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Governance in the European Union

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8
Governance in the
European Union
Thomas Christiansen

Chapter Contents
• Introduction 103
• Conceptualizing governance in the European Union 104
• Multilevel governance 107
• ‘New governance’ and the European regulatory state 108
• Normative debates about governance 110
• Conclusion 112

Reader’s Guide
This chapter provides an overview of the ‘governance turn’ in the study of European integration.
Opening with a discussion of the reasons why governance as a concept and as a practice has become
so prevalent in Europe, the chapter goes on to discuss the various ways in which the governance
approach has evolved. Two strands of this literature—‘multilevel governance’ and the ‘regulatory
state’—are examined in greater detail here (but see Chapter 15 for a discussion of the open method
of coordination, or OMC). The chapter then introduces some of the important normative debates
to which the ‘governance turn’ has given rise, before concluding with some observations about the
relevance of the governance approach in the current phase of European integration.

introduction of a traditional, hierarchical government at the helm of

The concept of ‘governance’ has become ubiquitious
over the past couple of decades. Looking at EU poli-
tics, in particular, in terms of governance—that is, as a
way of governing that does not assume the presence
the polity—is attractive from a conceptual point of
view, not least because it promises a systematic way of
studying the European Union that recognizes the par-
ticularities of the European construction. At the same
time, as a concept, governance has shown itself to be
104 Thomas Christiansen
rather open and flexible, facilitating a wide variety
of usages. Taking as its starting point a rather vague
agreement on what governance is not, it has been pos-
sible for scholars to find numerous applications for the
governance concept in empirical research.
Beyond the academic community, the idea of govern-
ance also has political appeal in allowing policy-makers
to talk about EU decision-making without invoking the
idea that Europe is in the process of becoming a state (if
not a ‘super-state’). Even if statehood at the European
level has never been a possibility, or indeed desirable,
there was nevertheless a period in the early 2000s when
the linguistic taboo of discussing the EU using the
nation-state analogy was broken. Romano Prodi, the
former Commission President, spoke of the European
Commission as a ‘European government’; Joschka
Fischer, then German Foreign Minister, called for the
‘finalité politique’ of the integration process, and the
Constitutional Convention that was in part inspired by
these ambitions drafted a treaty that foresaw an EU For-
eign Minister, EU laws, and a ‘constitution for Europe’.
However, as we now know, these ambitions were
buried when the Constitutional Treaty failed to be
ratified. The Lisbon Treaty, while largely preserving
the substance of the constitutional project, changed
the language of statehood, because this was consid-
ered to be highly problematic in terms of popular
acceptance. In this context, the concept of governance
has offered an appealing alternative to the conception
of the EU as a nascent state.
As a result, talk about ‘European governance’ and the
use of the governance concept have become extremely
widespread, spawning a vast literature of policy papers,
scholarly articles, books, and even an online journal
dedicated specifically to European governance (Living
Reviews in European Governance—see ‘Weblinks’). But
the extensive and somewhat inflationary application of
the concept has itself become a problem. It is applied
to an increasingly broad range of phenomena and its
diverse usage across different communities of scholars
makes it difficult to identify what ‘governance’ seeks to
describe (Kohler-Koch and Rittberger, 2009).
Conceptualizing governance in the
European Union
In his seminal article, Jachtenfuchs (2001: 245) discussed
the ‘governance approach to European integration’
in juxtaposition to ‘classical integration theory’. The
governance approach, in this perspective, is distinctive
because it treats the Euro-polity as an independent,
not (as ‘classical’ theories have done) as a dependent
variable. In other words, those studying governance
are more interested in what the European Union does,
rather than how the EU has come about. In charting the
conceptual roots of the approach, Jachtenfuchs identi-
fied, inter alia, network governance, regulatory poli-
tics, and Europeanization research (see Chapter 9) as
influential contributions to the governance literature.
Other authors have helped to clarify what govern-
ance is (see Box 8.1). Rhodes (1996: 652) defined govern-
ance as ‘self-organising, inter-organisational networks
[which] complement markets and hierarchies as
governing structures for authoritatively allocating
resources and exercising control and coordination’.
Stoker (1998: 17) reminded us that while governance
is seen increasingly in opposition to government, it
does actually perform the same functions, ‘creating the
conditions for ordered rule and collective action’. This
implies that its distinctive focus is not on outputs, as
such, but the process of achieving those outputs. Hix
(1998: 343), in his important contribution to the debate,
pointed out that the ‘new governance conception of the
EU emphasises the informal nature of the policy proc-
ess, the non-hierarchical structure of the institutions
and the non-redistributive nature of policy outputs’.
From this, we can see that most authors identify as
important the role of non-hierarchical networks; regula-
tion rather than redistribution in policy-making; and the
use of new instruments and procedures. However, con-
tributors to the governance debate often privilege one of
these aspects over the others and, as result, the govern-
ance literature has mushroomed in a number of differ-
ent directions. The reliance on, and relation to, research
on policy networks and epistemic communities has
been particularly strong (see, for example, Börzel, 1997;
Zito, 2001; Knill and Tosun, 2009; Faleg, 2012).
Building on such insights, the governance approach
has also been used to explore the way in which policy
networks in the EU have become institutionalized,
whether through committee structures (Christiansen
and Kirchner, 2000) or through the growing number
of regulatory agencies (Coen and Thatcher, 2007;
Trondal and Jeppesen, 2008; Dehousse et al., 2010;
Groenleer et al., 2010; Wonka and Rittberger, 2011).
Others have focused on the informal dimension of
governance (Christiansen and Piattoni, 2004).
As the same time, governance research has also
increasingly ‘drilled down’ into the specifics of particular
 Governance in the European Union 105

