The Transformation of Governance in the European Union

Rainer Eising, BEATE KOHLER-KOCH, Rainer Eising, BEATE KOHLER-KOCH

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134608331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book presents a theoretically informed typology of modes of governance which is tested in a careful selection of comparative country and policy studies. At the core is the question whether the European Union is destined to a network type of governance and whether and how this type of governance will be translated into the member states. The individual chapters subject the governing patterns at European and national level to empirical scrutiny. Drawing on recent research findings in different issue areas - including monetary union, social affairs, environment, genetic engineering and market liberalisation in transport, banking, energy, professional services - the contributions highlight the impact of the European activities on policy-making process in the member states.

Part I
THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE OF EUROPEAN GOVERNANCEINTRODUCTION

1
INTRODUCTION
Network governance in the European Union

Rainer Eising and Beate Kohler-Koch

During the last two decades, the scope and the density of the European Community (EC) rules have immensely increased and its institutions have been profoundly reformed. As a consequence, prominent commentators even came to regard the EC as a ‘new’ institution (Keohane and Hoffmann 1991; Sbragia 1992a).¹ In other words, it is well recognised that the EC activities have re-built the architecture of territorial rule in Western Europe (Grande 1994). To an ever growing extent, the European institutions are responsible for the authoritative allocation of values. However, there is also widespread agreement that the EC neither qualifies as a state, as it lacks legal sovereignty, nor can be reduced to an international organisation since its rules take precedence over domestic laws. Furthermore, the institutional configuration of the EC differs from both nation states and international organisations. In this sense, the European Community is a sui generis political system.

As the Community institutions are not likely to evolve into a federal state during the near future and yet play a growing political role in Western Europe, this volume addresses two pertinent questions: how are values legitimately allocated in the European Community and how do the ways and means of allocation, that is, the governance of the EC, impinge upon the member states?

Characterising the European Community as a system sui generis does not mean that our analysis needs to do without the theoretical or methodological tools that have been developed in international relations or comparative politics.² To analyse the nature of political processes in the European Community we have taken recourse to the concept of governance as developed in both international relations and comparative politics. In both sub-disciplines governance and not government is the focus of research because authoritative allocation takes place without or outside government. ‘Governance without government’ nowadays is a top priority on the research agenda (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Rhodes 1997). In international relations, the spread and the persistence of institutionalised cooperation in numerous issue areas, even despite contravening power relations or interest constellations, have provided the stimulus to this research agenda (Rosenau 1992). In short, the governance agenda in international relations centres on the structuring of state behaviour by international institutions. International regimes play a leading role in explaining the co-operation of actors.³ In comparative politics, the governance concept forms a response to the growing segmentation of both society and the state resulting from socioeconomic dynamics. The increased autonomy of social actors and the growing complexity of actor constellations attracted the attention of a broad range of literature on policy networks, sub-governments, and negotiation systems which have deprived the state of its authoritative position (Rhodes 1997). Despite their different origins and emphases, both strands of the debate have in common that they emphasise new processes of governing. they stress above all the absence of a central authority. State actors have lost their pivotal place above society. The political arena is populated by formally autonomous actors who are linked by multifaceted interdependencies. They suggest further that political arenas and societal subsystems develop their own rationale and logic of decision-making and are only loosely coupled to other political arenas. And last, not least, they call attention to the maintenance of order and patterns of structured co-operation despite the absence of a central organising and regulatory authority. From a theoretical point of view, both sub-disciplines emphasise the role of ideas and the relevance of institutions for the structuring of expectations and behaviour, the shaping of interests and identities. As usual, the empirical findings and the theoretical interpretations of ‘governance without government’ are disputed but, nevertheless, these are the common themes.

Considering the concept’s prominence in both sub-disciplines, it is of little wonder then that it has also been used to explore the interface of international relations and domestic politics, the European Community. However, so far it is not at all clear what is meant when we talk about governance in the European Community.⁴ In a recent review article, almost anything falls under the label of ‘the “new governance” agenda’ (Hix 1998). Among others, Paul Pierson’s historical institutionalist account of the EC as applied to social policy (1996), Giandomenico Majone’s portrayal of the regulatory state in Europe (1996), and Fiona Hayes-Renshaw and Helen Wallace’s analysis of Council decision-making (1997) are mixed into a cloudy ‘new governance’ cocktail. This does not come as a surprise. The few authors who have explicitly had recourse to the governance concept in their analyses of EC decision-making relied heavily on the concept’s self-explanatory power and did without a definition or explicit elaboration of its elements (Bulmer 1994; Pollack 1996).

