The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common framework for analysis

European Journal of Political Research 39: 289–318, 2001.© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

289

The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common frameworkfor analysis

JOHN PETERSONDepartment of Politics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland

Abstract. European Union (EU) studies have entered a highly contentious and, arguably,creative phase. A range of theoretical perspectives, seemingly quite highly differentiated fromone another, now compete for influence and ‘space’. However, the questions remain: is EUstudies developing theories which are truly competing theories? Or is it developing theoriesthat do not compete so much as they aim to explain distinctly different pieces of the EUpuzzle? This paper responds directly to these two questions, while reviewing recent literatureon EU governance. It argues, first, that we lack theories of EU governance that are true rivals;and, second, that leading models explain different outcomes at different levels in a multi-level system of governance. The result is somewhat phoney debates between compatible theo-ries masquerading as rivals, and between ‘comparative politics’ and ‘international relations’approaches. Above all, perhaps, we find middle range theories posing as general or ‘meta-theories’. In the absence of a plausible general theory of EU governance, theorists must chooseprecisely which type of outcome they wish to explain.

Introduction

Scholarship on the European Union (EU) has entered a particularly dynamicphase. To an extent unseen since the Haas versus Hoffmann debates of morethan twenty years ago (see Haas 1975; Hoffman 1982), the EU studies lit-erature offers new, innovative and (sometimes, at least) testable theoreticalmodels. Alongside Haas and Hoffmann, one of the seminal contributors tothe early literature on European integration finds that what was once ‘a rathersubdued dialogue . . . concerning the nature and dynamics of European integ-ration, has recently evolved into a full-scale, hard-fought debate’ (Puchala1999: 318).

There seems little doubt that scholarly interest in the EU is growing. It isperhaps less clear that the upsurge in the quantity of scholarship on the EU isbeing matched by advances in terms of quality. Deservedly or not, scholarswho work on the EU remain the subjects of pot shots from non-specialists,particularly (it seems) comparativists:

Although there is a large academic literature on the European Union,very little of it is theoretical: most consists largely of journalistic ac-

290 JOHN PETERSON

counts of recent developments, descriptions of institutions, histories –or even propagandist tracts (Eatwell 1997: 245).

One form of defence is to deploy concepts associated with the study ofcomparative politics at the EU level. Two factors encourage this type ofanalysis: first, the emergence of the EU as a polity in its own right (seeHooghe 1998); and, second, the fact that many comparativists can no longermake sense of their subject without addressing the role of the EU in nationalpolicy-making and politics. It may have been true, initially at least, that com-parativists who became interested in the EU in the early 1990s found that they‘possessed few theoretical tools that appeared directly applicable’ (Pierson1998: 28). Yet, over time a range of conceptual tools has been refined andadapted to yield rich, penetrating explanations of what the EU does and why.They include multi-level governance (Marks et al. 1996; Hooghe & Marks1997), variants of institutionalism (Garrett & Tsebelis 1996; Pollack 1997;Armstrong & Bulmer 1998; Sandholtz & Stone Sweet 1998), and policynetwork analysis (Rhodes et al. 1996; Peterson & Bomberg 1999).

The empire has struck back in the form of intergovernmentalist theory,firmly rooted in international relations (not comparative politics). The pub-lication of Andrew Moravcsik’s The Choice for Europe (1998) marks awatershed in the development of the literature on European integration. Es-chewing most of the conceptual tools of comparativists (see Wallace 1999:157), Moravcsik makes a compelling case for deploying a refined versionof liberal intergovemmentalism (LI) to explain the ‘grand bargains’ whichpunctuate the EU’s evolution. In Puchala’s (1999: 329) view,

The Choice for Europe is not going to resolve the debate between in-stitutionalists and intergovernmentalists. But this new contribution fromthe intergovernmentalist side will move the debate into a new phase,because hereafter alternative interpretations will have to be evaluatedon the basis of evidence that compares in quality and credibility withMoravcsik’s evidence.

Yet, the debate’s main problem seems not to be the plausibility of evidenceso much as the terms of the debate itself. A central argument of this paper isthat the debate is a phoney war in many respects. Whether or not it is the resultof careerism and the imperative to establish ‘exclusive protected zones ofknowledge’ (Cox 1999: 3), the result is largely complementary perspectivesmasquerading as incompatible rivals.

If there is one central tenet that now unites EU scholars it is that theUnion is a polity that operates simultaneously at different levels. In Europemore than elsewhere the international, supranational, transnational, national,

THE CHOICE FOR EU THEORISTS 291

regional and sub-national are inextricably linked. Compared to other multi-level, quasi-federalist polities, the Union is unique in that different levels ofEU governance are relatively clearly distinguished from one another, withtheir own resources and sources of legitimation. Each is driven by clearlydifferent logics or rationales, and dominated by different types of actor.1 Usu-ally, ‘competing’ theoretical perspectives implicitly – rarely explicitly – seekto explain outcomes at one level. None does a very good job of explainingoutcomes at all levels. As such, EU scholars must choose if they are to becredible. But the choice is not between rival general or ‘meta-theories’ ofEuropean integration or EU governance (see Christiansen et al. 1999; Risse& Wiener 1999). Rather, it is about what, precisely, is being explained, andat what level of analysis in a system of government which is clearly anduniquely multi-tiered.

The analysis below first develops a rationale for deploying a portfolio ofmiddle-range theories to understand the EU. It then considers what kind ofportfolio is most appropriate given the available theoretical ‘tackle’ and thenature of the EU as a multi-level polity. Throughout, the argument is illus-trated by empirical investigation of recent major policy debates or events,including monetary union, eastern enlargement, the evolution of EU externalpolicy, and the resignation of the Santer Commission under pressure from theEuropean Parliament (EP). The purpose is not to provide a rigorous testing ofleading theories, but rather to review critically the recent research literature.The central aim – pursued most explicitly in the conclusion – is to explorehow levels of governance and theoretical insights can be linked to shed newlight on EU governance.

The case for a portfolio

Explaining the European Union – what it does, how it does it and with whateffect – is one of the most daunting challenges facing political science as adiscipline. Clearly, there are important differences between being an ordinarynation-state and an EU Member State. But there are also very stark differ-ences between the EU itself and other polities, even ones that share some‘federal’ characteristics with the EU. The EU has far less authoritative controlover its citizens and territory compared to nation-states. The difference drawnhere may seem an abstract one, but it is one with practical implications asseen in (traditionally low if increasing) rates of compliance with Communitydirectives (see, for example, Jordan 1999; Börzel 2000; Ciavarini Azzi 2000).In the EU, more than in most nation-states, compliance – along with almosteverything else – is negotiable. Not only does the EU lack a police force orarmy, it also has no government: the EU’s ‘executive, legislative and judicial

292 JOHN PETERSON

authority’ do not, as Hix (1998b: 3) claims, constitute one. Nor does it haveany ‘opposition’, in the traditional sense of the term. It is no wonder that manyof the tools of comparative politics seem quite blunt when they are applied tothe EU.

That does not prevent brave attempts being made to apply them. Suchattempts are usually justified by claims that the EU now features ‘a com-plex and pluralistic political process, not firmly under the control of nationalgovernments and not explicable in terms of simple diplomatic bargaining’(Pierson 1998: 28). By the late 1990s, the EU was the scene of pitched battlesabout the content of policy in sectors where the Union enjoyed competence.Many (perhaps most) EU policy debates were not only or even mostly abouthow much competence the Union should enjoy. There was far more to EUpolitics than just how ‘actors align[ed] themselves on a continuum between‘more’ or ‘less’ integration’ (Hix 1998b: 2). EU politics became livelier, moreinclusive and less strictly technical, as evidenced by hard-fought policy de-bates on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in food, power limits onmotorbikes, and European content in television broadcasting (see Peterson &Bomberg 1999).