Box 8.1  Definitions of ‘governance’

(European) ‘Self-organising, inter-organisational networks [which] complement markets and hierarchies as governing
Governance structures for authoritatively allocating resources and exercising control and coordination’ (Rhodes, 1996: 652)
‘The development of governing styles in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors
have become blurred [and a] focus on governing mechanisms which do not rest on recourse to the author-
ity and sanctions of government’ (Stoker, 1998: 17)
‘The intentional regulation of social relationships and the underlying conflicts by reliable and durable means
and institutions, instead of the direct use of power and violence’ ( Jachtenfuchs, 2001: 246)
‘A process and a state whereby public and private actors engage in the intentional regulation of societal
relationships and conflicts [and which] denotes the participation of public and private actors, as well as non-
hierarchical forms of decision making’ (Kohler-Koch and Rittberger, 2006: 28)
Multilevel ‘The dispersion of authority to multi-task, territorially mutually exclusive jurisdictions in a relatively stable
governance system with limited Jurisdictional levels and a limited number of units [as well as the presence of ] special-
ized, territorially overlapping jurisdictions in a relatively flexible, non-tiered system with a large number of
jurisdictions’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2001a: 000)
Regulatory ‘Reliance on regulation? Rather than public ownership, planning or centralised administration? Characterizes
state the methods of the regulatory state’ (Majone, 1994: 77)
‘Relies on extensive delegation of powers to independent institutions: regulatory agencies or commissions,
but also the judiciary’ (Majone, 1999:1)