Its variegated and disputed use in international relations and comparative politics, and the confusion over what falls under the label of governance when talking about the EU, point out the need for clarification. In essence, ‘governance’ is about the structured ways and means in which the divergent preferences of interdependent actors are translated into policy choices ‘to allocate values’, so that the plurality of interests is transformed into co-ordinated action and the compliance of actors is achieved. It is quite evident then that, for us, governance is not synonymous with a new process of governing. Rather, we propose to distinguish between different ideal-types in terms of modes of governance: statism, corporatism, pluralism and network governance. It is only network governance, which in our opinion, bears several new characteristics. Building on the debates in international relations and comparative politics, these ideal types may be distinguished by the ways in which they combine four elements that are at the core of any kind of governing: the role of the state as compared to other actors, the rules of behaviour, the patterns of interaction and the level of political action.

The volume starts from the neo-institutionalist premise that the institutional and democratic properties of a political system shape but do not determine the mode of governance. The contributions test (and contest) the hypotheses, first that the European Community because of its systemic properties is governed in a particular way, namely in a network mode of governance, and, second, that this predominant mode of European governance disseminates into the member states. The concept of governance, in particular ‘network governance’, was elaborated by Beate Kohler-Koch in a draft paper for the conference and became a common point of reference. Nevertheless, individual authors had deviating research questions and we did not want to put them into a straitjacket. In the introduction, therefore, we will point to variations in terminology.

The core idea of ‘network governance’ is that political actors consider problemsolving the essence of politics and that the setting of policymaking is defined by the existence of highly organised social sub-systems. In such a setting, efficient and effective governing has to pay tribute to the specific rationalities of these subsystems. The ‘state’ is vertically and horizontally segmented and its role has changed from authoritative allocation ‘from above’ to the role of an ‘activator’. Governing the EC involves bringing together the relevant state and societal actors and building issue-specific constituencies. Thus, in these patterns of interaction, state actors and a multitude of interest organisations are involved in multilateral negotiations about the allocation of functionally specific ‘values’. As a consequence, within the networks the level of political action ranges from the central EC-level to decentral sub-national levels in the member states. The dominant orientation of the involved actors is towards the upgrading of common interests in the pursuit of individual interests. Incorporated in this concept is the idea that interests are not given as it is assumed in ideal-type assumptions about pluralism and corporatism, but that they may evolve and get redefined in the process of negotiations between the participants of the network. (See Table 1.1.)

The book is divided into four parts. In the first part, the governance concept is elaborated in more detail. The second part explores whether or not there really is a dominant mode of EC governance and provides evidence from different policy areas and economic sectors. The individual chapters point out that across issue areas network governance is very present but that different modes of governance may co-exist in the EC, ranging from statism in monetary policy and corporatism in social policy to networks in market integration and environmental policy. Likewise, a mix of modes is found in some of these areas. The third section centres on the transformation of national modes of governance in the context of EC integration. Congruence between EC-level governance and member state 6 RAINER EISING AND BEATE KOHLER-KOCH governance is a key issue in most of the chapters. The authors give a detailed assessment of the implications of differing degrees of congruence regarding the member states’ attitudes towards EC governance, their openness for EC governance, and the repercussions of EC policies on domestic modes of governance. Despite evident variations, the contributions meet on common ground as the analyses deviate from previous studies which argue that national actors generally defend theirnational institutions and identities (Héritier et al. 1994; Caporaso, Green Cowles and Risse, forthcoming). In the fourth section, the concept of ‘network governance’ is contested from different theoretical angles. One claim is that despite a lot of networking the role of the state may not have changed at all and the other is that EC network governance may only be a euphemism for upper class rule. The final contribution gives a comparative assessment of the separate chapters.

Table 1.1 Core elements of ideal types of governance

In Chapter 2, Beate Kohler-Koch outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the governance concept which, in general, have informed the volume. Combining the analysis of policy-making in the EC and the literature on the democratic deficit, she relates the network mode of governance to the institutional organisation and the democratic properties of the European Community. She starts from the hypotheses that the network mode of governance is predominant at the European level and dissemi-nates into the member states. Putting this mode of governance in a broader theoretical perspective she compares EC governance to differing modes of governance at state level. She identifies two core variables that discriminate between modes of governance: the constitutive logic underlying political systems (i.e. either the pursuit of individual citizen interests or a common purpose dear to a political community) and the organising principle of political relations (i.e. either majority-rule or consociation). The combination of these variables accounts for the single modes of governance. They result from strategic choices informed by ‘belief systems’ about appropriate ways of governing. According to her, network governance is distinct from corporatism, pluralism and statism in that it combines the principle of consociation with interest based politics. At the opposite end of the spectrum, statism is based on majority rule and common purpose. Reflecting on how the EC specific mode of network governance carries over into member states, she proposes to distinguish between three different ways: imposition by EC actors, involvement of state and non-state actors in EC policy practice, and incentives provided by EC institutions.

