New Modes of Governance in the EU: Common Objectives versus National Preferences

Manuele Citi and Martin Rhodes

No 1, European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) from CONNEX and EUROGOV networks

Abstract: The emergence in the European Union of new modes of governance (NMG) such as the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) has produced an enormous literature that falls into four broad categories: a theoretical approach seeks to explain why such methods emerged and locates them in existing theories of European integration, policy-making and institutional change; a strongly normative approach extols the non-hierarchical, deliberative virtues of NMG and ‘soft’ law and prioritizes the potential of the OMC as a font of ‘social learning’; a more empirical approach assesses new modes in operation across different policy areas and countries; and a more critical approach assesses the claims made on the OMC’s behalf as an effective instrument of policy making. Apart from our concern to critically review this literature, our aim is also to focus in on one of its greatest deficiencies: the absence, hitherto, of a comprehensive, multi-level framework for analysis, capable of specifying the conditions under which OMC practices are likely to produce a convergence of member state policies on common objectives. In doing so we also bring into our account a parallel literature – on policy diffusion and learning – that is frequently referred to by studies of the OMC and other new modes of governance but is rarely integrated systematically into their analysis.

Keywords: Europeanization; open coordination; governance; policy learning; policy diffusion; deliberative democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-01-16
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/typo3/sit ... abstract/N-07-01.htm Abstract (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/typo3/site/fileadmin/wp/abstract/N-07-01.htm [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/typo3/site/fileadmin/wp/abstract/N-07-01.htm)
http://www.connex-network.org/eurogov/pdf/egp-newgov-N-07-01.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erp:eurogo:p0011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) from CONNEX and EUROGOV networks
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Spiegel ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).