Beate Kohler-Koch

The Evolution and Transformation of European Governance

The European Community (EC) is governed without government and, therefore, it is bound to be governed in a particular way. In addition, EC governance is penetrating into the political life of member states and its particular mode of governing may disseminate across national borders. These, in a nutshell, are the two hypotheses that will be tested. The first is that Europe’s supranational Community functions according to a logic different from that of the representative democracies of its member states. Its purpose and institutional architecture are distinctive, promoting a particular mode of governance. The second is that the process of ‘Europeanisation,’ that is extending the boundaries of the relevant political space beyond the member states, will contribute to a change of governance at national and sub-national levels. Being a member of the EU is concomitant with the interpenetrating of systems of governance; any polity which is part of such a ‘penetrated system’ is bound to change in terms of established patterns of governing.

Catching up with change: The transformation of governance in the European Union

Abstract Looking at the transformation of governance in the process of European integration confronts us with a puzzle. Member states have accepted an incremental transfer of sovereignty and regulatory power. Empirical evidence, however, gives proof of a rather unrestricted vitality to shape policies according to national preferences. In European policy‐making the balance between private and public interests seems to have shifted to the detriment of the latter. At the same time the very properties of the European polity enable public actors to escape capture. In order to gain a better understanding of the transformation of governance it might be helpful to take a different approach. It is not the change in terms of shifting power relations between different levels of government or between different categories of actors which is of interest, but changes in the practice of governing and the understanding of what governance is about.

The Institutional Shaping of EU–Society Relations: A Contribution to Democracy via Participation?

ABSTRACT European integration has added an extra dimension to the perceived crisis of contemporary democracy. Many observers argue that the allocation of decision-making powers beyond the nation state bears the risk of hollowing out the institutional mechanisms of democratic accountability. In EU governance, the Commission has emerged as a particularly active and imaginative actor promoting EU–society relations, and it has done so with the explicit desire to improve the democratic legitimacy of the EU. However, assumptions concerning the societal prerequisites of a working democracy differ with the normative theory of democracy employed. Therefore, expectations concerning the beneficial effect of institutional reforms such as the European Commissions new governance strategy, which was launched at the beginning of the century, vary according to normative standards set by different theories of democracy on the one hand and to the confidence in the malleability of society on the other. Our contribution seeks to pave a way for the systematic assessment of the democratic potential of the European Commissions consultation regime. To this purpose, two alternative theoretical conceptions that link participation to democracy will be presented. A list of criteria for both conceptions that enable us to empirically assess the democratic potential of the EU Commissions participatory strategy will then be presented.

Linking EU and national governance

Contributors to this volume - Helen Wallace, Director of the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy Beate Kohler-Koch, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Mannheim University, Germany Armin von Bogdandy, Director at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law, Germany Andreas Maurer, Research Analyst, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Germany Jurgen Mittag, Lecturer in Political Science, University of Cologne, Germany Wolfgang Wessels, Professor of European Politics and Integration, University of Cologne, Germany Arthur Benz, Professor of Political Science, FernUniversitaet, Hagen, Germany Klaus Eder, Professor of Sociology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Hans-Jorg Trenz, Lecturer in Political Science, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Hubert Heinelt, Professor of Political Science, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany Tanja Kopp-Malek, Lecturer in Political Science, Bielefeld, Germany Jochen Lang, Research Assistant, Social Science Centre Berlin (WZB), Germany Bernd Reissert, Professor of Political Science, Fachhochschule fuer Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Germany Frank Deppe, Professor of Political Science, Philipps-Universitaet Marburg, Germany Michael Felder, Lecturer in Political Science, Gerhard-Mercator-Universitaet Duisburg, Germany Stefan Tidow, Teaching Assistant in Political Science, Philipps-Universitaet Marburg, Germany Jurgen Neyer, Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany Klaus-Dieter Wolf, Professor of International Relations, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany

Civil society and EU democracy: ‘astroturf’ representation?

The growing uneasiness about the democratic deficit of the European Union (EU) has incited politicians and academics alike to look for remedies other than institutional reforms and giving more powers to the European Parliament. Strategies of ‘good governance’ shifted centre stage and the governance turn initiated a lively discourse on the democratic credentials of involving civil society. This article presents the changing views on the role of civil society in EU discourse. Al though the Commission and even the Constitutional Convention put high hopes on the legitimacy input of civil society, a representation discourse is conspicuously absent. The article introduces an analytical framework to assess the contributions and limitations of civil society to democratic representation in EU governance.