sectors or policy fields. See, for example, the work done
on European environmental governance (Lenschow,
1999; von Homeyer, 2004), on EU economic govern-
ance (Puetter, 2012), or on EU external governance
(Lavenex, 2004; Schimmelfennig and Wagner, 2004).
While this proliferation of sector-specific applications
demonstrates the value of a governance perspective in
guiding research in a multitude of different arenas, it
contradicts the expectations of Jachtenfuchs (2001), for
whom the governance approach was a welcome depar-
ture from the fragmentation of policy studies that had
characterized EU research in the 1970s and 1980s.
Matters are somewhat complicated by the fact
that one of the first and most important contribu-
tions on ‘supranational governance’ (Sandholtz and
Stone Sweet, 1997, 1999) did not depart from the use
of traditional concepts and debates. Indeed, Sandholtz
and Stone Sweet’s theory positioned itself within the
established theoretical arena of intergovernmental-
ism and neo-functionalism. Their main contribution
was to re-evaluate the role of supranational institu-
tions in the integration process, and in particular to
emphasize the importance of judicial rule-making as
one of the key drivers of this process.
What this example demonstrates is that, in the
expanding field of governance research, it is becom-
ing increasingly difficult to identify a single, coherent
approach. Beyond agreement on the basic elements
of what constitutes governance (and what it is not),
the selective focus of individual authors means that
governance denotes rather different things to differ-
ent people. Arguably, this suggests that the differ-
ent strands of governance research deserve, or even
require, their own distinctive label in order to maintain
analytical clarity. An exercise in coming to grips with
the way in which the concept of governance has been
used to study the EU therefore needs to start by distin-
guishing some of the different usages of this concept.
It is possible to identify three approaches that have
been especially important:
• the multilevel governance approach, which empha-
sizes the nature of EU policy-making as involving
a multiplicity of actors on a variety of territorial
levels beyond the nation state;
• the new governance approach (or agenda), which
views the EU as a ‘regulatory state’ using non-
majoritarian decision-making to engage in
problem-solving; and
• the study of new modes of governance, drawing on
the use of non-binding instruments to make poli-
cies at the European level (with the open method
of coordination, or OMC, as a prime example—
see Chapter 15).
106 Thomas Christiansen
Each of these understandings of governance takes the
view that there is something fundamentally ‘new’
in the way in which the EU operates that requires a
departure from traditional approaches. As such, their
application in the study of European integration has
mainly been driven by external factors—that is, by
perceived changes in the empirical object of study,
rather than (internal) developments within integra-
tion theory (see Chapter 7). A common feature of
these governance approaches is their emphasis on
non-hierarchical networks as a key aspect of EU pol-
icy-making and of the EU as a whole. The presence
of such policy networks, bringing together EU offi-
cials, national administrators and regulators, business
interests, non-governmental organization (NGO) rep-
resentatives, and other stakeholders, is analytically
relevant, because networks ‘cut across’ the formal
boundaries that exist between institutions, territorial
levels, and the public and the private spheres.
However, despite such commonalities, there are
also important differences within this field; these,
however, are in danger of being overlooked. One
difference lies in which ‘classical’ theory is being cri-
tiqued. For example, multilevel governance is best
seen as part of the more established integration the-
ory debate, and in particular as a response to the domi-
nance of liberal intergovernmentalism in the 1990s.
By contrast, the new governance agenda can be seen
in opposition to the comparative politics approach to
the EU. In other words, ‘governance’ is sometimes
presented as an alternative to the view that the EU is
an intergovernmental arrangement among sovereign
states; it is sometimes juxtaposed with the view that
the EU itself should be studied as an emerging state,
with its institutions and procedures comparable to
those of nation states.
From this opposition to both (liberal) intergov-
ernmentalist and comparative politics perspectives
to European integration resulted a perception that
governance approaches could constitute some sort of
‘third way’ to the study of the EU, one that eschews
the reliance on the Westphalian state as the underly-
ing paradigm of EU politics (Pollack, 2005). This not
only justified the original designation of governance
as ‘new’ when it was first introduced during the 1990s,
but it also underpinned its perception of the EU as a
sui generis kind of polity—a new kind of political con-
struct that departs from the way in which both inter-
national and domestic politics have operated in the
past, or are operating elsewhere.
This presentation of governance as one corner of a
triangular debate about integration theories involv-
ing international relations and comparative politics
approaches might have helped to group together a vari-
ety of perspectives, presenting these as an ‘approach’.
But this has become more difficult in view of the way in
which governance has also become widely used in the
study of international and domestic politics. In this sense,
governance, be it global, regional, or national, appears to
be a universal phenomenon, albeit one that has a strong
and distinctive presence in the context of the EU. There
is, for example, a expanding literature on ‘global gov-
ernance’. The extent to which similar approaches and
assumptions can be employed to study global politics
and EU politics raises questions over the uniqueness of
the EU as a political system (see Rosenau and Cziempiel,
1992, for an early discussion of global governance, and
Reilly, 2004, for a comparison of national, sub-national,
and European understandings of the concept).
What this discussion shows is that, even though
the governance approach has been seen by some as
an argument for treating the EU as sui generis (see Hix,
1998), it has at the same time helped others to make a
connection, if not a comparison, between research on
the EU and on phenomena elsewhere. This has helped
to overcome the n = 1 problem that arises when Euro-
pean integration is treated as unique (Krahmann,
2003). In this vein, research on European governance
can draw on insights from research in other areas, or
on other territorial levels, while in turn work on the
EU can inspire governance research elsewhere.
Key Points
• The concept of governance has successfully described
the transformation of policy-making in many parts of the
world over the past few decades.
• Using the governance concept has been particularly use-
ful, given the difficulty involved in categorizing the Euro-
polity in terms of the traditional distinction between
international system and nation state.
• The governance approach is a broad concept, capturing
a variety of different perspectives and applications. At
its core, it involves the understanding that policy is made
through non-hierarchical networks of both public and
private actors located across different territorial levels.
• Multilevel governance, the regulatory state approach,
and the study of new modes of governance are the main
expressions of the ‘governance turn’ in EU studies.