The contributions in Part II focus on the evolution of EC-level governance in individual policy areas and economic sectors. At the intersection between EC-level governance and national-level governance, Andrea Lenschow (Chapter 3) analyses both the evolution of a new mode of environmental governance in the EC and its repercussions on a number of member states, namely the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and Germany. She places the emergence of network governance in world-wide debates on governance in general and on environmental policy in particular. In her opinion, a ‘new, systemic understanding’ of environmental governance has emerged which is ‘rooted in a new awareness of insufficient problem-solving capacity’ and constitutes a break from the almost statist style of EC-level governance in the past. She then points to recent ‘institutional and procedural innovations’ which, according to her, loosen horizontal boundaries and create networks between EC public and private actors. Qualifying these changes as ‘extensions’ to the old mode of governance rather than as a full-blown transformation of governance, she finds only ‘moderate’ pressure on the member states’ own modes of governance. Like Vivien Schmidt, she points to the congruence between EC level and national level governance as an important factor influencing the receptiveness on the part of the member states for the EC mode of governance. While the Netherlands were a ‘front runner’ in new environmental governance, and therefore fit the governance model emerging in the EC rather well, this does not hold for the other member states which have greater difficulties adapting to the EC and, in part, also display an unwillingness to implement a ‘new’ mode of governance.

Herbert Gottweis (Chapter 4) departs from the institutional perspective and presents a post-structuralist view on governance in the European Community. Analysing the regulation of genetic engineering in the EC, he emphasises the ‘importance of discursive practices’ and regards EC governance as ‘a field of political intertextuality’, asserting that ‘actors and structures’ as well as ‘interests and strategies’ must be conceptualised as products and effects of discursive practices. In his detailed account of the emergence of genetic engineering regulation at EC-level, he calls attention to the role of the Commission in the shaping of EC-level discourse. He argues that, despite several competing viewpoints, the Commission’s Directorate General XI (Environment) managed to gain a central position because it ‘skilfully deployed a regulatory narrative which linked the precautionary regulation of hazards’ to the metanarrative of the EC, namely market integration. This narrative provided the multitude of actors on the EC level—other DGs, national experts and bureaucrats, industry and environmental interest groups—with ‘sufficient overlap’ in their definitions of central problems and integrated them by an ‘intricate process of successful enlisting and mobilisation…into a network of meaning’.

In Chapter 5, Gerda Falkner illustrates that EC governance may change considerably over time. She argues that the governance of social policy has been transformed through various stages into a close to corporatist mode of governance. Initially, EC social policy was almost a ‘non-issue’. From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, a pluralist mode of pressure politics rather than co-operation of employers and trade unions characterised EC social policy-making. Only the Social Protocol, an annex to the Maastricht treaty, has strengthened corporatist elements. In her reading, this evolution should be attributed, on the one hand, to the growing relevance of the ‘social dimension of the internal market’ in the context of the Internal Market Programme, which was propagated again and again by the Commission. On the other hand, the prospect of majority voting in social policy which became evident during the Maastricht Treaty negotiations induced the European employers’ interest organisation, UNICE, to change their strategy. For the first time they accepted selective negotiations with the European representative of labour, ETUC. Consequently, the author notes interdependencies between the ‘action capacity at the EC level’ and the evolution of ‘interest politics’. However, according to her, the Social Agreement does ‘not replicate classic national corporatism’. First, its functional scope is restricted. Secondly, the social partners cannot themselves guarantee the implementation of their agreements. Finally, the EC as well as the social partners at the European level lack the organisational capacity for full-scale macro-corporatism.

In Chapter 6, Kenneth Dyson presents a deviant case because he argues that the governance of European Monetary Union ‘is a study in core executive action’. Thus, EMU was almost brought about in a statist mode of governance by the national heads of state and government and a closed circle of other core executives from the national finance ministries and central banks. In a marked contrast to other policy issues, these actors shared an interest in retaining control over policy formulation. The negotiations were marked by the absence of consensus-building between state actors and civil society, and characterised by a great reliance on technical rationality. Based on the assumption that ‘core executive’ governance does represent an ‘object for analysis rather than an analytical model or explanatory theory’, the author tests several theories that generate models about ‘core executives’. Kenneth Dyson maintains that these theories, such as bureaucratic politics or elite th...