To be sure, debates about what kind of polity the EU should be continue topermeate day-to-day decision-making. But what makes EU policy-making socomplex (and fascinating) is the simultaneous existence of multiple cleavages– pro- and anti-integrationist, intergovernmental, institutional, ideologicaland sectoral – that make battle lines in most policy debates impossible todraw neatly. Whether the ‘left-right’ dimension in EU politics is becomingmore or less salient, it probably matters enough to make the EU politics morelike ‘normal politics’ in national domestic settings than ever before. But thereis little evidence to sustain the view that this cleavage is primary, and thusthat ‘[t]he EU is no different from other systems’ in this regard (Hix 1998b:3; see also Torreblanca 1998). In fact, the search of recent centre-left govern-ments in Europe for a ‘third way’ between traditional left and right visions ofpolitics and policy suggest that the importance of this cleavage may actuallybe receding in EU policy debates. Nevertheless, the EU is different insofaras political alignments corresponding broadly to left and right are overlaid –and frequently overridden – by other cleavages.

Here we come to grips with what, above all else, makes EU governance sodifficult to theorise about: EU politics is a battle in which a variety of differentcleavages usually can be identified on any particular issue. To an unusual ex-tent, most key actors in EU politics simultaneously possess multiple interestsor identities: national and supranational, sectoral and institutional, politicaland technical. Their actions may be motivated by different rationalities atdifferent times. It is frequently difficult to predict how key actors will align


themselves on any given issue or which battle along which cleavage willmatter most in determining outcomes.

The one time in EU governance when we might expect key actors to lineup across a clear continuum from ‘more’ to ‘less integration’ is when EUMember States elect to amend the Union’s founding treaties in intergov-ernmental conferences (IGCs). In this context, Moravesik’s (1998: 1) ‘longwave’ perspective on European integration – for all its virtues – reveals thepitfalls of relying on the past to predict the future: it leads him to suggest thattransformative, grand bargains, which Treaty revisions inevitably are, ‘punc-tuate EC history at a rate of roughly once per decade’. Following agreementon the Treaty of Nice in 2000, the EU’s Treaties had been revised four timesin less than 15 years. If the pro- versus anti-integrationist cleavage was evergoing to dominate day-to-day EU policy-making, it seems as if its dominancewould be most assured in this period.

But there is little evidence to sustain this view. Moravcsik (1998) is per-suasive in arguing that economic interests, not strategic visions of the EU’svocation, are the most important determinant of national preferences whengrand bargains – concerning major questions of Treaty reform, agriculturalpolicy, or monetary union – are negotiated. Meanwhile, the everyday level ofEU policy-making has become routinised to the point where it often producesa negotiated policy solutions even in the absence of clear rules about howcompetencies are divided between Member States and the EU institutions, orbetween the latter.2

The more general point is that the EU is both a polity in its own right, inwhich the content of policy is highly contested, as well as an experimentalexercise in international cooperation in which the type and degree of co-operation is contested. As such, any viable general or ‘meta-theory’ of EUpolitics faces the daunting task of describing, explaining and predicting bothEU polity-building and policy-making (see Torreblanca 1998). Moravcsik isusually explicit in insisting that he is only concerned with explaining grandbargains, which amend the EU’s Treaties or change the way they operate, atthe highest political level. At this level of governance, intergovernmentalisttheory usually offers the most convincing explanations. Meanwhile, Moravc-sik (1998: 8) is happy to concede that ‘everyday legislative process withinthe Treat[ies] involves pooling of sovereignty in majority voting arrange-ments and substantial delegation to supranational officials. Here there is muchvariation’. LI is not offered as a theory of everyday policy-making.3

An alternative long wave perspective on European integration is offeredby Puchala (1972), whose classic ‘blind men and elephants’ article bearsrevisiting. It reminds us of the perils of ‘different researchers . . . looking atdifferent parts, dimensions or manifestations of the same phenomenon’, and

294 JOHN PETERSON

then claiming ‘that their parts were in fact whole beasts, or that their partswere the most important ones, the others being of marginal interest’ (Puchala1972: 267–8). More than 25 years later, it is hardly surprising that thereremains no theory which explains everything. Moreover, ‘elaborating someversion of a unified theory’ is ‘probably a mistake’ (Puchala 1999: 330).

However, a general or ‘unified’ theory is not the same as a framework orportfolio of different middle-range theories, in which both boundaries andlinks between both different theories and levels of governance are clearlyspecified. On the contrary, such an endeavour seems to be encouraged byPuchala’s (1999: 330) more recent urgings to ‘define and delimit what institu-tionalism and intergovernmentalism, as well as other approaches, respectivelydo explain and what they do not explain’. This paper seeks to do just that.

What kind of portfolio?

The first step in constructing a portfolio which ‘pitches’ leading theories attheir appropriate level of explanation is to reduce every move the EU makesdown to its lowest common denominator: the individual decision. If we focuson decisions (i.e., choices or solutions that end some uncertainty or reducecontention) as the most basic building blocks of governance, we come togrips with one of the most fundamental questions facing all EU researchers:the extent to which ‘decisions are atomised or path-dependent’ (Torreblanca1998: 150). If we specify different conceptual categories of EU decision, weheed Scharpf’s (1999: 167) injunction that ‘care [must be] taken to theorizethe distinction between . . . different classes of decision, and the reasons whyand how that distinction should make a difference’ (see also Caporaso 1998).

The EU makes three basic types of decision. First, the term ‘history-making’ decision has become a frequently-used shorthand for the grandbargains that determine how and how much the EU changes (see, for example,Jönsson et al. 1998: 319; Morvacsik 1998: 1; Caporaso 1999: 162; Wallace1999: 155; Webber 1999: 45; Dyson & Featherstone 1999: 782; Wallace2000: 71). These choices preoccupy the highest political levels in Europe; thatis, national cabinets and prime ministers. As such, they usually are negotiatedoutcomes of intergovernmental bargaining.

Second, ‘policy-setting’ decisions determine what the EU does. They aretaken when the EU reaches a ‘policy decision point’ (Richardson 1996: 282)and actually chooses a policy – a course of action (or inaction) – in theUnion’s defined field of competence. Most policy-setting decisions emergeafter bargaining between the EU’s institutions, in a system of shared (morethan separated) powers.


Third, ‘policy-shaping’ decisions determine how the EU does what it de-cides to do, or which policy options will be considered. Many policy-shapingdecisions are taken far upstream from the ‘policy decision point’, often longbefore formal policy proposals are even tabled. They concern the detailsof policy options and preoccupy a diverse range of actors, many of themformally apolitical, effectively technocratic, and policy-specialised.

Thus, we end up with three distinct levels of analysis. The specificationof levels of analysis is a longstanding preoccupation of international rela-tions scholarship, which usually classifies different explanations of interstatebehaviour into one of three categories: systemic, ‘domestic politics’, and indi-vidual leadership explanations. Moravcsik (1993: 34) argues that ‘the numberof levels and their relative utility is neither preordained nor arbitrary, but canand should vary according to the analytic purpose at hand’ (on differencesbetween levels of analysis and levels of governance, see Peterson 1995: 89).In this paper the levels of analysis identified correspond (usually) with indi-vidual, distinct levels of EU governance that assume primary responsibilityfor each kind of decision. Table 1 specifies the dominant actors at each level.

First, most decisions that make history are taken at the ‘super-systemic’level, which transcends everyday governance. It yields decisions that changethe nature of the EU as a political system. The dominant actors are theEU’s Member States – meeting as the European Council or as negotiatorsin intergovernmental conferences (IGCs), although sometimes (if rarely) theEuropean Court of Justice hands down decisions which make history. Second,the ‘systemic’ level incorporates what might be termed the ‘political sys-tem of the EU’ (see Hix 1999). Here the dominant players are the Councilof Ministers and the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER,grouping together national ambassadors to the EU), which mediate nationalpreferences and then pursue an agreed common position. The Council (to-gether with its offshoots, of which COREPER is primary) faces powerfulincentives to show institutional unity after it has bargained its way to a com-mon position because powers at the systemic level are shared, especially (andincreasingly) with the European Parliament (EP). Third, the sub-systemiclevel is where much of the everyday governing of the EU takes place, withvarious types of committee usually bringing together a diverse collection ofstake-holders in a given sector of policy to bargain over policy details.

