Experimentalist Governance in the European Union: Towards a New Architecture

by Charles F. Sabel (Editor), Jonathan Zeitlin (Editor)

Overview

This book advances a novel interpretation of EU governance. Its central claim is that the EU's regulatory successes within-and increasingly beyond-its borders rest on the emergence of a recursive process of framework rule making and revision by European and national actors across a wide range of policy domains. In this architecture, framework goals and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those of others pursuing different means to the same general ends. The framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures are themselves periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. The editors' introduction sets out the core features of this experimentalist architecture and contrasts it to conventional interpretations of EU governance, especially the principal-agent conceptions underpinning many contemporary theories of democratic sovereignty and effective, legitimate law making. Subsequent chapters by an interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars explore the architecture's applicability across a series of key policy domains, including data privacy, financial market regulation, energy, competition, food safety, GMOs, environmental protection, anti-discrimination, fundamental rights, justice and home affairs, and external relations. Their authoritative studies show both how recent developments often take an experimentalist turn but also admit of multiple, contrasting interpretations or leave open the possibility of reversion to more familiar types of governance. The results will be indispensable for all those concerned with the nature of the EU and its contribution to contemporary governance beyond the nation-state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191610189
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	02/25/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Charles F. Sabel is Professor of Law and Social Science at Columbia Law School, a post he has held since 1995. He was formerly the Ford International Professor of Social Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His publications include Learning by Monitoring (2006, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism (with Michael C. Dorf, 2006, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Can We Put an End to Sweatshops? A New Democracy Form on Raising Global Labor Standards (with Archon Fung and Dara O'Rourke, 2001, Beacon Press), Worlds of Possibility (ed. with Jonathan Zeitlin, 1997, Cambridge University Press), Ireland: Local Partnerships and Social Innovation (with the LEED Programme of the OECD, 1996), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (with Michael Piore, 1984, Basics Books), Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (1982, Cambridge University Press). Jonathan Zeitlin is Professor of Public Policy and Governance within the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directed the European Union Center of Excellence and the Center for World Affairs and Global Economy (WAGE). He has published extensively on new forms of governance in the European Union, as well as on comparative and historical analysis of business organization, employment relations, and public policy. He is frequently invited to provide policy advice and present his research on EU governance to European institutions, national governments, think tanks, and NGOs. Among his recent books are Changing European Employment and Welfare Regimes (Routledge, 2009); The Oxford Handbook of Business History (OUP, 2007); and The Open Method of Coordination in Action (PIE-Peter Lang, 2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

List of contributors ix

List of tables xi

List of abbreviations xiii

1 Learning From Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU Charles F. Sabel Jonathan Zeitlin 1

2 Innovating European Data Privacy Regulation: Unintended Pathways to Experimentalist Governance Abraham Newman 29

3 The Lamfalussy Process: Polyarchic Origins of Networked Financial Rule-Making in the EU Elliot Posner 43

4 Experimentalist Governance in the European Energy Sector Burkard Eberlein 61

5 Networked Competition Governance in the EU: Delegation, Decentralization, or Experimentalist Architecture? Yane Svetiev 79

6 Emerging Experimentalism in EU Environmental Governance Ingmar von Homeyer 121

7 Responding to Catastrophe: Towards a New Architecture for EU Food Safety Regulation? Ellen Vos 151

8 EU Governance of GMOs: Political Struggles and Experimentalist Solutions? Patrycja Dabrowska 177

9 Stumbling into Experimentalism: The EU Anti-Discrimination Regime Gráinne de Búrca 215

10 Experimentalist Governance in justice and Home Affairs Jörg Monar 237

11 The Role of Evaluation in Experimentalist Governance: Learning by Monitoring in the Establishment of the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice Olivier De Schutter 261

12 Experimentalist Governance in EU External Relations: Enlargement and the European Neighbourhood Policy Elsa Tulmets 297

References 325

General Index 355