Joint Institutional Frameworks in bilateral relations are circumscribed in policy scope, can lack adequate instruments for dynamic adaptation and provide limited access to decision-making processes internal to the contracting parties. Informal governance, the involvement of private actors as...

This working paper suggests to analyse agencification as a double process of institutional and policy centralisation. To that end, it develops a categorisation of agencies that incorporates these two dimensions. More specifically, it is argued that mixed outcomes where the levels of...

Die Analyse untersucht die wesentlichen Ziele und Instrumente der Europäischen Beschäftigungsstrategie (oder Offenen Methode der Koordinierung/Beschäftigung) und deren Auswirkungen auf Politikergebnisse und politisch-strukturelle Aspekte der Beteiligung von unterschiedlichen Akteuren. Die...

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...

In the last decade the industrial landscape and regulatory structures of the network industries such as telecommunications, energy and rail transport, have undergone a profound transformation. Liberalization has fragmented the former natural monopoly sectors; new players with new preferences...

Whilst the lack of democratic legitimation in the European polity is striking when measured against member state parliamentarian democracies, this focus shifts attention off those less obvious empirical processes which enhance democratic legitimation in Europe. In order to compensate for the...