Multilevel governance
Multilevel governance (MLG) was advanced in the
1990s as a particular take on governance in the Euro-
pean Union, challenging the state-centric nature view
of the EU prevalent up to that point (Marks et al., 1996).
In their account of European integration, the founders
of MLG emphasized the independent role of suprana-
tional institutions, such as the Commission and the
European Court of Justice (ECJ), whilst also pointing
out the internal differences that exist within member
states and the inability of national executives to control
how interests within individual states are represented.
‘Multilevel’ here referred primarily to the influence of
EU-level actors and regional actors alongside the repre-
sentatives of national executives (see also Marks, 1992).
Whereas the former was very much in the mould of
earlier neo-functionalist and more recent supranational
governance accounts of integration, the additional of
the regional level as part of the analytical frame was
new and innovative. This aspect of MLG struck a chord
with many researchers at the time, especially because
it connected to the analysis of the EU conducted in
federal systems such as Germany (Conzelmann, 1998;
Benz and Eberlein, 1999; Eising and Kohler-Koch, 1999).
From the mid-1990s onwards, MLG quickly estab-
lished itself as one of the main rivals to liberal inter-
governmentalism. It starts from the observation that
much of EU policy-making relies on networks of
actors, but goes beyond this by emphasizing the sig-
nificance of different territorial levels in this process.
On the back of a critique of the liberal intergovern-
mentalist assumption that central governments aggre-
gate national preferences, MLG points to the direct
relations that have developed between EU actors and
regional and local representatives within states. These
relations bypass central governments and thereby
prevent national executives maintaining a monopoly
over the representation of territorial interests. Con-
sequently, regions and municipalities become recog-
nizable as actors independent of their central state.
Moreover, their networking with the European Com-
mission and amongst each other creates regional and
local levels of interest representation within the EU.
From this perspective, then, EU politics transforms
itself from a ‘two-level game’ (Putnam, 1988) to one
that involves multiple levels of government. Together
with the incorporation of insights from the study of
policy networks, this perspective constituted the basis
of the MLG concept.
Governance in the European Union 107
A number of interrelated developments in the
late 1980s and early 1990s—the reform of the Struc-
tural Funds, the growth of regional lobbying, and the
creation of the Committee of the Regions (CoR)—all
brought home the fact that territorial entities within
the member states did have meaningful, two-way
contact with supranational institutions. This in turn
fuelled interest in MLG.
The appeal of this approach meant that its applica-
tion, initially centred around the study of EU regional
policy (Sutcliffe, 2000; Bache, 2008), eventually
expanded to cover numerous other policy domains.
Through the lens of MLG, authors have analysed the
influence of regional actors in areas such as employ-
ment policy (Goetschy, 2003), research policy (Kaiser
and Prange, 2002), environmental policy (Bulkeley et
al., 2003), and even foreign policy (Smith, 2004; see
also the expansive collection of sectoral case studies in
Tömmel and Verdun, 2008).
What these policy studies have shown is that there
is added value to incorporating actors beyond national
executives and EU officials in accounts of EU policy-
making. At the same time, these studies demonstrate
the variation of such influence across different policy
sectors and over different points in time (Schultze,
2003). Subsequently, MLG has also been applied to
the implementation stage of the policy process, a
logical move in view of the decentralized nature of
the EU’s administrative system (Thielemann, 1998;
O’Toole and Hanf, 2003).
Multilevel governance has therefore succeeded not
only as a effective critique of ‘state-centric’ integra-
tion theories, but also in framing a growing body of
research on various aspects of the EU policy process;
it addresses deeper questions about the potential for
transformation in the Euro-polity (Eising and Kohler
Koch, 1999; Piattoni, 2009). However, while MLG has
effectively exposed the weaknesses of liberal inter-
governmentalism, it has not developed systematic
and explicit statements about cause and effect, about
dependent and independent variables, or about the
scope conditions governing its explanatory power. In
other words, it lacks the credentials of a theory such
as liberal intergovernmentalism. As it stands, then,
MLG constitutes an approach that has added valu-
able insights, which allow for a more comprehensive
