Becoming In-crowd: Constructing EU Power in Informal Governance

Becoming In-crowd: Constructing EU Power in Informal Governance PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"This project analyses the role of the European Union in the informal setting of the G8 summit. The G8, as an instance of informal governance, forces us to reconsider existing conceptualisations of the EU's role or power. The G8 summit is not about formal agreements, but about fostering mutual understanding and cooperation through the building of an identity network. Consequently, we require an understanding of power that investigates if and how the EU participates in this network. To this end, this study employs an inductive approach, combining several different conceptual and empirical perspectives. This approach culminates in the general conclusion that the informality of the G8 allows for a flexible role of the European Union, in parallel yet subordinate to its member states. As an undefined participant, the European Commission was able to partake in the summit almost like a regular summit member, but it never really became one, because it did not have to. Consequentially, because the EU never really had to resolve its internal struggles of international representation, weak EU autonomy and erratic EU cohesion continue to affect the EU's role at the summit. Consequently, EU power in the G8 differs per level. While the EU is not quite a member on the formal level, they do participate informally in all elements that make up the summit. But if we look closer, at the identity level, we see that although the EU participates, its post-sovereign identity prevents it from being a true member of the core group."--Samenvatting auteur.

Becoming In-crowd: Constructing EU Power in Informal Governance

Becoming In-crowd: Constructing EU Power in Informal Governance PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This project analyses the role of the European Union in the informal setting of the G8 summit. The G8, as an instance of informal governance, forces us to reconsider existing conceptualisations of the EU's role or power. The G8 summit is not about formal agreements, but about fostering mutual understanding and cooperation through the building of an identity network. Consequently, we require an understanding of power that investigates if and how the EU participates in this network. To this end, this study employs an inductive approach, combining several different conceptual and empirical perspectives. This approach culminates in the general conclusion that the informality of the G8 allows for a flexible role of the European Union, in parallel yet subordinate to its member states. As an undefined participant, the European Commission was able to partake in the summit almost like a regular summit member, but it never really became one, because it did not have to. Consequentially, because the EU never really had to resolve its internal struggles of international representation, weak EU autonomy and erratic EU cohesion continue to affect the EU's role at the summit. Consequently, EU power in the G8 differs per level. While the EU is not quite a member on the formal level, they do participate informally in all elements that make up the summit. But if we look closer, at the identity level, we see that although the EU participates, its post-sovereign identity prevents it from being a true member of the core group."--Samenvatting auteur.

Informal Governance in the European Union

Informal Governance in the European Union PDF Author: Thomas Christiansen
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781843769729
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
How are the deals and decisions of the EU made - in the meeting rooms and at the conference tables, or by informal networks in the back corridors of power?

International Handbook on Informal Governance

International Handbook on Informal Governance PDF Author: Thomas Christiansen
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781001219
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
ÔThis volume provides a welcome overview of the diverse ways in which informal practices and norms shape policy in national states, the European Union, and international relations. The wide range of cases that feature in the volume point to the normative and substantive importance of informality. This volume is a valuable contribution to a fascinating and under-researched topic.Õ Ð Gary Marks, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, US and VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands Acknowledging that governance relies not only on formal rules and institutions but to a significant degree also on informal practices and arrangements, this unique Handbook examines and analyses a wide variety of theoretical, conceptual and normative perspectives on informal governance. The insights arising from this focus on informal governance are discussed from various disciplinary perspectives, within different policy domains, and in a number of regional and global contexts. This Handbook is an important contribution that will put informal governance firmly on the map of academic scholarship with its review of the range of the different uses and effects of informal arrangements across the globe. Bringing together multidisciplinary contributions on informal governance arrangements, this Handbook will appeal to postgraduate students in political science and scholars within the field of political science and global governance.

Informal Governance in the European Union

Informal Governance in the European Union PDF Author: Mareike Kleine
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469406
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
The European Union is the world’s most advanced international organization, presiding over a level of legal and economic integration unmatched in global politics. To explain this achievement, many observers point to its formal rules that entail strong obligations and delegate substantial power to supranational actors such as the European Commission. This legalistic view, Mareike Kleine contends, is misleading. More often than not, governments and bureaucrats informally depart from the formal rules and thereby contradict their very purpose. Behind the EU’s front of formal rules lies a thick network of informal governance practices. If not the EU’s rules, what accounts for the high level of economic integration among its members? How does the EU really work? In answering these questions, Kleine proposes a new way of thinking about international organizations. Informal governance affords governments the flexibility to resolve conflicts that adherence to EU rules may generate at the domestic level. By dispersing the costs that integration may impose on individual groups, it allows governments to keep domestic interests aligned in favor of European integration. The combination of formal rules and informal governance therefore sustains a level of cooperation that neither regime alone permits, and it reduces the EU’s democratic deficit by including those interests into deliberations that are most immediately affected by its decisions. In illustrating informal norms and testing how they work, Kleine provides the first systematic analysis, based on new material from national and European archives and other primary data, of the parallel development of the formal rules and informal norms that have governed the EU from the 1958 Treaty of Rome until today.

