Renaud Dehousse

Regulation by networks in the European Community: the role of European agencies

The creation of European agencies is to be viewed as a response to the conflicting pressures to which the European Community is exposed in the post-1992 period. On the one hand, experience has demonstrated that legislative harmonization is not enough to dismantle internal barriers to trade, and that some convergence of administrative practices is necessary to level the playing field. On the other hand, the delegation of direct administrative responsibilities to Community institutions is politically inconceivable, and probably undesirable. Regulation by networks is the Community response to this paradox: by bringing together the various national administrations in charge of a given Community policy, one hopes to achieve the necessary degree of uniformity. European agencies are expected to act as network coordinators, rather than as central regulators. This explains the limited powers which they have been given, as well as the crucial part played by national representatives in their functioning.

Delegation of powers in the European union: The need for a multi-principals model

Whereas a principal–agent model has widely been used to analyse the establishment of manifold autonomous agencies at the European level, it fails to capture some key elements of this process, such as the recurrent inter-institutional struggle of agency institutional design or the Commissions basic ambivalence vis-à-vis independent regulators. In contrast, acknowledging the absence of a clearly defined principal in the EU enables us to understand the relative weakness of existing agencies and the multiplicity of controls to which they are subjected. In such a system, strong EU regulators are unlikely to be established.

Constitutional reform in the European community: Are there alternatives to the Majoritarian avenue?

Traditionally, the weakness of the European Parliament and of European political parties is presented as a central cause of the European Communitys legitimacy crisis. This article suggests an alternative reading of the situation. Not only is the legitimacy crisis much more complex than is generally believed, but the strengthening of the Parliament, and the development of party politics that would ensue might ultimately threaten the stability of the Community. The experience of parliamentary federations suggests that the majoritarian features of the parliamentary system may be a source of tension. No matter how necessary the democratisation of the ECs institutional setting may be, reforms must not be detrimental to the quality of centre‐periphery relations.

The Institutional Dynamics of European Integration: From the Single Act to the Maastricht Treaty

No single theory or disciplinary approach can possibly explain a complex, dynamic, and in many respects unique process like European integration. The best we can do is to search for theoretical constructs capable of throwing some light on various aspects and stages of the process, and especially on the strong mutual dependence among its constituent elements. The result will not be an elegant or even a fully coherent theoretical explanation, but this is the normal state of affairs in political science. We are not aware of any grand theory of how, say, the American government operates. What we have is a set of partial and rather disconnected theories about the presidency, the cabinet, the logic of congressional action, the politics of regulation, policy making for social security, the development of judicial review, and so on. It would be very surprising indeed if a single set of conceptual lenses would reveal the logic of Community action. What has been said about statistical inference is a fortiori true for political science: it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

European Integration and the Nation-State

The state remains the starting point for many analyses of European integration. The Community, and after it the European Union (EU), were created by national states. If they did so, it is generally stressed that it is because they felt the development of international co-operation was likely to bring a number of collective benefits. In order to make sure it would serve their interests, structures and procedures were designed to preserve their control over decision-making; hence the weight of the member states in the European political system (Hoffmann, 1966; Garrett, 1992).

Managing the house: the Presidency, agenda control and policy activism in the European Commission

ABSTRACT Although the importance of international organizations is well-established, the specific contribution made to their policy outputs by administrative as opposed to political actors is rarely investigated. Still less attention is paid to how intra-organizational factors within international administrations affect the latter’s capacity to influence those outputs. Even in the case of the European Union, where the European Commission’s power over decisional outputs has been a long-standing interest, this issue has not been fully explored. Scholars have focused on horizontal factors, but have not addressed how vertical relations affect the Commission’s policy activism and therefore its influence on EU outputs. By examining how the transformation of power relations within the Commission has changed as a consequence of the strengthening of the Commission Presidency, this contribution fills that lacuna. Showing how a strong President has been able to control the Commission’s output, it demonstrates the importance of vertical relations as a variable.

Why has EU macroeconomic governance become more supranational

Abstract While much of the literature on the Euro crisis has highlighted the intergovernmental features of the European Union response, it appears that in strategic areas, such as macroeconomic policy or banking regulation, supranational institutions have seen their discretionary powers significantly enhanced and that they have played an instrumental role in bringing about such a change. This is all the more remarkable considering the decline in support for integration among governments and the public. This article explains this paradox by the dramatic character of the crisis and the deep mistrust that existed between European states at the time. It also suggests that the process could be hard to reconcile with attempts at ‘politicizing’ EU public policy.

Intergovernmentalists in the Commission: foxes in the Henhouse?

Abstract Contrary to the dominant view in the scholarly literature on European institutions, where the European Commission is generally described as a unitary actor whose acts are primarily influenced by a political agenda and/or considerations of self-interest, this article argues that a variety of opinions coexist within the Commission staff. Based on the largest attitudinal survey ever conducted on Commission officials, it documents the existence of a sizeable minority of intergovernmentalists and analyzes their attitude towards the institution they serve and their views on its place in the integration process.

How consensual is comitology

ABSTRACT This contribution revisits the question of the alleged consensual and deliberative nature of comitology proceedings on new conceptual and empirical bases. On the conceptual plane, we argue that it is important to separate the analysis of decision-making from that of outcomes: the fact that committees generally end up ratifying Commission proposals does not mean the latter are never contested. Consensus and deliberation being closely related concepts, we propose to focus on dissent within committees, which we regard as an indicator of a non-deliberative process or an imperfect deliberation. Applying this approach to data from the comitology register, we show the existence of a sizeable rate of contestation in various fields, and offer a first analysis of the factors that may influence dissensus.

Law, Political Science and EU Legal Studies: An Interdisciplinary Project?

Ask anyone who does interdisciplinary work: they will say it can be a thankless task. It is virtually impossible to stay on top of the literature from your own let alone the other discipline. A person’s home discipline does not appreciate or reward attempts to cross the divide. And the other fields that share your interest are inevitably unhappy with your failure to debate the issue on their terms, using the latest literature and findings in their field. European legal studies are no exception. Perhaps because of these reasons, there is not really an interdisciplinary attempt to advance our understanding of the influence of European law and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on European Union (EU) politics. Worse yet, there is a tendency to discount the contributions of each discipline. An example reveals the nature of this problem. Both law and political science identify similar legal phenomena and legal rulings as being important – e.g. the construction of the European legal order through ECJ decisions,1 or the Cassis de Dijon ruling establishing the principle of mutual European Union Politics [1465-1165(200203)3:1] Volume 3 (1): 113–136: 021227 Copyright© 2002 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi 06 Forum (jr/d) 1/2/02 9:01 am Page 113