Albert Weale

Environmental rules and rule‐making in the European Union

Abstract What does environmental policy‐making reveal about the rule‐making process in the European Union? In the light of environmental policy developments, this article proposes that the EU be regarded as a system of governance operating on the principle of concurrent majorities among leading actors. European environmental standards are neither functionally related to the Single Market nor a reflection of a dominant coalition of countries pushing their own national style of regulation nor even a merry‐go‐round in which different countries have a go at imposing their own national style in a sector that is of particular importance to them. Instead, they are the aggregated and transformed standards of their original champions modified under the need to secure political accommodation from powerful actors within the structure of decision‐making in which veto power is widely distributed. Some pathologies of this decision structure are also indicated.

Science advice, democratic responsiveness and public policy

Novel biotechnologies pose serious problems of how to combine scientific expertise and public involvement in the setting of standards of control. Identifying the problem of distinguishing the role of expertise from that of public involvement, this paper reviews current methods of promoting the public discussion of science. It identifies a particular problem in the articulation of ethical concerns that are especially relevant to various forms of biotechnology. These concerns are not amenable to consensus solutions, and the capacity to reflect on how to deal with these issues is reduced in the European Union. The conclusion is that public involvement should be seen to complement both scientific advice and systems of political representation. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Between economy and ecology? The single market and the integration of environmental policy

For a number of years influential voices in the international environmental policy community, including policy‐makers in the European Community, have been calling for the integration of environmental considerations into the making of economic policy. Despite acknowledgements in formal statements of the importance of environmental policy integration in the Community and the attempt by policy‐makers to argue that environmental protection was a precondition for sustainable economic growth, the programme to complete the single European market was developed without consideration of its environmental implications. The reasons for this involve a complex mix of intellectual, organisational and political factors. Moreover, the failure to achieve an integration of environmental considerations into the making of economic policy creates its own political dynamics, having three main features: disjointed decision‐making in the formulation of common technical standards across the EC; pressure from countries who are envi...

Political Legitimacy and European Monetary Union: Contracts, Constitutionalism and the Normative Logic of Two-Level Games

ABSTRACT The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also neglected the need for an impartial and publically acceptable constitutional order to acknowledge reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we contend that any reconstruction of the EUs economic constitution has to pay attention to reconciling a European monetary order with the legitimacy of member state governance. The EU requires a two-level contract to meet this standard. Member states must treat each other as equals and be representative of and accountable to their citizens on an equitable basis. These criteria entail that the EUs political legitimacy requires a form of demoicracy that we call ‘republican intergovernmentalism’. Only rules that could be acceptable as the product of a political constitution among the peoples of Europe can ultimately meet the required standards of political legitimacy. Such a political constitution could be brought about through empowering national parliaments in EU decision-making.

Social values and health policy: a new international research programme.

PURPOSE This editorial aims to outline the context of healthcare priority-setting, and summarise each of the other ten papers in this special edition. It introduces a new multidisciplinary research programme drawing on ethics, philosophy, health economics, political science and health technology assessment, out of which the papers in this edition have arisen. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Key normative concepts are introduced and policy and research context provided to frame subsequent papers in the edition. FINDINGS Common challenges of health priority-setting are faced by many countries across the world, and a range of social value judgments is in play as resource allocation decisions are made. Although the challenges faced by different countries are in many ways similar, the way in which social values affect the processes and content of priority-setting decisions means that those challenges are resolved very differently in a variety of social, political, cultural and institutional settings, as subsequent papers in this edition demonstrate. How social values affect decision making in this way is the subject of a new multi-disciplinary research programme. ORIGINALITY/VALUE Technical analyses of health priority setting are commonplace, but approaching the issues from the perspective of social values and conducting comparative analyses across countries with very different cultural, social and institutional contexts provides the content for a new research agenda.

European environmental policy by stealth: the dysfunctionality of functionalism?

There are four paradoxes to be explained in respect of European Union (EU) environmental policy: how it is that a liberal policy regime makes relatively little use of economic instruments; how it is that the formally independent Commission is heavily dependent upon member states in the development of its policy proposals; how it is that a ‘weak’ European Parliament has had greater influence on environmental standard setting than have most national parliaments; and how it is that a supranational political authority regulates subnational environmental public goods so extensively. The author argues that these four features of EU environmental policy are related to one another as the effects of a common cause: the historical importance of the Monnet method of European integration. How far this method should be transcended is also discussed.

Is Rule by Majorities Special

One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issue median of voter preferences. If popular control and political equality are core democratic values, they can be rendered as requirements on a collective choice rule, involving resoluteness, anonymity, strategy-proofness and responsiveness. These requirements entail that the collective decision rule be a percentile method. If we then add a requirement of impartiality, as exhibited in a collective choice rule which would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance, then the issue-by-issue median is uniquely identified as a fair rule. Hence, majorities rule is special. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered.

Citizenship Beyond Borders

Can the notion of citizenship be used to ground obligations that go beyond the borders of generation or nation? At first sight it would appear not. The concept of citizenship, and the baggage of presuppositions that it carries with it, are normally used to limit, rather than expand, obligations.1 The usual way in which this works is that citizenship is made a condition of participation in practices that define social and political rights and duties. The most obvious example is provided by the case of voting which typically, though not invariably, requires citizenship as a test of eligibility to vote. Similarly, schemes of social insurance within welfare states normally limit their cover to the class of citizens, although resident aliens may gain grace and favour entrance through special provisions. Similarly, in-kind benefits, like health care and education, may be limited in their provision within a welfare state to those who pass the test of citizenship. In other words, with both cash and in-kind benefits, there is an implicit limitation of the scope of risk-pooling among the beneficiaries to those who are members of the citizen body. This feature of the welfare state reflects the exclusive basis of membership of a political community that is tacitly captured in the idea of citizenship.

Debating Abortion, Deliberative Reciprocity and Parliamentary Advocacy

An influential model of deliberative democracy advances a principle of reciprocity as a norm of democratic debate on morally controversial issues. This norm is at odds with behaviour that has been observed in political campaigning and policy making where advocates of competing positions talk past one another. Does this inconsistency stem from a contrast between the normative and empirical or from not considering empirically plausible practices of democratic debate in which reciprocity might be respected? One such practice is free votes on conscience issues in the UK parliament. This article examines six second reading debates in the UK House of Commons on abortion legislation to assess whether, in favourable circumstances, political debate is consistent with reciprocity. Utilising computer-aided text analysis, via the Alceste program, it finds no gross departure from the norm of reciprocity, suitably operationalised, but neither does it find complete conformity to the norm of reciprocity. Because advocacy is an important component of political representation, deliberative norms are qualified in practice.

Metrics versus Peer Review

At a time when research evaluation policy in the UK is in some flux, and when there are a multitude of proposals for change but little hard-headed analysis, Political Studies Review is to be congratulated on setting up this symposium. Of course, as one of the co-editors of the British Journal of Political Science, which shows up extremely well in the McLean et al. study, as well as the Chair of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) panel, whose decisions are analysed by Butler and McAllister, I am hardly the most disinterested commentator. But the two articles under discussion are important in their own right and in each case grow out of work that has been conducted over many years.