History-making decisions

If it was ever in doubt that EU governance at the ‘super-systemic’ levelis primarily intergovernmental and elite-controlled, Moravcsik’s (1998) TheChoice for Europe provides more convincing evidence for this view thanwe have ever had before. The argument that domestic economic preferences

296 JOHN PETERSON

Table 1. Multi-level EU decision-making

Level Decision type Dominant actors Example

Super-systemic History-making European Council; Endorse White Paper on

governments in IGCs; internal market

European Court of Justice

Systemic Policy-setting Council; COREPER; Agree directives to create

European Parliament an internal market for

(under co-decision) motorbikes

Sub-systemic Policy-shaping Commission; Council Propose that all

working groups; EP motorbikes licensed in the

Committees EU must observe power limits

Source: Peterson & Bomberg (1999: 5).

primarily determine the choices of national elites when grand bargains arestruck is compelling. The recent case of the Amsterdam Treaty (see Morav-csik & Nicolaïdis 1999) reinforces a point echoed by close study of mosthistory-making decisions: the EU’s supranational institutions may influencechoices at the margins, but they rarely are decisive at this level.

Of course, the ECJ has been primarily responsible for some of the mosttransformative history-making decisions. Ostensibly working on the basis oflegal rationality, the Court often cloaks highly political judgments in ap-parently apolitical terms. Some of its judgments – such as Cassis de Dijonand Factortame – have clearly and dramatically changed the nature of EUgovernance (see Dehousse 1998; Weiler 1999). Approaching the EU froman international relations (IR) paradigm, intergovernmentalists have tendedto miss the importance of the ECJ because ‘[a]n international organization,almost by definition, does not have a court that exercises judicial review in thesphere of constitutional law as opposed to international law’ (Sbragia 1993:34).

Generally, however, decision-making at the super-systemic level is farless institutionalised than at other levels of EU governance. The finelystruck balance between the representation of territorial and non-territorialinterests, which is such a salient and institutionalised feature of the EU gen-erally, is mostly absent at the super-systemic level (see Sbragia 1993). AsMoravcsik (1998) insists, the EU’s Member States face real choices abouthow they want the Union to work. Specifically, the European Council isthe most supple, unconstrained source of agency in EU decision-making.It has the weight to surmount technical roadblocks to institutional changeand policy reform when change is needed. For example, at the March 2000


Lisbon Summit, EU Member States agreed an extraordinarily ambitiousset of targets designed to give the EU ‘the most dynamic economy in theworld’ within five years (see Lisbon Summit conclusions available fromwww.europa.eu.int/comm/off/index en.htm.). The European Council’s au-thority cannot be challenged by any other decision-making body at any otherlevel of EU governance (except, in rare cases, by the ECJ).

Yet, the role of the Court in pushing integration forward through history-making legal decisions boosts neofunctionalism, the oldest and most influen-tial of all regional integration theories. Its advocates ‘argue that in the marchtoward European Union, as community building gathered speed, the issuesbefore the Court have become more politically salient’ (Mattli & Slaughter1995: 189; see also Burley & Mattli 1993). Certainly, it is not difficult tofind quasi-constitutional decisions to integrate which have provoked further,related acts of integration through various kinds of ‘spill over’ (Haas 1964,1968; Lindberg & Scheingold 1970, 1971; Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991).

At first glance, neofunctionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism (LI)seem to have distinct and inconsistent microfoundations, thus offering rivalexplanations for the same outcomes at the same level of governance. How-ever, closer examination yields the conclusion that LI and neofunctionalismoffer mainly compatible, and certainly overlapping, rather than competing‘truths’.4 Following Sbragia (1993), we might conclude that LI is our besttheory for explaining the process of bargaining at the super-systemic level.Meanwhile, neofunctionalism (usually) helps explain how the structural con-text of EU decision-making changes, such as via the shift to increasedqualified majority voting (QMV), the empowerment of the EP, or the creationof a single currency. In particular, shifts in the structural context constrainfuture intergovernmental bargains.

This view is echoed by Pierson (1998), who qualifies LI’s image of neartotal Member State control yet concedes the ‘strong institutional position’of national actors. It might be argued that Pierson’s historical institution-alism truly competes with Moravesik’s LI as a theory of EU governance.Yet, historical institutionalist work on the EU tends to subsume neofunc-tionalist precepts, while conceding the power of national preferences at thesuper-systemic level, in a way that highlights the important degree of overlapbetween the two theories.

Basic differences do exist between the respective teleologies of histor-ical institutionalism and neofunctionalism. Institutionalism’s strongest suitis its ability to explain continuity: one of its most central theoretical as-sumptions is that institutions change more slowly than the preferences ofdecision-makers, thus creating a bias for inertia. Neofunctionalism does abetter job of explaining change, via the concept of spillover, or the simple

298 JOHN PETERSON

proposition that (in various ways) integration begets further integration. Forexample, Corbey’s (1995: 253) ‘dialectical functionalism’ explains advancesin European integration as a product of EU states’ need to avoid self-defeatingpolicy competition between themselves. Periodically, governments thus form‘a coalition against their own interest groups’ (which themselves often en-courage policy competition between governments) and embrace new forms ofcooperation (Corbey 1995: 253). More generally, neofunctionalism generatespredictions both about how decision-making at the highest political levelsmay be shaped from below by domestic or transnational political action, andwhat issues become subject to negotiations at any given time at the super-systemic level. But because intergovernmental cleavages are usually primaryand determinant when history-making decisions are negotiated, LI remainsour best theory for describing, explaining, and predicting the outcomes ofthese negotiations. Arguably, LI is the only genuinely developed, coherent,integrated theory we have of intergovernmental negotiation at the super-systemic level. Many readers of The Choice for Europe may well questionthe existence of any genuine ‘supranational theory’ of inter-state bargaining,or ‘geopolitical’ or ‘federalist’ theory of national preference formation. AsScharpf (1999: 165) argues, it is difficult to take LI’s ‘competitors quite asseriously as [Moravcsik] does’.

The broader point is that LI and neofunctionalism are mostly compatibletheories. In a fundamental sense, both are theories of international relations,in that they seek to explain how and why sovereign states compete andcooperate. Both characterise regional integration as a fundamentally elite-driven process. The context in which intergovernmental bargains are struckmay change over time in ways that constrain governments and are predictedby neofunctionalism. But governments, even after they have chosen to ‘lockin’ cooperation between themselves by embracing advances in Europeanintegration, strive to retain control over super-systemic decision-making.

