Informal Governance in the European Union : How Governments Make International Organizations Work

Mareike Kleine

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780801452116
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The European Union is the world's most advanced international organization, presiding over a level of legal and economic integration unmatched in global politics. To explain this achievement, many observers point to its formal rules that entail strong obligations and delegate substantial power to supranational actors such as the European Commission. This legalistic view, Mareike Kleine contends, is misleading. More often than not, governments and bureaucrats informally depart from the formal rules and thereby contradict their very purpose. Behind the EU's front of formal rules lies a thick network of informal governance practices. If not the EU's rules, what accounts for the high level of economic integration among its members? How does the EU really work? In answering these questions, Kleine proposes a new way of thinking about international organizations.

Table of contents

• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction
• 1. Liberal Regime Theory
• 2. Formal and Informal Governance in the European Union
• 3. The Commission’s Agenda-Setting Power
• 4. Decision Making in the Council and the Parliament
• 5. The Implementation of EU Policies
• 6. Knowing the Limits
• 7. The Council Presidency as an Adjudicator
• 8. Adjudicatory Authority in Practice
• Conclusion and Extension
• Notes
• Glossary of Institutions, Treaties, and Procedures
• References