understanding of EU politics and policy-making, but it
has not developed as a fully fledged theory.
Recent advances in the literature have nevertheless
sought to advance MLG beyond the early claims that
108 Thomas Christiansen
EU level and sub-state level actors matter in the Euro-
pean policy process. These aim to enhance its explana-
tory power and theoretical potential. Piattoni (2009),
for example, building on the earlier work of Hooghe
and Marks (2001a) and Skelcher (2005), has pointed out
that territory in the emerging Euro-polity is not neatly
separated into European, national, regional, and local
levels, but that policies are often made within or for
overlapping, interstitial, or loosely defined spaces that
do not necessarily correspond to pre-existing territo-
rial jurisdictions. This distinction between the older
‘type I’ form of MLG and a more recently identified
‘type II’ approach helps scholars to engage with the
tensions between different forms of MLG, whilst also
brings new normative dilemmas to light.
Although the initial statement of MLG was rational-
ist in its emphasis on cost–benefit calculations, informa-
tional asymmetries, and institutional self-interests, other
contributions to the field have sought to demonstrate
the constructivist potential of MLG (Christiansen,
1997). For example, in an interesting departure from
the usual application of MLG, Aalberts (2004) employs
a constructivist reading of the concept that seeks to rec-
oncile the empirical observation that the significance of
sovereignty in the Euro-polity has been declining with
the apparent resilience of the nation state.
Key Points
• Multilevel governance emphasizes the involvement and
potential influence of actors from different territorial
levels in the making of EU policy.
• Much of the literature making use of the insights of MLG
has focused on the role of regions in the politics of the EU.
• Multilevel governance has demonstrated its usefulness
above all in research on the agenda-setting and imple-
mentation phases of the EU policy process.
• Beyond the study of EU policy-making, MLG has also
informed research on constitutive politics and the trans-
formation of governance in the EU.
‘New governance’ and the European
regulatory state
A rather different perspective on governance has been
taken by authors who have conceptualized the Euro-
pean Union as a regulatory state. Rather than focusing
on multiple levels of governance or on networks of
actors, here the focus is on the kind of decisions being
taken at the European level and the instruments that
are being employed in order to achieve outcomes.
The ‘regulatory state’ is seen in contrast to the tradi-
tional welfare state, interchangeably labelled also as
the ‘interventionist’, ‘positive’, or ‘dirigiste’ state—
that is, one that is heavily involved in the allocation
of goods and the redistribution of wealth. The regula-
tory state, by contrast, does not involve classic deci-
sions about spending and taxation, but is essentially
concerned with socio-economic regulation (Majone,
1994, 1996; Caporaso, 1996; McGowan and Wallace,
1996).
While the rise of the regulatory function of the state
has been part of a wider phenomenon both within
states as well as globally (Moran, 2002), the argument
about the EU as a regulatory state built on a number
of factors that were specific to the EU. First, the EU’s
Budget, in relation to the combined gross domestic
product (GDP) of the member states’ economies, is
comparatively small and does not permit the kind of
social expenditure that welfare states have at their dis-
posal. At the same time, the EU has no practically no
tax-raising powers and cannot use taxes as an instru-
ment of redistribution.
As a result, the EU has no choice but to intervene in
the economy and in society through regulation. While
regulatory activity at the European level was modest
until the mid-1980s, hampered by the need for unani-
mous decision-making, a step-change occurred with
the Single European Act (SEA) and the roll-out of the
1992 Programme. The move to qualified majority
voting (QMV) made the passage of European legisla-
tion much easier. Re-regulation at the European level,
combined with the mutual recognition of technical
and product standards at the national level, opened
up member states’ markets, and created the condi-
tions for regulatory competition among national and
regional jurisdictions (Young, 2006).
In terms of institutional foundations, scholars have
focused on a number of particular arrangements
in the EU through which regulatory activity takes
place. Among these are the delegation of powers to
the European Commission, the creation of a large
number of decentralized agencies, and the growth of
regulatory networks. What these mechanisms have in
common, and what has been identified as a hallmark
of the European regulatory state, is that decision-
making through these institutional arrangements is