Thus, for example, calls for direct election of the Commission President(Hix 1998a: 35), or even input from the EP in the choice of a candidate,5

have been resisted by Member States. The 1994 decision to choose JacquesSanter to replace Jacques Delors as Commission President was clearly in-tended to rein in a Commission which had become activist, entrepreneurial,and difficult to control (see Grant 1994; Ross 1995). After Santer’s entireCommission dramatically resigned in 1999, the choice of Romano Prodi ashis successor was abetted by Prodi’s determination to ‘campaign . . . in themost appropriate way for this sort of institutional post . . . not a campaignamong the masses, but one made of contacts with decision-making elites andmeetings with executives’ (Prodi quoted in European Voice, 4–10 February


1999). By far the most important cleavages when history-making decisionshave to be made are intergovernmental ones.6

In particular, the bargaining which preceded agreement on Agenda 2000,a package of measures designed to prepare the EU for eastern enlargement,illustrated that the cleavages that usually preoccupy students of comparat-ive politics do not matter much at the super-systemic level (see EuropeanCommission 1997; Galloway 1999). The political divide which emergedfrom debate on the package, especially its proposed reforms of the Com-mon Agricultural Policy (CAP) and EU cohesion funding, was not mainlyone of left versus right or pro- versus anti-integrationist, but rather northversus south. Provided Ireland was viewed as an honorary southern state,and France was considered to look both ways, the north-south divide be-came the primary cleavage at the highest political levels of the EU in thelate 1990s. Two interesting by-products were stubborn Spanish resistance topolicy reform and accusations that the Germans blatantly used their power(and 1999 Council Presidency) to pursue naked national ambitions. At thesame time, the decision taken at the 1999 Berlin summit on a 7-year EUbudget required considerable Spanish and German concessions. A generaland plausible interpretation of the outcome was that the evolving struc-tural context of the EU was shown to constrain governments, in line withneofunctionalist predictions.

The north-south divide was even more visible in the first clear case wherethe European Parliament alone and in a straight vote faced a choice thatmade history. When the EP voted on a motion of censure against the SanterCommission in January 1999, the anti-Commission vote consisted of Greens,Liberals, British Conservatives, Nordics, and virtually all German MEPs (ina dramatic reversal of traditional German loyalty to the EU’s institutions).The pro-Commission vote united most French and Irish MEPs, and nearly allof the Italian, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese delegations. They were joinedby most (not all) British Labour MEPs, who reluctantly voted against theirown Socialist Group’s motion after being lobbied fiercely to do so by theBlair government.7 The largest party groups – the Socialists and ChristianDemocrats – basically split along north-south lines.

More generally, the EU remains essentially a system of international re-lations at the super-systemic level. As LI teaches, national positions andpreferences are derived from domestic economic imperatives far more thanideological or geopolitical ones. However, LI fails to acknowledge that themachinery constructed to cement regional cooperation constrains choices.It may even increasingly narrow the parameters of choice over time, thusvalidating the most basic of all neofunctionalist assumptions.

300 JOHN PETERSON

Systemic decision-making

Traditionally, EU studies have been the domain mostly of international rela-tions (and international economics) scholars. Thus, IR theories of EU politicshave dominated. As Moravcsik (1992: 6) observes,

A majority of international relations theorists recommend that the ana-lyst give priority to international explanation and employ theories ofdomestic politics only as needed to explain anomalies. Yet only a limitedset of real-world problems in international relations lend themselves tothis sort of analysis.

Until recently, a persistent real-world problem for EU studies has been thelack of a theory of the ‘domestic politics’ of the European Union, or onewhich could explain how it worked as a political system (as opposed to asystem of international relations) in its own right.

Usually, no major EU policy may be ‘set’ without the agreement of allthree of the EU’s major legislative institutions: the Council of Ministers,Commission and EP. Moreover, Member States do not hesitate to use litig-ation to challenge particularly controversial measures, such as the WorkingTime Directive or a ban on cigarette advertising, and thus the ‘agreement’ ofthe ECJ is sometimes a further prerequisite. Intergovemmental bargainingclearly matters at the systemic level, and plays a crucial part in deter-mining outcomes. However, particularly given the increasing ubiquity ofthe co-decision procedure (Shackleton 2000), which makes the EP an equalco-legislator with the Council, the most important cleavage in most policydebates is increasingly interinstitutional as opposed to intergovernmental.

As such, institutionalist theory – in various guises – sheds important lighton how most policies are set in practice. Garrett and Tsebelis’ (1996: 269–70)‘rational choice institutionalism’ eschews an exclusive focus on intergov-ernmental bargaining and assumes that ‘[o]ne can understand the legislativeprocess in Europe only through detailed institutional analysis of the interac-tions among [EU institutions], and in particular the sequencing of decisions’.The ‘historical institutionalism’ deployed by Armstrong & Bulmer (1998)offers compelling explanations for everyday decision-making concerning thefreeing of the internal market. Pollack (1997: 101) offers his own variant ofinstitutionalism, which allows that ‘the functions of supranational institutionsmay reflect not so much the preferences and intentions of their member stateprincipals but rather the preferences, and autonomous agency, of the supra-national institutions themselves’. Interestingly this model assumes that therelative autonomy of EU institutions is determined mostly by the extent towhich they can free themselves from the control of the EU’s Member States.


In this context, the introduction of the co-decision procedure, and itsextension in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, has given the EP considerableautonomy and even power on matters of policy detail in sectors (especially theinternal market) where it applies. The result has often been to make EU policymore consumer- or environment-friendly.8 But the perceived need amongstMEPs to defend and extend the EP’s own institutional prerogatives carriesconsiderable weight in determining its behaviour, especially because the EPmaximises its influence under co-decision only when it collectively judgeshow far it can push the Council. The increasing ubiquity of co-decision pro-cedure illustrates clearly that process in EU decision-making – which stillvaries enormously between different EU policy sectors – is crucially impor-tant in determining what kind of cleavages dominate policy debates and thuswhat outcomes are. But the more specific point is that institutional cleavagesare usually the most important when policy is set via co-decision.

That does not mean that other cleavages do not matter. The EuropeanParliament usually splits along party group lines in key votes (see Brzinski1995). Still, party group cohesion – although far higher than in, say, theUS Congress – remains lower than in most national European parliaments.Moreover, those who argue for integrating a ‘left-right dimension’ into EUpolitics and policy-making would, logically, point to the EP as a primaryforum for battles in which such a split is visible. Their case is certainlyweakened by analysis of the 1999 election manifestos of the three largest EPpolitical groups (the Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals). All citedunemployment as Europe’s most urgent problem. All favoured the Euro, moretransparency in EU decision-making, CAP and structural funds reform, anda stronger Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). All demanded thatfurther powers be transferred to the EP in the name of ‘European democracy’.One MEP suggested that if the covers of the three manifestos were swapped,a lot of members would not be able to tell the difference (see European Voice,28 January–3 February 1999, p. 10).

The lack of any clear left-right dimension in EU politics, even where itwould – intuitively – be strongest is further manifest in differences within EPparty groups. The gap separating French and German Socialists on one handand British Socialists on the other is wide. The former tend to be enthusiastic-ally pro-European and sceptical of liberal economic policy solutions. BritishLabour MEPs are often more pro-market than pro-EU. The solution, as so of-ten in EU politics, is highest common rhetoric and lowest common substance(Edwards and Wiesalla 1998: 2). Witness the Party of European Socialists’(PES) manifesto pledge during the 1999 EP election campaign to say ‘ “yes”to a market economy but “no” to a market society’. The more general pointis that the systemic level is where the many different cleavages to which EU

302 JOHN PETERSON

politics give rise tend to intersect. At this level, the EU’s institutions usuallyprovide order and aggregation, and institutionalist theory helps us predict thecontours of policy battles.

More specifically, institutionalist theory helps explain why the setting ofprecedents is so fiercely contested at the EU’s systemic level. At the heart ofmost institutionalist analyses is the concept of ‘path dependency’, or the no-tion that ‘[o]nce an historical choice is made, it both precludes and facilitatesothers. Political change follows a branching model. Once a particular fork ischosen, it is very difficult to get back on the rejected path’ (Krasner 1984:225). Since the Treaties are so vague, everyday policy-making frequently issubject to bickering by EU institutions over the proper boundaries of insti-tutional prerogative or EU competence. For example, the first few years ofthe existence of the CFSP featured almost daily squabbles about how to fundEU joint foreign policy actions, after no agreement could be reached on theissue at the super-systemic level in negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty (seePeterson 1998: 6–7). Traditionally integrationist Member States – Italy, theBenelux states – generally favoured funding CFSP joint actions from the EU’scentral budget. Anti-integrationists – the UK above all – pushed for ad hoc,intergovernmental financial contributions. But the battle became, in key re-spects, an inter-institutional one between the Council fighting against ‘centralbudget creep’, with the Commission and EP regaling against the hamstringingof the CFSP by disputes about who should pay for what.

