Looking Inside the Blackbox : Competence Allocation in EU Competition Policy from an Actor-Centred Perspective

One of the most important challenges for economic policy in the 21st century is the ubiquitous process of globalisation. Traditional governance concepts based on sovereign nation-states are increasingly called into question. This is the reason why alternative modes of governance such as network governance or the European Open Method of Coordination have become popular. However, the bulk of the relevant literature leaves the important issue of the dynamics of competence allocation unexplored. Most commonly it is left untouched and treated as a "blackbox" instead. We aim to show that the more general framework of multilevel systems of institutions can contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics that determine the allocation of competences in such systems and its evolution. We present an institutional-economic analysis that views this allocation and its dynamics as the result of self-interested, strategically-behaving agents. Thus, we contribute towards a clarification of the "blackbox" of complex governance processes that will play a dominating role in 21st century's international economic policy. In this paper, we apply our approach to the specific field of EU competition policy. We examine in depth the fundamental changes currently going on in this field