Informal Governance in the European Union

Informal Governance in the European Union PDF Author: Andreas Follesdal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The study of European integration tends to focus on formal aspects of the integration process: formal decision-making procedures, the role and functioning of institutions, the provisions contained in the treaties, the operation of regulatory regimes in the various policy areas. This is hardly surprising: what is distinctive about the integration process in Europe - what distinguishes integration in Europe from international co-operation in other parts of the world - is the creation and growth of a unique institutional and legal framework structuring the relations between the participating states. An early and still important contribution to the understanding of the integration process has been the 'integration through law' school which regarded the development of a supranational legal order as the key factor in the explanation of the integration process (Cappoletti et al 1986). If the formalisation of inter-state relations is regarded as the essence of the integration process, it is hardly surprising that scholars should concentrate on the formal procedures and the institutionalised arenas for decision-making. However, as has become increasingly evident in the course of recent developments in the European Union, there is an important undercurrent to the formal integration process. This concerns the operation of informal networks which link policy-makers to client groups as well as actors across EU, national and sub-national institutions, and influence (or at least seek to influence) decision-making in the EU. This practice of informal governance is, of course, not a recent phenomenon, but a long-standing dimension of EU politics. This is a recognition that has been reflected by some approaches to European integration: in particular the literature on policy networks and the new institutionalism writing of the 1990s have picked up on the less formal aspects of the EU policy process. Nevertheless, informal governance has never been systematically studied and assessed: this is the void that this volume seeks to fill.

Informal Governance in the European Union

Informal Governance in the European Union PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : European Union
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Social Construction of Corruption in Europe

The Social Construction of Corruption in Europe PDF Author: Dirk Tänzler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317015819
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The volume demonstrates the suitability of the theory of social constructivism in portraying and analyzing the diversity of the phenomenon of corruption. The approach of social constructivism taken in this volume is able to reconstruct the 'construction of corruption' both from a societal perspective, by assessing it as generally accepted or tolerated behaviour in more or less standardized rule-governed social situations, and from the perspective of actors who perceive corrupt behaviour as problem solving in everyday life. The volume proves the usefulness of a social construction perspective for empirical research. It contains case studies of social definitions of corruption in eleven European countries that contribute in different ways to establishing a grounded theory of the phenomenon of corruption.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability

The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability PDF Author: Mark Bovens
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191002577
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 807

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Book Description
Over the past two decades public accountability has become not only an icon in political, managerial, and administrative discourse but also the object of much scholarly analysis across a broad range of social and administrative sciences. This handbook provides a state of the art overview of recent scholarship on public accountability. It collects, consolidates, and integrates an upsurge of inquiry currently scattered across many disciplines and subdisciplines. It provides a one-stop-shop on the subject, not only for academics who study accountability, but also for practitioners who are designing, adjusting, or struggling with mechanisms for accountable governance. Drawing on the best scholars in the field from around the world, The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability showcases conceptual and normative as well as the empirical approaches in public accountability studies. In addition to giving an overview of scholarly research in a variety of disciplines, it takes stock of a wide range of accountability mechanisms and practices across the public, private and non-profit sectors, making this volume a must-have for both practitioners and scholars, both established and new to the field.

Adapting to EU Multi-Level Governance

Adapting to EU Multi-Level Governance PDF Author: C.J Paraskevopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351960792
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The main theme of this book is the adaptation process of the new EU member states from Central-Eastern Europe (Hungary and Poland) to the multi-level system of governance in public policy, particularly in the regional and environmental policy areas. The work conceptualizes policy learning and institutional and policy adaptation within the EU system of governance and draws lessons from the experience of previous waves of enlargement-cohesion-countries (Ireland, Portugal and Greece). In doing so, the book makes an important contribution to the literature on the transformation of domestic policy-making structures, as a result of the increasing Europeanization of public policy, as well as on the conceptual tools, explanatory variables and mechanisms determining this process.

The Routledge Handbook of European Public Policy

The Routledge Handbook of European Public Policy PDF Author: Nikolaos Zahariadis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317404025
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of European Public Policy provides an in-depth and systematic understanding of EU policies. It covers theoretical approaches on the policy process and the various stages of public policy-formulation and decision making; and discusses key questions of contemporary European governance. The handbook introduces major concepts, trends, and methodologies in a variety of comparative settings thereby providing the first systematic effort to include theoretical and substantive analyses of European public policies in a single volume. The handbook is divided into four sections: Concepts and approaches in EU policymaking; Substantive policies of the EU, including economic and social, fiscal and monetary, areas of freedom, security and justice, and external policies; Elements of the policy cycle; Themes ranging from crisis and resistance to controversies in education. This handbook will be an essential reference for students and scholars of the European Union, public policy, social policy and more broadly for European and comparative politics.