Path dependency in policy outcomes is also a product of the need foragreement in EU politics between so many different institutions and decision-makers, including many beyond Brussels or Strasbourg. A common resultis impasse and an inability to set policy in the first place. Yet, once an EUpolicy is set, it is often even harder to change it, even when it has outlived itsusefulness.

Changing the EU’s institutions seems harder still: unanimity is requiredat the super-systemic level for most major institutional changes. However,the frequency of Treaty reforms in the past fifteen years reveals that, para-doxically, it is often easier to alter the EU’s institutions at the super-systemiclevel than to alter EU policy at the systemic level. In most policy sectors,the EU continues to trundle along on a well-trod policy path. Policy sectorsare highly compartmentalised, with each having its own ‘dedicated’ Coun-cil, Commissioner, Directorate-General and EP Committee. The EU seems aclassic case of a ‘differentiated polity . . . characterized by functional and insti-tutional specialization and the fragmentation of policies and politics’ (Rhodes1997: 7). Specialised and fragmented institutions may be ‘stickier’ than integ-rated institutions (such as cabinet governments) and thus may promote pathdependency in policy outcomes.


The recent EU literature does offer alternatives to institutionalist theor-ies of systemic decision-making. Bueno de Mesquita & Stokman (1994: 67)apply a series of formal mathematical models to systemic decision-makingwhich, they claim, are ‘as simple as possible and as complex as necessary’.Yet, while these models appear to have considerable predictive power, theyrely on a radical disfigurement and simplification of the EU’s policy process.For example, the EP is assigned no weight at all in decisionmaking on the1989 Auto Emissions Directive despite clear evidence that its imprint onthe Directive was considerable (see Bomberg 1998: 150–6). Again, theoristscannot hope to truly explain outcomes, and why one option is chosen overothers, unless they carefully and empirically examine EU policy process.

Sandholtz and Stone Sweet’s (1998) model of ‘supranational governance’offers, in some respects, another fresh theory of how the EU sets policy. But itexplains outcomes in some sectors far better than in others (see Puchala 1999)and in any event relies heavily on precepts borrowed from institutionalist the-ory (see Sandholtz & Stone Sweet 1998: 16–24). Golub’s (1996) case studyof the 1994 Packaging Waste Directive gives considerable encouragementto advocates of an intergovernmentalist or state-centric model of systemicdecision-making. However, the outcome of the Directive seems equallyamenable to explanation using other models (see Peterson & Bomberg 1999:196–7). In any event, we lack any fully developed state-centric model of EUpolicy setting.

Arguably, we also lack a fully developed institutionalist theory of systemicdecision-making. What institutionalism really offers is a set of assumptionsupon which theory may be built, as well as a ‘method for deriving ana-lytical insights’ (Armstrong & Bulmer 1998: 61). Yet, the EU clearly hasevolved into a system characterised by a continuous set of pitched battles forinstitutional ascendance, particularly at the systemic level. Developing andrefining institutionalist theories seems the most promising avenue to makingsense of this level of governance. The rationale is not only that the inter-institutional cleavage is most pronounced at this level of decision-making.Following Torreblanca (1998: 135–6), synthesising rational choice and histor-ical institutionalist models seems to offer considerable scope for ‘extremelyfruitful results’ at a level of governance where different kinds of cleavage(i.e. intergovernmental and left-right) often intersect. These approaches alsohave the virtue of ‘ask[ing] questions about actors and institutions which cutacross international relations and comparative politics’ (Torreblanca 1998:35) at a level of decision-making where explanations usually must span thegap between these two categories of approaches.

304 JOHN PETERSON

Sub-systemic decision-making

The dramatic events of early 1999 in Brussels – culminating in the massresignation of the Santer Commission – illustrated one point above all others:the EU is an extremely protean system at its deepest recesses. The reportof the EP-mandated Committee of Independent Experts into allegations ofnepotism and mismanagement in the Commission uncovered a myriad ofdecisions on the allocation of EU funds and posts that were taken withinnetworks of consultants and/or officials at several steps removed from theCollege of Commissioners. For example, decision-making within the MEDAprogramme (to promote co-operation with Mediterranean countries) was con-trolled by ‘a network of firms . . . which was set up by external consultantson the initiative of the Commission’ (EP 1999: 39), and to which the Com-mission had effectively delegated its executive power. In the case of theLeonardo Programme (to promote pan-European educational exchanges), aBritish university professor was paid 2677 Euro per day as a consultant forhis ‘networking know-how’ (EP 1999: 75).

After the Santer Commission resigned, most of its members were re-appointed as caretakers to keep EU business from grinding to a halt, althoughno new major legislation could be tabled until a new Commission under Prodiwas confirmed. However, even in normal times the Commission’s monopolyover the EU’s legislative agenda is only a formal one. More accurately itis a resource that the Commission may use in bargaining over the shapeand content of the EU’s legislative agenda. Like almost everything else inEU governance, the Union’s legislative agenda is negotiated between an ex-tremely diverse collection of policy stakeholders (see Zito 1995; Peterson &Bomberg 1999). Its broad content is politically determined, as much by thepreferences of EU Member States as by those of the Commission (or EP).But the precise details of proposed EU policies are negotiated or ‘shaped’ ina jungle of working groups and committees at the technical or sub-systemiclevel.

Our knowledge of the murky depths of EU decision-making is limited.Patterns of influence are usually less clear and more variable than at otherlevels of decision-making. We lack hard sources of the kind that Moravcsik(1998) deploys in his study of history-making decisions: the sub-systemiclevel generates far fewer public documents (i.e. Presidency Conclusions,ECJ legal judgments, or published Council votes) which give researchers awindow into decision-making at other levels.

Moreover, the range of conceptual tools available to scholars trying tomake sense of sub-systemic decision-making is rather narrow. We encounterdifferent forms of bureaucratic politics (see Peters 1992), but still lack adeveloped, causal model of this genre which can explain outcomes. The


diversity of stakeholders and complexity of EU bargaining diminishes therelevance of rational actor models: it is frequently impossible for actors tostockpile all the necessary information, process it in real time, and accuratelycalculate the probabilities for different likely outcomes in a process of policy-shaping that is often highly unpredictable. At the other end of theoreticalspectrum, there may be mileage in applying the classic ‘garbage can’ modelof decision-making at the EU level (Cohen et al. 972). In the EU more thanmost other systems, ‘preferences are unstable and uncertain and the decisionthat something needs to be done often creates the preferences rather than viceversa’ (Peters 1996: 70; see also Richardson 1996a). But this logic is far morevisible in some policy sectors (consumer policy) than others (agriculture).

Increasingly, investigations of EU sub-systemic decision-making have de-ployed the concept of policy networks, whether as a purely descriptive tool(see Marks 1996; Pollack 1997) or as an explanatory model (see Pfetsch1998; Peterson & Bomberg 1999). Borrowing from the extensive publicpolicy literature on network forms of governance, we can define policynetworks as:

structures of interdependence involving multiple organizations or partsthereof, where one unit is not merely the formal subordinate of the othersin some larger hierarchical arrangement. [They] exhibit some structuralstability but extend beyond formally established linkages and policy-legitimated ties. The notion of [policy] network excludes mere formalhierarchies and perfect markets, but it includes a very wide range ofstructures in between (O’Toole 1997: 45).