both non-majoritarian and removed from the elec-
toral process. This means that regulatory decisions
are not taken through the ‘normal’ channels used by
liberal democratic systems—majority votes by elected
representatives in parliament or decisions by national
executives accountable to voters—but by non-elected
technocrats.
This departure from standard norms of parliamen-
tary democracy has led to debate among scholars (see
‘Normative debates about governance’ for a discus-
sion). For proponents of regulatory governance, the
immediate justification for this independence from
politics has centred on the following argument: the
kind of regulatory decisions that are taken in the EU
are about the search for the best solution to a given
regulatory problem. As such, they are about identify-
ing what is called the ‘Pareto optimal’ outcome among
a range of possible solutions—a Pareto optimum
being the outcome at which the greatest possible col-
lective gain is being reached. Setting technical stand-
ards for industrial goods, regulating financial services,
preventing monopolistic tendencies and other forms
of market abuse, or supervising safety standards and
procedures for air travel and maritime transport, are
all examples of the kind of activities that should, from
this perspective, better be left to independent Euro-
pean regulators.
In the same vein, it is argued that it is not only right,
but also indeed imperative to entrust technocrats and
experts with the search for the best possible solutions.
Equipped with access to information, possessing exper-
tise in the particular area in which regulatory decisions
are required, and insulated from political pressures,
technocrats will have the best chances of identifying
the right solution. Indeed, from the vantage point of
the search for the Pareto-optimal outcome, majori-
tarian institutions, which tend to decide through vot-
ing on different options, cannot be trusted to come
up with the best solutions. Consequently, regulatory
governance arrangements involve the setting up of
independent agencies that are removed from political
interference so that they can do their work objectively.
The logic of non-majoritarian decision-making
is most entrenched in the area of monetary policy
in which the independence of central banks has
become an article of faith. As long as the goal of sta-
ble money and low inflation is accepted as beneficial
to society as a whole, it follows that the setting of
interest rates and decisions about money supply
should not be subject to the shifting preferences of
Governance in the European Union 109
electoral competition and party politics. Independent
central bankers can ignore the short-term pressures
of elections and instead can take decisions based on
the long-term interests of monetary stability in mind.
In line with the central bank analogy, the ‘regula-
tory state’ school of thought has identified a grow-
ing number of regulatory decisions as ‘outsourced’
to independent agencies. This has affected areas such
as competition policy, utilities regulation, financial
services oversight, and the implementation of public
services more generally. The resulting rise of the reg-
ulatory state is seen as a global phenomenon, driven
by competitive pressures in globalized markets, with
the EU as a particular expression of this trend. In the
EU, negative integration—the removal of domestic
non-tariff barriers—has been accompanied, albeit to
a more limited extent by positive integration—the
setting of minimum standards at the European level.
Re-regulation—the creation of new standards applica-
ble to the single market—has largely been left to net-
works of national regulators meeting at the European
level, either informally through networks or in the
more formalized settings of agencies and committees.
In addition, the European Commission has been
entrusted with the centralized implementation of
much of EU legislation, through the delegation of
powers (see also Chapter 25). This leads to the Euro-
pean Commission adopting thousands of implement-
ing measures each year, with many of these being of a
regulatory nature. Given that the Commission is exer-
cising these delegated powers in the place of national
administrations, member states have insisted on the
setting up of a large number of advisory, management,
and regulatory committees composed of national rep-
resentatives. These committees oversee the adoption
of implementing measures (Blom-Hansen, 2011). The
resultant system is known as ‘comitology’ and not
only provides a framework for member state control
over the Commission’s use of delegated powers, but
also can be seen as a site for the systematic coopera-
tion—indeed the ‘fusion’—of national and EU-level
administrations (Wessels, 1998).
A number of issues have been highlighted in the
new governance literature. For example, the fact
that European regulatory networks tend to be only
loosely coupled, and essentially rely on national agen-
cies to implement regulatory decisions agreed at the
European level, has led Eberlein and Grande (2005)
and others to point out that potential ‘supranational
regulatory gaps’ may arise. The relative weakness of
110 Thomas Christiansen
regulatory networks, lacking formal powers to sanc-
tion the uniform implementation of decisions, means
that agreements might either fall victim to distributive
conflict, or otherwise not be subject to democratic
accountability (see also McGowan and Wallace, 1996).
This dilemma between effectiveness and accounta-
bility has been a common debating point among those
studying the regulatory state. Indeed, Majone (1994)
himself has been quick to point to the need for strong
accountability structures that can go hand in hand
with the empowerment of independent regulators.
However, accountability is not understand in terms
of political control in this case—something that, from
the new governance perspective, carries the ‘danger’
of politicization—but rather relies on judicial review.
In an accountability structure compatible with the
tenets of the regulatory state, judicial control though
courts, acting on behalf of political institutions, and
enforcing established standards constitutes the best
way of ensuring compliance with agreed standards
(Majone, 1999). Courts therefore, together with cen-
tral banks and independent regulatory agencies, are
the non-majoritarian backbone of the regulatory state.
Key Points
• The literature on the ‘European regulatory state’ has
developed from a wider recognition of the changing role
of the state in society in the neoliberal era.
• This variant of the new governance literature sees the
EU as important in the shift from redistributive to regu-
latory politics in Europe.
• The regulatory state model advocates a de-politicization
of regulatory decision-making through the setting up
and strengthening of independent and non-majoritarian
institutions.
• The proposition that regulatory decision-making con-
stitutes the search for Pareto-optimal solutions that can
be best left to technocrats has given rise to normative
debates about the accountability of decision-makers.
Normative debates about
governance
The previous sections have already alluded to the
normative challenges that the governance turn has
to confront. The main debate in this regard has con-
cerned the difficulties in reconciling the governance
approach with the traditional form of liberal democ-
racy, which is generally taken as the benchmark in
this kind of normative assessment. This debate can be
broken down into two distinct arguments in which
scholars have engaged: first, do new forms of gov-
ernance actually require legitimation in terms of tra-
ditional representative democracy; and second, does
governance constitute a move towards an alternative
kind of democracy, distinct from traditional models?
In terms of the first of these debates, the case ‘against
democracy’ has already been presented under ‘“New
governance and the European regulatory state’.
Advocates of the regulatory state approach argue that
what matters here is not democratic legitimacy as
expressed through the electoral process, but judicial
means of holding independent regulators to account.
The essence here is procedural control: ensuring that
policy-makers have followed the required steps in the
regulatory process (Majone, 1999). As long as that is
ensured, the normatively desirable outcome of the
policy process will be reached. While this initial argu-
ment has been applied to the delegation of power to
the European Commission or the further ‘outsourc-
ing’ of particular decisions from the Commission to
independent agencies, others have taken this further,
arguing that the European Union deals only with tech-
nocratic decisions and that, since it is not involved in
‘high politics’ kind of a kind that matters to citizens,
there is no reason to worry about the putative ‘demo-
cratic deficit’ (Moravcsik, 2002).
This argument is in part based on the assumption
that decision-making does not involve controversial
choices and that, as such, there is no need for the polit-
icization of decision-making. Against this assumption,
critics have pointed to many regulatory decisions that
have had significant societal implications and which
have the potential to favour certain groups, sectors,
or member states over others. Decisions of this kind,
it has been argued, require legitimation in terms of
representative democracy (Føllesdal and Hix, 2006).
Take, for example, the regulation of genetically modi-
fied organisms (GMOs), which, in the EU, has been a
highly contentious issue that has divided both socie-
ties and member states (see Box 8.2). The question of
whether or not to permit the cultivation and use of
GMOs in foodstuffs has shown itself to be more than
a technocratic challenge to find the ‘right’ solution,
and has been overlaid with ethical, emotional, and
economic arguments that the EU’s regulatory system
has found difficult to integrate (Skogstad, 2003). The

