Laura Cram

Calling the tune without paying the piper? Social policy regulation: The role of the commission in european community social policy

Regulatory policy is presently the principal form of European Community (EC) social policy legislation affecting European citizens. One possible explanation of this trend is that the Commission, far from being a neutral bureaucracy, has been an active force in pushing outward the frontiers of Community social policy. Expanding its skills, and learning from past experience, the Commission makes maximum use of its limited powers in the social sphere. One important aspect of the Commisions opportunistic role may be its ability to prepare the ground for future regulatory action. The relatively costless nature of regulatory policy-making, from the point of view of the Commissions budget, increasingly allows the Commission to call the proverbial tune without incurring the costs of paying the piper.

Policy Making in the European Union: Conceptual Lenses and the Integration Process

A fresh view at attempts to conceptualize the process of European integration. Her book explores the impact of the day to day work of policy maker, interest groups and bureaucrats in influencing the environment in which European Treaty formulation and ratification are taken. She sheds new light on the wide range of policy areas in which institutions such as the Commission of the European Union and the European Court of Justice have succeded in expanding the scope of EU competence despite national government opposition.

Imagining the Union: a Case of Banal Europeanism?

In recent years there has been a revived interest among students of the European Union (EU) in the work of the early integration theorists such as Karl Deutsch and Ernst Haas. Scholars have, for example, begun to recognize the importance of transactions in the creation and maintenance of the governance regime within the EU (Sandholtz and Stone Sweet, 1998) which were so central to the work of Deutsch. Meanwhile, a focus on the learning of ‘integrative habits’ as a result of prior cooperation, emphasized by the functionalists (Mitrany, 1943),2 the communication school (Deutsch, 1953, 1957, 1966) and neo-functionalist scholars (Haas, 1958), has once again begun to come to the fore. An extensive literature, drawing upon new institutionalist approaches, examining the role of institutions, institutionalization, lock-in, path dependency and the question of preference formation (Armstrong and Bulmer, 1998; Pierson, 1996), has, for example, emerged.

Developments in the European Union

PART 1: INTRODUCTION - Reconciling Theory and Practice L.Cram, D.Dinan & N.Nugent - PART 2: THE POLITICAL SYSTEM - The European Council and Council of Ministers F.Hayes Renshaw - The Commission L.Cram - The European Parliament K.Neunreither - The Court of Justice and the Legal System D.Wincott - Interests S.Mazey & J.Richardson - Decision-Making N.Nugent - PART 3: POLICIES AND POLICY OBJECTIVES - Creating a European Market: M.Calingaert - Promoting Solidarity and Cohesion J.Mitchell & P.McAleavey - Environmental Policy J.McCormick - Trade and Aid: The EU in the Global System F.Laursen - The Common Foreign and Security Policy M.Holland - Co-operation on Justice and Home Affairs Matters: E.Ucarer - PART 4: KEY ISSUES - Enlargement M.Baun - Treaty Change in the European Union: The Amsterdam Experience D.Dinan - The Political Synamics of Economic and Monetary Union K. Featherstone - Democracy and the European Union B.Laffan - PART 5: CONCLUSIONS - The Evolving European Union L.Cram, D.Dinan & N.Nugent - Index

Does the EU Need a Navel? Implicit and Explicit Identification with the European Union

Analysts should expect neither too much from European Union identity and its causal role in driving the integration process, nor too little, by underestimating the stabilizing force of implicit identification with the EU. Daily transactions in an EU institutional context embed an acceptance of the EU as a legitimate political authority and underpin passive consent to the continued functioning of the EU. The emergence of explicit EU identification is contingent upon the value (real and symbolic) attached to transactions, the extent to which valued goods are perceived to be under threat and whether competing political authorities are viewed as legitimate.

Reconciling Theory and Practice

This book focuses on developments in the European integration process and, more especially, developments in the European Union (EU). The chapters which follow cover a wide variety of topics and issues. The purpose of this first chapter is to lay a foundation for these following chapters by outlining key underlying questions.

The importance of the temporal dimension: new modes of governance as a tool of government

This article offers an alternative perspective to those which view ‘new modes of governance’ as evidence of a democratic-participatory turn in the European Union. The temporal dimension in public policy analysis is emphasized. New modes of governance, such as the Open Method of Co-ordination and civil dialogue, are unlikely to reduce the democratic deficit in the short term. Indeed by enhancing the role of unelected institutions and allowing national executives to bypass sceptical electorates, such processes may undermine democracy in the Union. Over the long term, however, new modes of governance and their accompanying narrative may have an important role to play in the European integration process, even contributing to the ‘invention’ of a people for the European Union.

Women's political participation in greece since the colonels dictatorship: From democratic struggle to incorporation by the party state?

This article examines the changing nature of womens political participation in Greece and argues that the period since 1974 has seen a shift from political participation through womens involvement in popular democratic struggles to the increasing incorporation of the womens movement by the Greek ‘party‐state’. From 1967–74 Greece lived under the repressive dictatorship of the Colonels. Yet Greece now enjoys some of the most progressive legislation in Europe in the area of equality between the sexes. Most of the demands of the Greek womens movement of the late 1970s were already translated into public policy provisions by the 1980s. Womens issues came to be accepted on to the political agenda in Greece in part as a result of womens participation in national struggles for liberation and democracy through which they developed close links with the parties of the Left. In the short term, collaboration with the newly formed or newly liberated parties of the Left brought important rewards for the womens o...

In the Shadow of Hierarchy: Governance as a Tool of Government

Any understanding of the extent to which the emergence of new forms of governance has taken place, and of the significance of these developments for the balance of power in the EU policy process, requires some understanding of what the old methods were, the relative roles of the actors involved, and the context in which current practices developed. In short, it requires the understanding of how policy was developed under the Community method. Drawing on the example of EU social policy, it is argued that the Commission has always operated in ‘the shadow of hierarchy’ (Scharpf 1994), with member states able to limit the available capacity of formal competences.1 Forced to consult when it was unable to legislate, or to utilise soft law when binding legislation was precluded, the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (DG EMPL), in common with other ‘Cinderella’ directorates such as DG Environment, developed an extensive armoury of ‘weapons of the weak’. This ‘consultation as a surrogate for action’ model has over time become ‘civil dialogue’, before being mainstreamed throughout the Commission and codified in the Treaty of Lisbon.

Introduction to the special issue on the institutional balance and the future of the EU governance: the future of the union and the trap of the "nirvana fallacy"

The question of the “institutional balance” strikes at the very core of what the European Union is and where it is headed. In Declaration 23 of the Treaty of Nice, member states committed themselves to launching “a deeper and wider debate about the future of the Union” (point 3). As the articles in this volume indicate, in addressing the future of the Union, it is crucial that member states and the institutions dispel the myths upon which some of the need for reform has been conceived. In any institutional reform process, it is vital that the architects of reform avoid what Demsetz has referred to as the “Nirvana fallacy.” In examining the institutional balance(s) in the EU and addressing the future of the Union, it is important that the realities of contemporary praxis are fully understood and that unrealistic goals are avoided. The EU can no more be expected to conform to some mythical ideal of “good governance” than can the member states of which it is constituted.