Changing Patterns of European Governance(1):
Introduction to the Symposium
Nils C. Bandelow
The progress of European integration causes different
constraints and options for national politicians. The German discussion on this
multi-level governance starts with Fritz Scharpf’s application of his joint
decision theory on EC’s institutional setting. In the original version, Scharpf
claimed that European integration primarily occurs in the field of negative
(economic) integration because of the many obstacles for positive (political)
integration (cf. Scharpf 1988). Focussing on European Council’s decision-making
Scharpf named the unanimity principle as one of the most important reasons for
blockades of new regulatory policies designed to curb negative externalities
emerging from market activities. Especially in fields of social, health, safety
and environmental process regulation, but also in macro-economic employment
policy and industrial relations positive integration will be hampered by the
different interests of rich and poor memberstates. Meanwhile there are several
theoretical arguments and empirical results demonstrating that there are at
least exceptions to the logic inherent in the so-called joint decision trap
(cf. Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch 1996; Kohler-Koch 1998).
So by analyzing multi-level governance questions arise
about how and under which conditions politicians (can) escape the trap of
regulatory rise to the bottom. While most scholars either argue for
preservation of national problem solving capacities or for ways to stimulate
positive integration, the papers presented in this symposium argue for
(different) forms of “soft regulation”. The third way of governance presented
by Klemmer, Becker-Soest and Wink
includes strategies which focus on intergovernmental coordination to improve the use of remaining problem solving
capacities by national governments. Within this soft regulation the European
Union may serve as a “virtual learning forum”.
Klemmer et al. prove governance by stipulating learning
processes by analyzing national labor market policies. Formally, the European
Union has got little legal powers to influence national labor markets.
Nonetheless, labor market policy is one of the most urgent problems of
industrialist countries. Restricted by negative regulation and the impact of
international competition, politicians have to look for new strategies to
handle the specific problems of their national labor markets. The search,
adaptation and implementation of new political strategies can be analyzed by
using the paradigm of political learning. This paradigm has gained increasing
attention within public policy analyses (cf. Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993, Knoepfel
and Kissling-Näf 1998). Within
political science, many competing approaches of learning have been developed:
Learning has been grasped as any change of belief systems or only as
improvement of cognitive knowledge. Individuals, corporative or even collective
actors have been analyzed as objects of learning processes. Within this confusion
of political science, Klemmer et al. refer to institutional economics, applying
a psychological learning model that focuses on the enlargement of the
individuals’ knowledge.
Strategic learning by individual politicians may be
hampered by many grounds: Politicians may only focus on short-term policy
impacts to win elections, they may only learn from experience of states with
similar institutions and traditions or they may fail to apply successful
strategies of other countries to their home situation. It is the aim of the
European Union’s soft regulation to overcome and avoid these forms of
“pathological learning”. The articel argues that within labor market policy
supranational coordination, the institutionalization of benchmarking, the
extension of information, the exchange of personnel and the development of
competitive implementation settings could contribute to political learning of
national actors or still improved national labor market strategies.
While Klemmer, Becker-Soest and Wink direct their
empirical lens towards the narrower field of labor market policy, the paper
presented by Roth and Schmid includes
labor market policy and employment policy as well. Nevertheless, this second
contribution completes the view of institutional economics by making a
classical argument of political institutionalism. Roth and Schmid develop a
conceptual framework based on policy network analysis with a particular focus
on the implementation process. The paper “Governance of Complexity” argues,
that the EU’s dynamic multi-level system is both diverse and unified. There is
a great number of possible relations between the national and supra-national
elements of policy implementation networks. The authors describe this
complexity within their example of employment and labor market policy, which
can be noted to show a special variety of national implementation systems. The
concrete research focus is the implementation of the ADAPT program in Austria,
Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The paper points out three key
components of European labor market policy networks: (1) the organizational
structures of national labor administrations, (2) the general features of the
political system and (3) the degree of industrial relations system’s
corporatism. It argues that a decentralized organization of national labor
administrations – as it can be observed in the Netherlands, the UK and in
Denmark – may have the greatest innovative capability and problem-solving
capacity. But it will only work well if the political strategy fits into the
national conditions of the political-administrative system and the level of
corporatism. Considering the diversity of national conditions the European
Commission has to opt for “soft instruments” of policy coordination by
involving concerned (and local) actors in patterns of partnership and exchange.