Box 8.2  The authorization of GMOs: a case study of European regulatory governance
The authorization of GMOs in the EU can be seen as good exam-
ple of the challenges and difficulties of the European regulatory
state. The need to regulate GMOs has arisen fairly recently and,
within the EU’s single market, requires the involvement of suprana-
tional institiutions in order to ensure that such goods can be freely
traded. In response to this challenge, the European Parliament
and Council have adopted a number of regulations concerning
both the cultivation of GMOs in Europe, and the bringing into the
market of food and animal feed containing GMO ingredients.
Such legislation adopted under the ordinary legislative proce-
dure, or OLP (formerly the co-decision procedure), however,
does not in itself permit or prohibit the use of GMOs. Instead,
these regulations delegate powers to the European Commis-
sion, which then has the responsibility of ruling on individual
authorization applications from industry. The Commission
itself is then obliged, under the procedural rules that have
been adopted, to consult a number of other institutions
before taking its decision. This includes primarily the scientific
assessment of the proposed product by the European Food
Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, as well as the approval of the
Commission’s intended decision by a comitology committee
composed of representatives of member state administrations.
In addition, the examination process also involves networks of
national laboratories and committees of experts in bio-ethics.
It is an exhaustive process that has frequently taken more than
a year until the Commission was in a position to adopt its deci-
sion. In fact, on several occasions the process took so long that
applicants have taken the Commission to court for inaction.
Three particular issues have been identified that have caused
delays or created problems in this field. First, the examination of
the safety of new products conducted by EFSA relies, owing to
the Authority’s limited resources, to a large extent on the scien-
tific evidence provided by the applicant—evidence that has, on
occasion, been shown to be biased in favour of the safety of the
product. It must therefore be questioned whether there is actu-
ally the possibility of a neutral assessment of such applications.
result is not only a perceived lack of legitimacy in this
area of EU policy-making, but also problems with the
effective regulation of this sector (Christiansen and
Polak, 2009).
Authors have advanced many other examples of
such ‘loaded’ decisions that, from a democratic theory
point of view, would require legitimation through
representative rather than non-majoritarian institu-
tions. The EU’s response to the 2008 banking crisis
and the eurozone’s subsequent sovereign debt cri-
sis have been further triggers for debates about the
Governance in the European Union 111
Second, the comitology committee overseeing the Commis-
sion’s use of delegated powers is required, under the rules, to
give its approval with a qualified majority. However, member
states are almost evenly divided among themselves between
supporters and opponents of authorizing GMOs, meaning
that it has proven difficult for the Commission to achieve the
necessary majority for approval. The absence of qualified
majority voting (QMV) in favour of authorization has meant
that applications are regularly referred to the Council, which
can in theory overrule the Commission by QMV. But given the
foregoing situation, no such majority can be found here either,
which means that, in the face of ‘no decision’ in the Council, the
Commission has the final say after all. At the end of this proc-
ess, the Commission has regularly found itself faced with (a) a
favourable scientific report from EFSA, (b) no opinion either
way emerging from internally divided comitology committees
and Council meetings, and (c) threats of court cases for inac-
tion looming. The usual end result has been the authorization
of such GMO applications by the Commission, albeit in the face
of strong opposition from a number of national governments
(not to mention protests from NGOs and political parties),
leading in some cases to domestic bans for GMOs in certain
member states.
Third, opponents of GMOs have complained that the process
lacks transparency and is biased in favour of GMOs, whereas
industry has bemoaned the long delays in reaching a final
decision, which is seen to leave Europe uncompetitive in the
application of this new technology. By the early 2010s, the dif-
ficulties experienced with the delegation of these regulatory
powers to the European Commission and EFSA led to the
search for a new legislative framework that would allows for
greater political input.
In sum, the case of GMO authorization demonstrates amply
the challenges to the delegation of regulatory powers to inde-
pendent agencies when issues at stake are contested and carry
the potential for politicization.
legitimacy of European governance in this field. One
observation made in the context has been that the
alleged flexibility and adaptability of regulatory net-
works has been lacking (Mügge, 2011). In this reading,
close cooperation among financial market regulators
sharing a neoliberal outlook has meant that financial
regulations were devised by an epistemic community
based on a dogmatic worldview—a regulatory para-
digm that was not adaptable to the changing require-
ments of the current crisis. This diagnosis echoes the
earlier critique by Gill (1998) of the bias in what he
112 Thomas Christiansen
called the ‘new constitutionalism’ of European eco-
nomic governance.
From this perspective, regulatory decisions require
democratic legitimation—if not through representa-
tive institutions, then at the very least through delib-
erative mechanisms. The presence of, or the need for,
deliberation in the policy process takes us to the sec-
ond of the normative debates. Some authors, focus-
ing either on multilevel governance (MLG) or new
modes of governance (NMGs) have explored the
degree to which these forms of governance might
meet the expectations of deliberative democracy
(Steffek et al., 2007).
While research has demonstrated that such oppor-
tunities exist, it has also pointed out the limitations of
such deliberation (Eriksen, 2011). The involvement of
‘European civil society’ is generally translated into the
consultation of Brussels-based NGOs, casting doubts
over the representativeness of such cooperation (Koh-
ler-Koch, 2010). Furthermore, observers have pointed
out that many of the organizations representing civil
society are, in fact, dependent on financial support
from the European Commission, possibly resulting in
their co-option within a sphere of ‘approved’ partici-
pants in the policy process (Bellamy and Castiglione,
2011). Authors have also pointed to the normative
problems inherent in the way in which technocratic
Conclusion
In summarizing the main arguments advanced in this
chapter, four points need to be emphasized. First, the
‘governance turn’ has been an important develop-
ment in the literature on the European Union, signi-
fying the changing nature of the integration process
since the Maastricht Treaty and demonstrating the
desire of scholars to adapt their research tools accord-
ingly. Second, the study of European governance
centres on the role of non-hierarchical networks in
the policy process, emphasizing their relevance in a
shift away from classic state-centric theories as devel-
oped in the subfields of international relations and
comparative politics. Third, governance has become
a broad and internally highly diverse orientation,
involving a range of different applications, based
on a variety of underlying assumptions, making it
increasingly difficult to talk of a single ‘governance
approach’. Fourth, the governance turn has raised,
both explicitly and implicitly, a number of normative
questions, leading to debates about the limitations of,
‘good governance’ has been ‘exported’ to third coun-
tries outside the EU (Karppi, 2005; Hout, 2010; Knio,
2010). At the extreme, critics have argued that ‘far
from laying the grounds for a more inclusive, partici-
patory and democratic political order, the [European]
Commission’s model to governance represents a form
of neoliberal governmentality that is actually under-
mining democratic government and promoting a poli-
tics of exclusion’ (Shore, 2011: 287).
Key Points
• The governance approach, as a departure from tradi-
tional liberal democratic procedures of decision-making,
raises important normative questions.
• Some authors point to the normative benefits of govern-
ance, such as greater opportunities for deliberation, the
potential of greater inclusiveness in the policy process,
and the advantages of depoliticized regulatory activity
producing the best result.
• Critics of the governance approach have pointed to the
way in which theoretical advantages do not materialize in
practice, and have warned of the rigidity and dogmatism
that may arise if policy-making is left to an exclusive com-
munity of experts.
and the need for, the democratic legitimacy of EU
governance arrangements.
These normative debates are ongoing and would
seem all the more important as the study of govern-
ance has become part of the mainstream of approaches
analysing EU politics. An interesting site of debate,
driving home this point, is the discussion about the
future of economic governance in the EU. In view of
the existential crisis that the eurozone has been fac-
ing since 2010, the criticism levied at the weaknesses in
both the financial services sector and the management
of single currency, and the calls for a tighter and more
comprehensive gouvernement economique, the early
2010s have allowed for reassessment of governance.
In fact, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which
sets targets for member states in terms of permissible
levels of public debt and budget deficits, is the most
prominent example of the failure of the soft mode of
governance, given that the non-compliance of mem-
ber states with the SGP targets contributed to (if not
 Governance in the European Union 113