We remain at a relatively early stage in the development of an adequatelytheorised model of policy networks. A step forward in this context is Moravc-sik’s (1999b: 283) notion of ‘two-level networks’, which hypothesises thatsuccessful supranational entrepreneurship results from the ‘superior ability’of supranational actors ‘to coordinate and manipulate information and ideasheld by domestic social groups and government officials’, and thus aggregateinterests. Moreover, the literature on EU policy networks is maturing to thepoint where it has begun to yield clear, testable hypotheses, including:

• The more that the Council decides by qualified majority in any sector, themore policy content will be determined by sub-systemic level bargaining.

• The ‘newer’ the EU’s competence in any sector, the ‘less insular and morepermeable’ are corresponding policy networks (Jönsson et al. 1998: 333).

• The more non-EU actors must be engaged in negotiations in any policysector, the more important the role of the Commission as ‘ring-leader’ ofcorresponding policy networks (see also Moravcsik 1999b).

306 JOHN PETERSON

• ‘The more a network is knowledge-based and the less it rests onasymmetrical resource dependencies, the greater the likelihood of non-conflictual negotiations’ (Jönsson et al. 1998: 335).

The ubiquity of networks as forums for sub-systemic EU decision-makingarises from four factors. First, the EU lacks hierarchy. The content of thepolicy agenda is more negotiable than in other systems of governance be-cause the Union lacks any political programme, such as a manifesto or aQueen’s speech. Policy formulation is a process of bargaining between adiverse collection of actors within networks.

Second, the EU continues to lack formal institutions which can adequately‘manag[e] the policy dialogue’ (Wallace 1997: 10). The EU depends fun-damentally on its ability to forge consensus between an extremely widevariety of decision-makers before policies may be set. Winning coalitions inEU governance are usually ‘cross-cutting’, particularly ‘across national gov-ernments, the European Commission, the European Parliament and interestgroups’ (Torreblanca 1998: 148). Yet, most set-piece forums – meetings ofthe Council of Ministers, the EP’s plenary sessions, conciliation committeesto settle Council-EP disputes – do not permit much meaningful bargaining totake place. Instead, they

tend to be formal and structured. Partly because of this, they are of-ten not very well equipped to produce the horse trading, concessions,and compromises that are so often necessary to build majorities, createagreements, and further progress. As a result they have come to be sup-ported by a vast network of informal and unstructured channels betweenEU actors (Nugent 1999: 352).

Third, the EU is a radically differentiated polity at the sub-systemic level.High ‘fire walls’ exist between finely divided and often insulated policy sec-tors. The Commission’s services are sub-divided into narrower policy fieldsthan are most national administrations.9 Yet its formal rules of procedurerequire more inter-agency coordination than occurs in most national systems.Take, for example, the 1994 Directive on Packaging Waste, which harmonisednational policies on waste management of product packaging: no fewer thansixteen different Commission directorates were involved in formulating theproposal. Thus the EU policy process cannot even start until agreement hasbeen negotiated within a cluster of networked organizational units.

Fourth, in the EU more than most other systems of governance, imple-mentation is, in practice, negotiated within policy networks. The EU’s mainlegislative tool is the directive, which specifies policy goals but not means. Assuch, the actual content and impact of most legislation is determined to a con-siderable extent in exchanges between various types of official (national and


supranational), together with interested groups and lobbyists, after the EUitself legislates. National administrations thus have incentives to engage withprivate actors, who ‘have to be drawn into the policy networks because theyprovide necessary expertise and because effective implementation depends ontheir support’ (Kohler-Koch 1997: 49). In other words, the EU seems reliant– perhaps uniquely – on governance by networks both at the beginning andend of its policy process.

At first glance, the EU would seem to foster mostly crowded, denselypopulated policy networks. The EU is a massive polity – even in advance ofits now inevitable and radical enlargement – which incorporates fifteen sov-ereign Member States, eleven languages, 370 million citizens and a diverserange of political, administrative and economic traditions. As such, most EUnetworks appear to be loosely constituted equivalents of Heclo’s (1978) ‘issuenetworks’. Their structures and membership seem to vary each time a newissue arises on the policy agenda. Dominant coalitions do not seem to remaindominant in many sectors for very long. Most EU policy networks appearcapable of collective action only with great difficulty.

Yet, in fact we encounter enormous variety between networks in differentpolicy sectors, and sometimes even within them. For example, the birth ofthe Euro and an expanded role of the EU in macroeconomic policy coordin-ation gave coherence to a European monetary policy network. Key membersinclude national treasury officials, central bankers, two Commissioners (foreconomic affairs as well as the Commission President) and their cabinets andthe Commission’s Directorate for Economic and Financial Affairs. Yet, the‘Euro-12’ version of the Council, which brings together only representativesof states within the Euro-zone, quickly spawned a far more integrated sub-group, or ‘policy community’ (see Dyson & Featherstone 1999; Levitt &Lord 2000). The contrast between the two may be appreciated from the num-ber of individuals in the room when the different Councils, which sit at theapex of each network, meet: the Euro-12 Council meets with only 24 peoplein the room (minister plus 1 advisor), whereas ECOFIN (the Economic andFinancial Council) is a gaggle of at least 100.

If there is a single most important variable in determining collective actionwithin policy networks, it is trust (see Hindmoor 1998). Even very looselyconstituted issue networks can achieve collective action if there is high degreeof trust amongst members. Lacking either hierarchies or a ‘free market’ forpolicy ideas in most sectors, transaction costs at the EU level are often highenough to threaten open exchange. But trust – especially fostered by repeated,iterated bargaining – facilitates exchange.

More specifically, relatively high levels of trust are an important gluewhich binds together ‘advocacy coalitions’ of like-minded actors with spe-

308 JOHN PETERSON

cific political purposes. Members of advocacy coalitions share ‘core policybeliefs’, and are likely to be capable of effective political action when theirmembers interact repeatedly, exchange information easily and unite in sup-port of policies which will treat them fairly, if not all equally (Sabatier 1998:116). It is clear that such coalitions are active in Brussels and that they com-pete to control EU policy networks (on the analytical distinction betweenpolicy networks and advocacy coalitions, see Peterson 1995). For example,rarely noticed and frequently important factors in policy debates are thepolitical loyalties of (ostensibly) apolitical officials in the EU’s institutions.Hooghe (1998: 5) notes that ‘Commission officials take sides in strugglesbetween “Euro-Marketeers” and “Euro-Socialists” ’, with the former support-ing the EU as a neoliberal project and the latter seeking a distinct brand of‘European regulated capital’.

Such broad orientations can become the source of principal cleavagesin sub-systemic policy debates. Take, for example, the behind-the-scenesmachinations that preceded the January 1999 EP vote of censure of the Com-mission for its handling of the Community’s budget. The bitter battle betweenthe two largest Parliamentary groups, the PES and European People’s Party(the EPP, a collection of Christian Democratic parties), was a highly unusualdeparture from the traditionally cosy, even incestuous relations among them.The tabling of the motion by the PES was clearly intended to call the bluffof the Christian Democrats who (along with the Greens and Liberals) hadrefused to sign off on the Community’s budget. It also sought to embarrass(Christian Democrat) Santer, who had cried ‘back me or sack me’ in responseto claims of budgetary mismanagement by his Commission.

The EPP swung behind the Liberal Group’s calls for the resignation ofCommissioners Manuel Marín and Edith Cresson (both Socialists). For itspart, the PES threatened to vote to sack the entire Commission if thesetwo Socialists were singled out. Both the PES and EPP came away less-than-flattered by the scrap, and in some respects were rescued only by theextremely hard-hitting nature of the Report of Independent Experts whichprovoked the Santer Commission’s resignation. Besides the Liberals, the onegroup that gained the most from the episode was the Greens. They tooka hard-line against fraud and were the conduit for the publication of anearlier, leaked (and highly damaging) Commission dossier which cataloguedirregularities in a range of EU programmes. Interestingly, in a sign of thesalience of advocacy coalitions at the sub-systemic level, the Commissionofficial responsible for leaking the dossier, Paul van Buitenen, was himself acard-carrying Green (see van Buitenen 2000). The point is that, beneath thesurface, manoeuvring by advocacy coalitions was an important determinantof the result of the EP’s vote.


