Buch, Englisch, Band 68, 391 Seiten, Format (B × H): 143 mm x 215 mm, Gewicht: 492 g
Reihe: Schriften des Max-Planck-Instituts für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln
Institutions, Policies and Legitimacy in Multilevel Europe
Buch, Englisch, Band 68, 391 Seiten, Format (B × H): 143 mm x 215 mm, Gewicht: 492 g
Reihe: Schriften des Max-Planck-Instituts für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln
ISBN: 978-3-593-39188-5
Verlag: Campus
Since the mid-1980s, Fritz W. Scharpf has been investigating the evolution of the multilevel European polity and its impact on the effectiveness and legitimacy of democratic government in Europe. Community and Autonomy collects in one volume Scharpf’s nearly two decades of research on government in Europe and offers new contributions that focus on the asymmetric impact of European law on the institutions and policy legacies of EU member states and on the implications of these asymmetries for the democratic legitimacy of government at national and European levels.
Seit Mitte der 1980er Jahre beobachtet Fritz W. Scharpf die Entwicklung der Effektivität und Legitimität europäischer Mehrebenenpolitik. Zu Beginn der hier versammelten Aufsätze steht die Vermutung, die 'Politikverflechtungsfalle' beschränke generell die Problemlösungsfähigkeit europäischer Politik. Später betont Scharpf die Asymmetrie zwischen wirksamer 'negativer' und schwacher 'positiver Integration'. Er benennt aber auch die Bereiche, in denen effektive europäische Politik erwartet werden kann oder ausgeschlossen scheint. Scharpfs Blick richtet sich auf die institutionellen Bedingungen, welche die Rechtsetzung und Politikgestaltung begünstigen und zugleich politisches Handeln auf der europäischen Ebene behindern. Nicht zuletzt betrachtet er die Rückwirkungen des EU-Rechts auf die Institutionen und Politiktraditionen der Mitgliedsstaaten.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme
- Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Europäische Union, Europapolitik
Weitere Infos & Material
Contents
Acknowledgments. 7
Copyright Acknowledgments. 8
Introduction
Community and Autonomy in the European Union (2010). 11
1 The Joint-decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration (1988). 21
2 Community and Autonomy: Multilevel Policy-making in the European Union (1994). 67
3 Negative and Positive Integration in the Political Economy of European Welfare States (1996). 91
4 The Problem-solving Capacity of Multilevel Governance (1997). 127
5 Interdependence and Democratic Legitimation (2000). 149
6 Democratic Legitimacy under Conditions of Regulatory Competition: Why Europe Differs from the United States (2001). 173
7 Notes Toward a Theory of Multilevel Governing in Europe (2001). 193
8 The European Social Model: Coping with the Challenges of Diversity (2002). 221
9 Legitimate Diversity: The New Challenge of European Integration (2003). 247
10 The Joint-decision Trap Revisited (2006). 277
11 Refl ections on Multilevel European Legitimacy (2007). 299
12 Legitimacy in the Multilevel European Polity (2009). 317
13 The Double Asymmetry of European Integration—Or: Why the EU Cannot Be a Social Market Economy (2009). 353
Introduction
Community and Autonomy in the European Union
The essays in this volume record a quarter-century of refl ections on the multilevel
European polity and its impact on the effectiveness and legitimacy of democratic
government in Europe. Re-reading them in the order in which they were published,
I fi nd it interesting to see how themes that were mentioned as an aside early
on evolved over time, and how the overall view of the institutional structure and
its empirical and normative implications has become progressively wider and more
complex, even though the individual articles focus on a relatively narrow range of
specifi c issues. Thus my present map of the overall terrain would include
– a view of policy making at the European level that distinguishes between its
“political” and “non-political” modes and that focuses on the specifi c problem-
solving capabilities and legitimacy conditions of each of these modes.
It would also include
– a view of the impact of European integration on the problem-solving capacity,
democratic legitimacy and the socioeconomic orders of EU member
states, and, fi nally, it would include
– a view of the mechanisms that may (or may not) adjust the balance between
the equally legitimate concerns of European integration and of democratic
self-determination in EU member states.
In this introduction, I will roughly follow the sequence in which I came to pay
attention to these themes.
Problem-solving Effectiveness
My fi rst contribution, and one of my most cited articles, focuses entirely on
what I would now call the “political mode” of EU policy making, and it presents
a very skeptical view of the Community’s problem-solving capacity. Though
published in 1988, it was written in 1983/84 (i.e., before the adoption of the Single-
Market program), and it compares the effects of intergovernmental bargaining on policy outcomes in German federalism and in the European Community.
In Germany, we had explained the blockades and suboptimal policy outcomes
(which our policy studies had identifi ed in certain fi elds) by the dependence
of national programs on the (nearly) unanimous agreement of Länder governments.
