of public goods as a consequence of the predominance of supply-side economics and the increasing importance of fiscal discipline imposed through cuts in public spending for securing international competitiveness. Moreover, these international-competitiveness considerations seem to have led to the fundamental shift from interventionist to regulatory state (Majone, 1998).

On the other hand, it has been argued that the undermining of corporatism at the national level and the gradual transformation of the pattern of collective action and interest intermediation have been brought about by three interrelated developments. First, there is a growing demand for regulation at the global/transnational or supranational levels by multinational companies and other private interest organizations who prefer centralization of regulation at the supranational level because it reduces transaction costs and therefore they do not see any reason for participation in the corporatist bargaining at the national level. Subsequently, there has been a gradual transfer of crucial regulatory functions from national to transnational (i.e. World Bank-WB, World Trade Organization-WTO) or supranational (i.e. EU Commission) institutions (Pierre, 2000; Pierre and Peters, 2000). Second, in a similar vein, public interest organizations, such as environmental or consumer groups, view regulation at the global or supranational levels as less costly and perhaps more effective than the national structures of interest intermediation, and therefore they try to secure substantial resources to pursue lobbying strategies at the global level. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, post-industrial society is no longer simply divided between capital and labour and class has declined as major determinant of individuals’ political, economic and social interests and values. Conversely, post-industrial society is characterized by complexity and multiplicity of interests which cannot be captured by corporatism. This is the case of individuals with ‘post-material’ value orientations, who, being excluded from corporatist arrangements, tend to join ‘new social movements’, such as the civil rights or the ecology movements. Further, the hierarchical and top-down structure between peak and grassroots associations and the closeness of tripartite meetings with state officials, as identical features of corporatist intermediation, inhibit dialogue, communication and flow of information between actors on a horizontal basis and may constitute a major impediment to policy change and innovation in crucial public policy areas, while the policy outcomes of corporatist arrangements cannot be seen as reflecting a broad social consensus in post-industrial societies (Schmitter and Lehmbruch, 1979). In sum, globalization seems to have challenged corporatism as the dominant, class-based pattern of collective action and interest intermediation, especially in the post-war Europe, and brought about important economic and societal changes that favour a more pluralistic model at both the international and national/domestic levels. Thus, despite the presence of a mix of representation styles currently in Europe combining elements of corporatism, pluralism and neo-pluralism, as a consequence of the well-known co-existence of Anglo-Saxon pluralism and European corporatism (Hix, 1999), there seems to be a trend towards a rather pluralistic model of interest representation at both the supranational and national levels (Streeck and Schmitter, 1991).

Table 1.1 Forms of governance

Forms of governance	Modes of interest intermediation	Types of actors	Citizenship
State	Representative majority decisions/hierarchical administrative interventions	Political actors (governmental institutions, local and regional authorities, quangos)	Vote
Market	Bargaining/market exchange	Economic actors (individuals, enterprises)	Choice
Associations	Bargaining/political exchange	Collective/corporate actors (associations, chambers)	Right to organize or join a collective corporate actor
Civic interaction	Arguing	Civil society actors, social movements	Voice (direct actions)

Source: H. Heinelt, et al. (1999), Participatory Governance, Project Proposal submitted to the EU Commission, 5^th Framework Programme, First Call for Proposals.

As the above analysis suggests, globalization is supposed to have definitely eroded the traditional domestic political authority of the state. However, it would be superfluous to assume that the state has become absolutely irrelevant as a meso-level of governance. Instead, what does really take place in this transitional period is a transformation of the state, which still remains a functional locus of public policy and governance (Pierre, 2000) especially with regard to the notions of legitimacy and redistribution. Additionally, as the recent literature on globalization (Swank, 2002) points out, domestic institutional structures, in the form of the so called ‘social corporatism’, play a crucial role in mediating and/or counterbalancing the global pressures. Thus the debate about governance has been brought about by a wide range of developments, as diversified as, in abstract terms, the limited capacity of state hierarchy to ‘govern’ and regulate the rapid technological change, the significant deregulation of the economy and the ‘marketization’ of policy-making and, on the other hand, in parallel, the crisis of the ‘principal-agent’ model in policy-making and consequently the increasing role of societal (civil society) actors in the policy process (see Table 1.1). In that sense, governance has become an umbrella concept for a wide variety of empirical phenomena about governing. In structural terms, these include governance by hierarchies, governance by markets, governance by networks, governance by (policy) communities, while, in procedural terms, governance is conceptualized as steering and coordinating (see inter alia, Hood, C. 1998; Rhodes, R.A.W, 2000; CEC, 2001).

Europeanization and domestic governance structures

The problematique of governance in the EU raises crucial issues for the study of public policy planning and implementation. This is so, because the governance structures of the member states are facing the additional challenge of adapting to a multi-layered policy-making environment at the EU level. The notion of ‘multilevel governance’ (MLG) in the EU (Marks, 1993; Kohler-Koch, 1996; Caporaso, 1996; Marks et al., 1996) implies that sub-regional, regional, national and supranational authorities interact with each other in two ways: first, across different levels of government (vertical dimension); and, second, with other relevant actors within the same level (horizontal dimension). Although it could be argued this system of governance might merely reflect the multiplicity of the governance structures among the member states in any sphere of public policy, the multi-level system of governance is considered as an outcome of the Europeanization of public policy. Yet, the notion of Europeanization may take several meanings and refer to a wide variety of processes, i.e. historical, cultural, institutional (see Featherstone, 2003) and therefore there is a need for definition/clarification. In the context of public policy-making in general Europeanization is viewed as a process of institutional and policy adaptation as a response to EU policies. Europeanization is also often related to the notion of modernization. Modernization, however, is also a rather ambiguous concept that may take several connotations and mean different things to different people (Hood, 1998, pp. 194-221). For, in the contextual framework of this book – Cohesion and CEE countries – it should primarily be interpreted as synonymous to institution building. Thus, the Europeanization process refers to the complementary notions of opening up the structures of the traditional nation state to the supranational level, and, consequently, to their adaptation to the EU multi-level system of governance. In that respect, the Europeanization of public policy constitutes a rather enduring and long-standing challenge for the administrative structures of the member states and hence it is viewed as a positive external shock for promoting institution-building, learning and policy-making innovation at the domestic – national and subnational – levels.

