Gerda Falkner

Modes of governance: towards a conceptual clarification

ABSTRACT Recently, political science has seen an intense debate about the phenomenon of ‘governance’. The aim of this paper is to clarify the basic concepts that are at the heart of this debate, notably ‘governance’ and ‘modes of governance’. We argue that most contributions share a common concern for the relationship between state intervention and societal autonomy, but different strands of the literature highlight different facets of this continuum. Existing understandings may be classified according to whether they emphasize the politics, polity or policy dimensions of governance. We use these categories to present a structured overview of different dimensions of modes of governance as they may be found in the literature. In this context, we argue that the classification of modes of governance as ‘old’ or ‘new’ is of little analytical value. Moving from single dimensions to systematic classification schemes and typologies of modes of governance, we highlight a number of shortcomings of existing schemes and suggest an approach that could avoid these weaknesses. As a first step in this approach, we take a closer look at different policy properties of governance and develop a systematic typology of four modes of governance in the policy dimension: coercion, voluntarism, targeting and framework regulation.

Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States

Starting from the findings of an earlier compliance study covering the 15 ‘old’ Member States of the European Union, which identified three ‘worlds of compliance’, this article seeks to establish whether or not the new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) represent a separate world of compliance. We present empirical findings from a research project on the implementation of three EU Directives from the field of working time and equal treatment in four CEE countries. The evidence suggests that the new Member States display implementation styles that are similar to a few countries in the EU-15. The expectation that the new Member States might behave according to their own specific logic, such as significantly decreasing their compliance efforts after accession in order to take ‘revenge’ for the strong pressure of conditionality, is not supported by our case studies. Instead, all four new Member States appear to fall within a group that could be dubbed the ‘world of dead letters’. It is crucial to highlight, however, that this specific ‘world of compliance’, characterized by politicized transposition processes and systematic application and enforcement problems, also includes two countries from the EU-15.

Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor?

To what extent are European rules complied with, and what are the reasons for non-compliance with EU law? According to an intergovernmentalist perspective, implementation problems should occur when member states failed to assert their interests in the European decision-making process. Focusing on 26 infringement procedures from the area of labour law, we show that such ‘opposition through the backdoor’ does occur occasionally. However, we demonstrate that opposition at the end of the EU policy process may also arise without prior opposition at the beginning. Additionally, our findings indicate that non-compliance is often unrelated to opposition, and due to administrative shortcomings, interpretation problems, and issue linkage. This study is based on unique in-depth data stemming from a ground-level analysis of the implementation of six EU Directives in all 15 member states.

Problems of Operationalization and Data in EU Compliance Research

Substantial theoretical, conceptual and empirical advances have been made in research on the implementation of EU policies during recent years. However, our findings have remained ambivalent and our theoretical insights disparate. It therefore seems high time to address some methodological issues and to raise awareness of the limits of the various approaches and of the data commonly used. We highlight the challenges of operationalizing and of choosing adequate indicators for the dependent variable (compliance). We also discuss the promises and perils of different types of data used in the field, such as official statistics on notifications and infringements published by the European Commission.

Theorizing EU Treaty Reform: Beyond Diplomacy and Bargaining

This article argues that a comprehensive approach to treaty reform requires both a more inclusive and longer-term perspective. We re-conceptualize agency and structure in the process of treaty reform; examine theoretically as well as empirically the respective roles of interests, ideas and institutions in treaty reform; and seek to reconcile agency and structure, as well as ideas, interests and institutions, in a temporal perspective on treaty reform.

Europeanization of Social Partnership in Smaller European Democracies

This article examines the impact of Europeanization on cooperation between major interest groups and the state in national policymaking. Its theoretical innovation centres on two issues: (1) a classification of cooperation by management, labour, and the state in public policy-making and (2) a differentiation of levels of Europeanization in the Member States. The empirical material highlights the implementation of six EU Directives in four smaller states: Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Sweden. A moderate trend towards convergence is discovered, caused mainly by forced adaptation of the most extreme model of corporatism.

European works councils and the Maastricht social agreement: Towards a new policy style?

Abstract The Maastricht Agreement on Social Policy creates a new policy regime which impinges on the main actors’ behaviour and preferences. This case study of the European Works Councils Directive suggests the development of an innovative policy style. ‘Euro‐corporatist’ procedures now have priority vis‐a‐vis traditional decision‐making in the Council. In this first decision under the new legal basis, they did not produce a collective agreement. This could be different in future cases as the Social Agreement gives considerable incentives for reforms within the European social partner federations. The Directive on European Works Councils may be seen as a spillover from the Internal Market to EC labour law facilitated by the extension of qualified majority voting. The overall policy process involves successive decision‐making (partly by the social partners) on at least three levels: European, national and subnational. Concerning the regulatory style, a more flexible and minimalist approach was chosen in co...

The EU’s current crisis and its policy effects: research design and comparative findings

Abstract The paper summarises a collaborative international research project comparing the impact of the ongoing conglomerate of crises in nine EU policies. All of them saw significant crisis-induced pressures and challenges. Beyond changes in discourse, the crisis-induced pressures have, in many areas, also triggered a rather sizable amount of policy change. Considering EU competences, no single example of re-nationalisation was found, but many new EU-level tasks. The governments were of prime importance in immediate crisis management but supranational institutions and processes continue to matter.

Institutional Performance and Compliance with EU Law: Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

This article compares the performance of state institutions and compliance with EU law in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The public institutions highlighted are of crucial relevance when it comes to enforcing EU social standards and include the court and legal systems as well as labour inspectorates and equal treatment authorities. Expert and practitioner assessments point to major shortcomings in their institutional performance. The procedural compliance pattern to which these shortcomings give rise closely resembles that found by previous studies in some Western European countries, notably Ireland and Italy. Thus, the four countries examined here fall within a ‘world of dead letters’ as far as their compliance with EU law is concerned. In this ‘world’, EU directives tend to be transposed in a politicised mode (although so far, this happened rather timely and correctly) and there is frequent non-compliance at the later stages of monitoring and enforcement.

EU–global interactions: policy export, import, promotion and protection

ABSTRACT The interactions between the European Union (EU) and international policy regimes are ever more important. Much of the existing literature has focused on the bottom-up dimension of the EUs role in global institutions, assuming that the EU predominantly seeks to project its policies to the global level. However, our review of empirical research reveals that EU policy exports tend to be rare and that EU–global interactions are more varied. On a global scale, the EU is not a hegemonic power that can easily transfer its standards to international regimes, nor does it always desire to do so. This article conceptualizes the EUs interactions with international institutions in four modes (policy export, policy promotion, policy protection and policy import), establishes different rationales motivating EU actors to engage through a given mode and relates recent empirical research to this comprehensive typology.