Taking the state of the Common Agricultural Policy as an example, the
article suggested that similar institutional conditions would also create a “jointdecision
trap” (JDT) at the European level. With the benefi t of hindsight (cf.
Chapter 10), it was easy to show that the basic explanatory model (which anticipated
George Tsebelis’ [2002] theory of “Veto Players”) remains valid wherever
its assumed institutional conditions are in force. But the popularity of the article
on the citation index owes probably even more to the fact that it was also easy
to show that these conditions do not exist everywhere, and that even where they
exist, they will not always generate policy blockades or compromises on the lowest
common denominator.
Legislative and Judicial Policy Making
In my subsequent work (beginning in Chapters 2 and 3, and fully developed
in Chapter 7), I have clarifi ed the domain and the limits of the JDT model by
distinguishing between the “political” and the “non-political” modes of policy
making at the European level. Political modes are defi ned by the fact that member-
state governments retain signifi cant veto powers. This is not only true of
purely “intergovernmental” negotiations over Treaty revisions and unanimous
policy choices, but also of European legislation in the “Community Mode”—
which requires an initiative of the Commission and a majority in the European
Parliament. But since the agreement of at least a qualifi ed majority of memberstate
governments in the Council of Ministers remains necessary in all cases, the
constellation continues to fi t the analytical category of a “joint-decision system”
(Scharpf 1997: 143–145; Chapter 7 in this volume). In other words, European
legislation in the “political mode” does depend on very broad agreement among
a wide variety of veto actors—and hence the mechanisms suggested by the JDT
model may apply.
This is not so where European policy choices can be adopted in the “nonpolitical
mode” by supranational agencies. Within specifi c policy domains, the
European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission and the European
Court of Justice (ECJ) have the power to act without the involvement of national
governments (or of the European Parliament, for that matter). For most
purposes, moreover, these agencies can be modeled as a unitary actor (rather than as a constellation of internal veto players). Within their fi elds of competence,
in other words, the institutional preconditions of the JDT model do not
apply—and hence there will be policy areas where the European capacity for
effective action is not impeded by the mechanisms specifi ed in the fi rst article.
Thus the ECB has full competence over monetary policy for the Euro area,
and it is more completely shielded from political directives or interference than
any national central bank (Articles 105, 108 ECT). The same is true of the European
Commission when it is defi ning and applying competition rules for private
companies and public enterprises and when it is controlling state aids that might
distort market competition (Articles 81–89 ECT). But while the policy areas and
policy goals that are to be served by these mandates are reasonably well specifi
ed in Treaty provisions adopted by intergovernmental agreement, there are no
similar substantive purposes circumscribing the Commission’s power to initiate
Treaty infringement proceedings against a member state (Article 226 ECT),
let alone the Court’s power to interpret and apply Community law (Articles
220–234 ECT). Both of the non-political powers have been used to massively
undermine the position of member states.
Since the power to apply implies a power to interpret the law and thus to
defi ne the domain of its application, the normative dividing line between legitimate
interpretation and illegitimate judicial legislation is diffi cult to defi ne even
in national polities. But there, the unquestioned normative priority of democratically
legitimated rule-making over judicial rule interpretation is matched in
practice by the ability of parliamentary majorities to correct judicial decisions
that misconstrue the legislative intent. And even in countries where the judiciary
may also review the constitutionality of legislation, its choices are politically constrained
by intense public debate, and they may generally be corrected through
qualifi ed majorities. In other words, judicial law-making occurs in the shadow
of democratically legitimated political authority. In the relationship between the
European Union and its member states, by contrast, ECJ decisions based on an
interpretation of the Treaty can only be corrected by the unanimous adoption
of a Treaty amendment that has to be ratifi ed in all twenty-seven member states,
and attempts to correct the interpretation of directives and regulations are impeded
by all the obstacles implied by the JDT. In other words, the potential
range of politically uncontrolled judicial legislation is far wider in the EU than it
is in any national constitutional democracy (Chapters 3, 4 and 7).
The foundations of this awesome power of the judiciary were already laid
by two famous ECJ decisions in the early 1960s that postulated the direct effect
of European law and its supremacy over all law of the member states.
Their policy-making effectiveness, however, did not become manifest before the
end of the 1970s. When harmonization directives were blocked in the Council, judicial authority was able to simply disallow national regulations by defi ning
them as non-tariff barriers that interfered with the economic liberties of importers
and exporters. While the effectiveness and the normative ambiguities
of this “integration through law” were soon recognized by politically sensitive
students of European law (Weiler 1982; Cappelletti/Seccombe/Weiler 1985),
many political scientists continued to focus exclusively on political action on
the European level and ignored the power of judge-made law to constrain and
selectively empower and shape political choices at the national and European
levels (Chapters 12, 13).