In regional policy – and especially in the case of the Cohesion and CEE countries – Europeanization is viewed as an independent variable that crucially affects and challenges well-established structures within the domestic systems of governance and plays an important role in the administrative restructuring and devolution processes within the member states and in enhancing the institutional capacity at the subnational (regional and local) levels. In particular, its impact on the regional and local policy-making arenas is supposed to be twofold: a direct one, by providing increased resources through redistribution; and an indirect one, by shaping intra-regional interactions and thus promoting local institutional capacity through the creation of intra, inter and transregional networks that support local development initiatives. In that respect, the Europeanization function in regional policy may be considered as almost synonymous to ‘subnational mobilization’ at the European level (Hooghe, 1995).

In the environmental policy Europeanization has traditionally been interpreted as a process by which new member states, either contribute to the formulation and/or advancement of the EU environmental policy towards their own national priorities (higher standards in environmental protection), or adopt the already more advanced European regulations into their domestic policies. This takes place within the framework of the intergovernmental bargaining between the so called ‘pioneers-forerunners’ group, consisting – prior to the last enlargement – mainly of Germany, Denmark and Netherlands, and the ‘latecomers’ group, which comprises mainly the cohesion countries (Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece) (Andersen and Liefferink, 1997). This, in turn, has led to important institutional innovations in almost all cohesion countries. In this respect, especially in the case of the Cohesion and CEE countries, Europeanization is, again, viewed as an independent variable that crucially affects and challenges well-established structures within the domestic policy-making structures in environmental policy.

Given the complexity of the MLG structures – an outcome of the multiplicity of governance structures, organizational routines, norms and policy styles among the member states – within which the adaptation process takes place, however, the notion of ‘goodness of fit’ between the Europeanization process of policy-making, on the one hand, and the domestic (national, regional, local) institutional settings, rules and practices, on the other, has been identified as a crucial parameter for the adaptation process of the national governance systems to the European policy-making structures in public policy in general and regional policy in particular (Risse, et al., 2001; Cowles, Green and Risse, 2001; Boerzel, 2001, 1999). What the term implies is the degree of ‘adaptational pressures’ that domestic institutions and policy-making structures will face in order to comply with the European rules and practices. In particular, given the distinctive character of the policy-making structures at the European level¹ on the one hand, and the fact that Europeanization is fundamentally conceived of as a system of continuous interactions between EU policy-making rules and regulations and domestic policy structures on the other, the better the ‘goodness of fit’ between EU rules and domestic practices the weaker the adaptational pressures will be for the domestic institutional structures (Risse, et al., 2001). Conversely, policy and/or institutional misfits between the supranational and domestic levels of governance are expected to exert high adaptational pressures which, in turn, lead to domestic structural change (ibid: pp. 6-9). However, the presence of institutional and policy misfits and, consequently, of high adaptational pressures is considered a necessary but not sufficient condition for domestic institutional and policy change, given that there is evidence to suggest that the latter is crucially conditioned by the presence of specific institutional structures at the domestic level of governance that may facilitate or inhibit the adaptation process (Boerzel and Risse, 2000; Paraskevopoulos, C.J., 1998, 2001). What becomes clear from the above analysis – and coincides with the underlying assumption of this book – is that although the Europeanization process plays a key role in the transformation of the domestic systems of governance in general and the public/regional policy-making structures, domestic institutions and especially specific features of the pre-existing institutional infrastructure at the national and subnational levels of government matter for adaptation (Garmise, 1995a,b; Lenschow, 1997; Jeffery, 2000; Paraskevopoulos, 1998, 2001,a,b; Risse, et al., 2001; Boerzel, 2001). Moreover, this importance of the pre-existing institutional infrastructure has become evident in the transition of the CEECs as well (Offe, 1996; Elster, et al., 1998; Goetz, 2001; Goetz, and Wollmann, 2001).

As it has been argued (Paraskevopoulos and Leonardi, 2004), the ‘goodness of fit’ approach may not be relevant to the study of the regional and environmental policies and public policy at large, given the distinctive character of the Europeanized policy-making structures vis-à-vis national policy styles. This is particularly true for the cohesion policy, given that national regional policies have on the whole been quite different from the model (i.e., devolved integrated planning) implemented since 1989 at the EU through the Community Support Frameworks (CSFs). Hence, domestic policy structures of all member states have had to learn and adapt to a completely new policy environment. In this framework, some countries and regions have adapted to the new rules and procedures much more quickly than others, while from the point of view of the rate of expenditures and socio-economic impact of the cohesion policies, the cohesion countries have demonstrated a much higher level of expenditure and impact than have the more economically developed member states. Therefore, here the important variables are not t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One Theoretical Framework and Methodological Approach
• Part Two Domestic Governance Structures in Regional and Environmental Policies: National Case Studies
• Part Three Europeanization of Regional and Environmental Policies and Domestic Policy Change: Comparative Perspectives
• Part Four Coping with Multi-Level Governance: Policy Implications
• Part Five Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index