The ‘Territorial Employment Pact’, a new decentralized and participatory
approach launched by the Commission, is cited as a promising example of a more appropriate governance strategy.
The paper presented by Eberlein and Grande specifies the analyzes of the combinatory
effects of European political strategies and particular national institutions.
The article “Regulation and Infrastructure Management: German Regulatory
Regimes and the EU Framework” concentrates on the interplay of national
regulatory institutional change and the European integration dynamic. The
empirical subject is the decline and dismantling of the particular German
active state in three central sectors of infrastructure (telecommunications,
railways and electricity). Until recently, the German state took a very active
role in infrastructural management by providing public services with general
access. The so called “Leistungsstaat” has been dismantled in the 1990s by
privatization and liberalization measures. In order to guarantee the further
provision of public goods the active state was replaced by regulatory
institutions. Within this regulatory frameworks the European Union plays an
increasingly important role. However, national patterns of sectoral regulation
have not been forced into convergence. Different types of EU regulatory regimes
can be observed instead. These regimes can be distinguished upon the autonomy
of national and European agencies and as well by the form of interplay between
both. The so-called “Regulatory Forum” regime is of most interest, as it can be
observed in the key examples of the paper. Within this model, the EU brings
together experts, officials and representatives of societal interests both from
the national and the EU levels. It can be marked as another form of soft
governance to avoid the blockades and limitations of positive integration.
Using the framework of general European directives the forum strategy enables
the commission to affect national strategies even in fields without strong
European legal powers.
The article by Bandelow,
Schumann and Widmaier can be interpreted as the discussion of a possible
strategy of the European Commission to use such forums (among other forms of
networks) by linking policies of different fields. Thereby the Commission may
achieve its assumed goal to enlarge the weight of supranational governance. The
starting point of the paper was that the European multi-level system shows
similarities to the political system of the United States. Therefore the paper
suggests that we can find similar bargaining strategies in both cases. An
analysis of policy-making processes in the United States stresses the
importance of logrolling procedures within the US-Congress to overcome
decision-making blockades. Logrolling is a special type of package deals
between public actors (members of parliament). While there may be similar forms
of package deals within the European Council – which has functions, in a way,
most similar to Congress – we can also observe the emergence of a special type
of package deal within the European Union. This type does not only involve
public actors but also private actors, namely large firms, who agree on deals
with the European Commission. The Commission is interested in deals with these
firms, because large firms have important resources like information about
policy impacts and influence on member states’ governments. They can also serve
as partners of the European Commission to use soft governance in fields where
it has no strong legal powers. Large firms are not always interested in
supporting the European Commission’s soft governance: They may be interested
primarily in the world market or they may aim to protect their national market
against European competitors. The paper argues, that despite of contrary
interest structures the Commission can force large firms in different branches
to support their policies by offering multi-domain package deals. By doing so,
it can link its regulatory competencies and financial resources in some fields
to win influence in other fields.
The comparison of these special type of package deals
with the theory of logrolling illuminates, that the welfare effects of this
form of soft governance need not be negative. But there are legitimation
problems because of a lack of public mandat and control. The hypotheses are
discussed within two branches: biotechnology and energy, because both show
important differences. Nevertheless we can observe the emergence of a similar
type of package deal.
Summarizing the main theses of the symposium, we can
find several options for soft governance within the European multi-level
system. Soft governance is of major important in all policy fields and it may
be the only option in some areas, as the article of Klemmer et al.
demonstrates. In other fields we can observe a combination or even a linkage
between soft and conventional types of governance. Knowledge and use of the
strategic options relevant in the special policy area can enable politicians
and interest groups to overcome the decision-making blockades of positive
integration.
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