EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Reforming European Institutions of Governance

Johan P. Olsen

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2002, vol. 40, issue 4, 581-602

Abstract: The European Union has combined a belief in institutional engineering with the experience that comprehensive reform is difficult to achieve. The long–term development has been in a consistent direction. Yet, the history of the Union is one of founding acts and deliberate institution–building, as well as informal and gradual institutional evolution where common practices have been codified into formal–legal institutions. Institutional arrangements are contingent and malleable, but not necessarily in a voluntaristic way. A simple model of institutional engineering, assuming predetermined political will, understanding and power, is not likely to capture processes of comprehensive reform in complex and dynamic political orders like the EU. This does not deny that there are several options for deliberate intervention in existing structures. EU reformers may both reduce the need for reform and make reform more feasible.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5965.00389

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:bla:jcmkts:v:40:y:2002:i:4:p:581-602

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:40:y:2002:i:4:p:581-602