Current approaches examining the effect of institutions on policy processes have difficulty in explaining the results of the legislative process of codecision between European Parliament and Council within the European Union. The formal Treaty changes which gave rise to codecision have in turn...

Current research on the main bodies of the European Union (Council, Commission, Parliament) tends to concentrate either on relations within these bodies, or on relations between them. The result is that little attention is paid to how these two intersect; that is, to how changes in relations...

The concept of path dependence is being used in highly deterministic ways in neo-institutionalist analysis, so that studies using this framework have difficulty in accounting for, or predicting, change. However, the original Polya urn model from which path dependence theory draws predicts that...

Public-interest services constitute an essential element of the modern welfare state. The provision of utilities for all at an affordable price have long been regarded as a prerequisite of everyday life generally guaranteed by the state. But in recent years, publicly-owned utilities throughout...

Die europäische regulative Politik erwächst aus einem bunten Feld nationaler regulativer Traditionen und Interessen. Diese stoßen im europäischen Entscheidungsprozeß aufeinander und werden zum Ausgleich gebracht. Die informellen Muster, die - im Rahmen der europäischen institutionellen...

The European Union is a composite democracy (Heritier 1999a; Benz 1998; Auel et al 2000; Manin 2000). It is comprised of diverse elements of democratic legitimation: the vertical legitimation through parliamentary representation in the EP; executive representation through delegates of democratically-elected...

Community legislation is unquestionably a factor to be reckoned with in member-state policy making. But the extent and mode of its impact on domestic policies and administrative structures will depend on the existing policy practices and the political and institutional structures of the country...

The focus of this analysis is on new modes of governance and government in the European Union that (a) include private actors in policy formulation, and/or (b) while being based on public actors, (c) are only marginally based on legislation (these are hierarchical insofar as they are subject to...

Observers of the European policy-making process are inevitably struck by the contrast between cumbersome decision-making processes on the one hand and simultaneous swift policy developments on the other. Many policies seem to be stuck for long periods in the Council, while at the same time...

Although the goal of market integration has not actually been challenged in recent years, it has nevertheless increasingly come to be considered incomplete and in need of complementary goals which serve the general interest by promoting social cohesion and equality. The debate has been conducted...