Regieren im dynamischen Mehrebenensystem

Die westeuropaische Integration hat in den letzten funfzig Jahren zur immer starkeren Institutionalisierung supranationaler Entscheidungskompetenz in der Europaischen Union gefuhrt. Ein Blick in den Vertrag von Maastricht zeigt, das bereits heute die EU in einem Umfang zu gemeinschaftlichem Handeln befugt ist, der uber die Vorstellungskraft manchen Burgers hinausgeht. Parallel hierzu last sich aus den regelmasigen Umfragen des EUROBAROMETER ablesen, das nach Ansicht der Burger eine Fulle von politischen Aufgaben am besten von der EU ubernommen werden sollten. Die Tatsache, das in der EU eine kollektive Problembearbeitung durch zielgerichtetes offentliches Handeln stattfindet, durch das allgemeinverbindliche Entscheidungen getroffen werden, last es gerechtfertigt erscheinen, von „Regieren“ zu sprechen. Die Anwendung dieses allgemeinen Begriffes von Regieren auf das politische System der EU mag allerdings ungewohnlich erscheinen, weil der Begriff des Regierens ublicherweise nur bezogen auf den Staat verwendet und dabei ohne weitere Prazisierung mit der Tatigkeit der Regierung verbunden wird. Die politische Integration Westeuropas hat allerdings dazu gefuhrt, das die Bedingungen, unter denen Regierungen tatig werden und ihre Fahigkeit, im Interesse ihrer Burger zu „regieren“, sich qualitativ gewandelt haben.

European Networks and Ideas: Changing National Policies?

Wider involvement and better knowledge are keywords in the recent White Paper on European Governance. The political discourse has, quite obviously, taken up the academic debate about the importance of ideas and networks. The Commission is seen as an ideational entrepreneur which by arguing and networking is able to induce autonomous actors with quite diverse interests to follow a European course of action. Regional policy has been a most promising field of research to confirm this hypothesis. Recent investigations can be read, however, in quite a different way. The paper questions established conventional wisdom concerning the importance of European ideas and networks for policy change and raises the question how ideational and network competition could be explored in a better way.

De-mystification of participatory democracy : EU governance and civil society

The democratic legitimacy of the European Union has become an increasingly urgent issue. In searching for a way out, academics, EU institutions, and political forces advocate the involvement of civil society. The Commission’s new governance approach and finally the Lisbon Treaty introduced elements of participatory democracy and elevated civil society to a key actor in democratizing the EU. Does this hold upon closer scrutiny? This is the main question of this book. It investigates how the promise of civil society participation is put into practice and, based on an elaborate theoretical framework, evaluates whether the political practice deserves the quality attribute “participatory democracy”. The book presents the results of a large research project composed of several highly original empirical studies. The research team used various methodological approaches and generated a rich data set. The wealth of empirical insight is evaluated against clear criteria deduced from normative democratic theory. As key elements of the analyses – democracy, participation, and civil society – are contested concepts, the authors placed particular emphasize on clarifying their understanding of these concepts and on considering competing interpretations. By relying on a consistent theoretical approach the authors present an unusually balanced evaluation. They come to convincing, though rather skeptical conclusions. Civil society participation in EU governance is not the democratic remedy its advocates had hoped for. This may not be a welcome but nevertheless it is an important finding both for European decision-makers, for civil society organizations, and for scholars.

Die Welt regieren ohne Weltregierung

Mit dem politischen Umbruch in den ehemals realsozialistischen Staaten wurden auch die internationalen Strukturen verschoben. Der globale Systemkonflikt loste sich auf: nicht mehr der Wettbewerb um die Dominanz der jeweils eigenen politischen Ideologie beherrscht die ausenpolitische Strategie der Grosmachte, sondern es geht ihnen darum, die internationalen Handlungsbedingungen dahingehend zu beeinflussen, das sie mit den gesellschaftlichen Anspruchen auf Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen und dem Kampf um die Stabilisierung von Herrschaft vertraglich sind. Die fruhere Politik der Selbstausgrenzung des realsozialistischen Lagers wurde zugunsten einer aktiven Politik der Einbindung verworfen. Die Bemuhungen um eine Eingliederung in die Weltwirtschaft sind begleitet von dem bewusten Willen, sich den politischen Bundnissen des Westens anzunahern und den internationalen Regimen liberalistischer Provenienz anzupassen. Gleichzeitig hat der Zerfall der staatlichen Einheit der Sowjetunion und die Aufgabe des militarischen Fuhrungsanspruchs zu einer fundamentalen Verschiebung im internationalen Machtegleichgewicht gefuhrt, so das das bipolare Abschreckungssystem sich in eine unipolare militarische Dominanz der USA verwandelte.

The three worlds of European civil society—What role for civil society for what kind of Europe?

Abstract The article argues that it is difficult to agree on the political role and the democratic credentials of civil society in the EU not just because the concept of civil society is ambiguous but also because civil society is linked to different images of the nature of the European polity. An analytical model is developed that categorises three distinct conceptions of the Union and spells out the different roles civil society may take in each of them to render the EU more democratic. The empirical analysis exposes the implicit conceptions which inspired the Commission to involve civil society in EU governance and investigates how these conceptions changed with the formalisation of EU–society relations. The article concludes that no coherent normative theoretical concept gained ground and, consequently, civil society is assigned contradictory roles which do not add up but depreciate the democratic state of the Union.