caused) the crisis. Nevertheless, negative experiences
of this kind do not mean that the EU will abandon this
form of governance. Indeed, future plans with regards
to economic governance include the tightening of the
supranational oversight of fiscal policies through the
introduction of a ‘European semester’, which per-
mits the European Commission to monitor national
budget plans more closely before their domestic adop-
tion (Hacker and van Treeck, 2010). Other aspects of
the response to the sovereign debt crisis—in particular
the close cooperation between European Commis-
sion, European Central Bank (ECB), and International
Monetary Fund (IMF) in negotiating and monitoring
the conditionality of national bailouts—appear as a fur-
ther evidence of the significant role that technocrats are
playing in the response to the crisis. At the same time,
this shift towards technocracy at the European level
frequently clashes with the operation of representative
democracy at the national level. The ‘governance turn’
has certainly made its mark on the European Union,
but the debate about the way in which such govern-
ance can be legitimated remains as relevant as ever.

Questions

1. How do you explain the success of the governance approach?

2. How is European governance distinguished from traditional form of EU policy-making?
3. What are the main elements of the ‘governance turn’ in EU studies?
4. Does the governance approach constitute a convincing critique of liberal intergovernmentalism?
5. What is distinctive about multilevel governance?
6. What are the strengths and weaknesses of multilevel governance in analysing the process of European integration?
7. How is decision-making by unelected technocrats legitmized in the European regulatory state?
8. What are the main criticisms on normative grounds that can be advanced against new governance?

Guide To Further Reading

Eising, R. and Kohler-Koch, B. (eds) (1999) The Transformation of Governance in the European Union (London:
Routledge)  Presenting the findings of a large-scale research project, this volume includes chapters on governance in a
range of different sectors and member states.

Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. (2001a) Multi-Level Governance and European Integration (London: Rowman & Littlefield)  This
is the definitive statement of the key elements and findings of the multilevel governance approach by its founders.

Majone, G. (ed.) (1996) Regulating Europe (London: Routledge)  A collection of contributions from the founder of the
European regulatory state approach and others.

Marks, G., Scharpf, F. W., Schmitter, P. C., and Streeck, W. (1996) Governance in the European Union (London: Sage Publica-
tions)  A collection of essays by senior scholars exploring different dimensions of the governance approach.

Scharpf, F. W. (1999) Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? (Oxford: Oxford University Press)  A collection of
essays exploring both the empirical and normative dimensions of governance in the EU.

Weblinks

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/index_en.htm  The official website of the European Commission, developed along-

side the launch of the Commission’s White Paper on European Governance in 2001.

http://eiop.or.at/erpa/  The European Research Papers Archive is an online collection of working papers relating to
EU studies, in which much innovative theoretical work is showcased for the first time.
 114 Thomas Christiansen
http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/  Living Reviews in European Governance is an e-journal, publishing solic-
ited state-of-the-art articles in the field of European integration and governance research.

http://www.unc.edu/~gwmarks/  Gary Marks’ home page, which includes access to published and forthcoming
papers.

http://www.unc.edu/~hooghe/  Liesbet Hooghe’s home page, which includes access to published and forthcoming
papers.

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