When a policy decision point approaches, but clashes between rivaladvocacy coalitions causes impasse, the EU’s natural propensity is to depoliti-cise issues and ‘push’ them back to the sub-systemic level for quiet resolution.A common ploy is to create purpose-built ‘epistemic communities’ – or‘network[s] of professionals with recognized expertise and competence ina particular domain’ – who can help define problems, identify compromisesand supply ‘expert’ arguments to justify political choices (Haas 1992: 3).The hope is usually that such committees will have credibility with policystakeholders and can coax collective action. A good example was the Com-mittee of Independent Experts created by the EP to settle its internal disputeover mismanagement within the Commission. Often, purpose-built epistemiccommunities are charged with the design of new procedures for dealing withfuture conflicts, preferably by depoliticising them.

The problem is that de-politicising the sort of emotive issues – food safety,environmental protection, immigration – which the EU increasingly embracesis not often easy. Take, for example, the 1998 proposal of the Commissionerfor consumer policy, Emma Bonino, for the creation of a special group ofCommission officials (drawn from the directorates for consumer policy, en-vironment, and external economic relations) to establish new procedures foraddressing public health concerns about specific consumer products. The pro-posal followed in the wake of the Commission’s refusal to consider a ban –backed by Bonino – on the use of phthalates (a potentially harmful softeningagent) in children’s toys. Afterwards, groups such as Greenpeace bitterlycomplained that, ‘No action is going to be taken until there are corpses onthe table. The Commission is politically bankrupt in terms of consumer pro-tection’ (Axel Singhofen of Greenpeace, quoted in Financial Times, 2 July1998). Yet, Bonino’s proposal for creating a new epistemic community offood safety officials was itself attacked by the Toy Industries of Europe, whichhuffed, ‘the Commission should have more scientists in scientific committeesthan at the moment’ (Maurits Bruggink, Secretary of the Toy Industries ofEurope, quoted in European Voice, 28 January–3 February 1999).

Sometimes depoliticisation works. The 1996 flap over accusations thatIsrael was violating rules governing its EU Association Agreement by re-exporting Brazilian orange juice to the EU is a case in point. At a time whenthe EU was desperately seeking to upgrade its role in the Middle East PeaceProcess (with the US distracted by a Presidential election), the Union wishedto be assertive without provoking a political row with Israel. The solutionwas to issue a detailed warning to the Israelis, but to earmark the issue asa ‘technical’ one. The row was then settled at the official level within theEU-Israel Cooperation Committee (see Gomez 1999: 187–8; see also Torreb-

310 JOHN PETERSON

lanca’s (1998: 143) exhaustively-researched case study of the negotiations ofEU Association Agreements with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

The EU’s affinity for depoliticisation by delegation to policy networkshas theoretical implications. It may be that the EU’s policy agenda is setmainly by the demands of its Member States, responding to domestic eco-nomic pressures (Moravcsik 1998). It is also plausible to suggest that ‘thereare simply no non-political issues in relations amongst states’ (Puchala 1972:274). Ministers do frequently concern themselves with details that they wouldleave to ‘experts’ at the national level. Clearly, however, the relegation ofcontroversial issues to discreet, technocratic sub-systemic bargaining withinpolicy networks is an important way to the keep EU active and forward-moving, despite the many shackles (i.e., multiple veto points, fragmentedinstitutions, lack of resources) which encourage inertia.

More generally, it is important to investigate what happens between thetime the EU decides to take action and the time it actually takes action.In most cases, the parameters for EU action are narrowed significantly innegotiations between policy specialists – primarily national and EU officialsand lobbyists – who seek to shape policy options in the interests of theirsector. When we can identify the key players in different EU policy networks,assess the relative stability and permeability of EU networks, map patternsof resource dependence within them and identify the main cleavages whichdivide them, we should be able to go a long way towards predicting EU policyoutcomes.

Conclusion

The central argument of this paper is that the first step in theorising about EUgovernance is to choose precisely what it is that is to be explained. Otherwise,it becomes easy to over-stretch the explanatory potential of middle-range the-ories. We also end up with phoney wars between advocates of ‘rival’ theories,which are often pitched at different levels of analysis and thus are ostensiblyseeking to explain different outcomes. Creating a framework which drawson leading theories or models in social science more generally – liberalism,functionalism, institutionalism and network analysis – both advances ourunderstanding of European integration and helps EU scholars escape fromwhat Caporaso (1999: 161) has described as their ‘self-constructed theoreticalghetto’. This effort might seek to replicate the ‘emerging synthesis’ of inter-national, American and comparative politics approaches that is characteristicof recent scholarship on globalisation and international political economy(Milner 1998). Moravcsik (1999b: 271) moves in this direction by drawing on‘bargaining theory and theories of comparative and American politics’, while


Caporaso (1999: 161) similarly urges a synthesis of approaches from ‘inter-national relations, comparative politics, and political economy’. Revealingly,neither seems very concerned to integrate policy analysis.

A second step is to try to develop causal links between outcomes at dif-ferent levels of governance and thus to synthesise insights that emerge fromdifferent theoretical models. In particular, an important goal is to answer thequestion of ‘why integration happens’ – and what are its causal mechanisms– alongside the question of ‘how integration happens’. As such, scholars needto move beyond initial choices about what is important to explain, and makelinkages between explanations at different levels of governance.

For example, the framework outlined here should encourage scholarsto investigate the conditions under which advocacy coalitions are able toshift the EU’s policy agenda from the bottom-up, and create and exploitavenues for new integrated policy solutions. In this context, the role ofideas – especially new, experimental, potentially innovative ones – in EUdecision-making seems more crucial than in other more established and lessexperimental systems (see Cram 1997). Moreover, the EU’s policy agendaseems an unusually open one, characterised by ‘a number of points of access,a large number of influential policy advocates, and a wide range of policyoptions that have been legitimated in one or more of the constituent politicalsystems’ (Peters 1996: 62).

These features of EU governance were certainly visible in the successfuleffort by a coalition of Commission officials, Socialist party activists andtrades unions to convince Member States to accept (first) the Social Charterand (then) the Maastricht Treaty’s Social Protocol to ‘flank’ the 1992 project.A similar story can be told about the effort by an advocacy coalition of envir-onmentalists to push for the transformation of the EU from a purely economicunion, with no mention in its Treaties of environmental protection, to becom-ing the main regulator of environmental protection in Europe. Students of theEU need to develop hypotheses about how and why coalitions can transformEU governance by transcending not only national divisions but also levels ofEU governance (see Moravcsik 1999b).

Shifting to a ‘top-down’ perspective, it is worthwhile investigating howand how much history-making decisions transform sub-systemic decision-making. Take, for example, the decision to embrace co-decision and thento extend it in successive rounds of (Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice)Treaty reforms. The effect was to grant MEPs – especially committee chairsand rapporteurs on specific policy initiatives – membership cards to policynetworks that preside over sectors where co-decision applies. Both the Com-mission and Council were clearly more engaged with MEPs in pre-legislative,sub-systemic bargaining after 1993 than was the case beforehand.

312 JOHN PETERSON

More recently, the 2000 Lisbon Summit saw a coalition of the UK andSpain together with the Portuguese Council Presidency successfully shift theEU towards collective acceptance of the need to liberalise labour, telecom-munications and financial markets in order to mimic the success of America’s‘new economy’. The clear intent was to transform EU policy networks in eachof these sectors. The position of public sector reformers or innovators withinthem, as well as that of private sector lobbyists, was certain to be strengthenedas the EU pursued the ‘soft convergence’ of national policies through peerpressure, benchmarking, and policy transfer.

Nevertheless, most policy networks are, by nature, technocratic, exclusiveand jealous of their grip on the policy agenda (see Rhodes 1997: 9–10). Theythus tend to be resistant to politicisation and a force for continuity morethan change. We need more cases that test the extent to which EU policynetworks operate autonomously of national governments and democratic con-trols, thus reinforcing the impression of the EU as a technocracy (see Harcourt& Radaelli 1999; Radaelli 1999) as opposed to a political system (Hix 1999)subject to political control.

A third, related avenue of investigation concerns the possibility that theEU ‘strengthens the state’. The EU is clearly a unique form of multi-levelgovernance with a complex system of shared powers: between its Mem-ber States and institutions, between its institutions, and between levels ofgovernance. One plausible thesis is that the EU constitutes a kind of hyper-Madisonianism which dilutes the power of most types of coalitions (or‘factions’) because they are unable to coordinate their activities across levelsof governance. Yet, there is one kind of actor which is powerful at all levels:the EU’s Member States and their representatives (see Grande 1996). It maywell be that intergovernmental cleavages remain the primary divisions inpolicy debates in all forums from the most high-profile European Councilsummit to the least-noticed technocratic committee of officials. The EU maystrengthen the state, even at the deepest recesses of sub-systemic governance.

It does not follow, however, that intergovernmentalism qualifies as an ad-equate general theory of EU governance. Intergovernmentalist theory tendsto assume monolithic state interests, but does not specify how national agentsare mobilised or coordinated between institutions or levels of governance. Wehave anecdotal evidence to suggest that some Member States (particularlyFrance) are skilled at mobilising their nationals to pursue collective actionnot only at different levels of governance, but also within the EU’s institu-tions. The national partisanship of Commissioners and their cabinets, as wellas the national ‘flagging’ of high-level posts in the services, were familiarfeatures EU of governance by the late 1990s, and central targets of Prodi’sadministrative reform ambitions (see ‘Press Statement – 29 September 1999


– by Neil Kinnock, Vice President of the European Commission’ availablefrom http://europa.eu.int/comm/reform/index en.htm). Yet liberal intergov-ernmentalism assumes a rigid dichotomy between the interests and behaviourof EU Member States and the EU’s institutions. Paradoxically, LI tells usboth more and less than we might expect when we apply it to everyday EUdecision-making.

Ultimately, we have little evidence to suggest that intergovernmentalismexplains or predicts anything besides history-making decisions. Moravcsik’s(1998) Choice for Europe does a better job of explaining the high politics ofEU decision-making than any other recent work. But it contains very littleanalysis of the everyday practice of agreeing EU policy, as opposed to thegrand bargains that are struck relatively rarely. Understanding less dramaticEU policy outcomes means engaging in policy analysis: the ‘activity of cre-ating knowledge of and in the policy-making process . . . investigat(ing) thecauses, consequences and performance of public policies and programmes’(Dunn 1994: 1).

Finally, the sad passing of Susan Strange – a perceptive student of EUGovernance – should remind EU scholars to reflect, as she invariably did inher work, about the relationship between the theoretical and the empirical.Theory can be a guide to framing an investigation (see Strange 1988; 1998),but theory must always be based on ‘something concrete’ and developed ‘onthe basis of something real that [we] know intimately’ (Cox 1999: 3). EUstudies often seem to generate more theory than detailed case studies. Thereis a clear need for more actual testing of theory, probably less abstract the-orising, and certainly more policy analysis. Above all, however, EU scholarsneed to stop fighting phoney theoretical wars, make choices about what theywant to explain, and make the European Union a touchstone in the more gen-eral effort in political science to synthesise insights from comparative politics,international relations, and public policy.

Acknowledgments

Early versions of this paper were presented to the research seminar of theDepartment of Politics, University of Glasgow, at the 1999 European Com-munity Studies Association conference in Pittsburgh; and at INSEAD (theEuropean Institute of Business Administration) in Fontainebleu. I am grate-ful to Christopher Berry, Liesbet Hooghe, Erik Jones, Michael Lessnoff,Andrew Moravcsik, Alberta Sbragia, Jonathan Story, and Douglas Webberfor comments and suggestions. All emphases in citations occurred in theoriginals.

314 JOHN PETERSON

Notes

1. This view is at odds with Torreblanca’s (1998: 34) contention that it is not ‘easier with theEU than with any other political system to isolate the levels and sequences of the policyprocess . . . evidence suggests the opposite’. ‘Sequence’ in the EU’s policy process (howand by whom the policy agenda is set, whether technical negotiations precede or followpolitical agreement, etc.) certainly varies enormously. However, the EU has developedquite distinctive levels of governance between which policy initiatives often ‘bounce’before policies are set. This paper also challenges Torreblanca’s (1998: 134) view thattheoretical debates about EU politics have ‘shown a tendency for competing approachesto divide up the field and ignore each other’. While it is certainly true that theories(ostensibly ‘competing’ ones) have implicitly (rarely explicitly) ‘divided up the field’,advocates of them have hardly ‘ignored each other’, and indeed have tended to engage insomewhat contrived debates with one another. Generally, Torreblanca’s (1998) critique isthoughtful, perceptive and bears close attention.

2. The point was amply illustrated by the fact that 6 years after the European Court ofJustice’s ruling that the Uruguay Round was a ‘mixed agreement’, which thus requiredthe Commission, Council of Ministers, and Member States to share responsibility fornegotiating agreements on ‘new’ trade issues (such as services and intellectual propertyrights), there was still no agreed code of conduct defining who represented the EU in suchnegotiations.

3. Moravcsik (1998a: 179) often strains against the shackles of his self-imposed limits, sug-gesting (usually in footnotes) that ‘it remains an open question to what extent the patternof national preferences (while mitigated by institutional constraints) remains a, perhapsthe, decisive factor in daily decision-making’. The literature still lacks many systematictest cases of LI at anywhere other than the ‘super-systemic’ level of decision-making.

4. Witness, for example, Moravcsik’s refusal in The Choice for Europe to attempt an‘ultimate showdown’ with neofunctionalism (Caporaso 1999: 163). Instead of refut-ing neofunctionalism, Moravcsik (1999a: 175) urges that ‘we should dismember it,either appropriating or challenging selective hypotheses’. The portfolio presented in thispaper appropriates neofunctionalist hypotheses about the structural context in whichintergovernmental bargaining occurs at the super-systemic level.

5. Of course, the EP already has the right to confirm the nominated college of Commission-ers via a vote of investiture, but it has no role in the choice of nominee for President, whothen must – together with governments – assemble a prospective college (see Peterson &Bomberg 1999: 40–1).

6. There is even a plausible case to be made for argument that intergovernmental cleavagesare the most important determinants of major legal decisions of the ECJ. It is remarkablethat the Court has never struck down any directive passed by a vote of the Council ofMinisters (Weiler 1999; see also Garrett 1995).

7. This point was confirmed by presentations by three British Labour MEPs (David Mar-tin, Ken Collins, and Bill Miller) to the 29th Annual UACES Conference, University ofGlasgow, 7–9 January 1999.

8. It remains to be seen whether the emergence of the Christian Democratic Group as thelargest single party group in the EP after 1999 will have the effect of altering this tendency.For example, together with its Liberal Group allies, it rallied around a set of amendmentsto the Automobile Recycling Directive in late 1999 that were far more industry- thanenvironment- or consumer-friendly.


9. Even after the Prodi Commission rationalised and reorganised the Commission’s servicesin late 1999, it still had directorates dedicated specifically to fisheries, the ‘informa-tion society’, external relations, trade, enlargement, and a ‘common service for externalrelations’. See http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs en.htm.

References

Armstrong, K. & Bulmer, S. (1998). The governance of the single European market.Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bomberg, E. (1998). Green parties and politics in the European Union. London and NewYork: Routledge.

Börzel, T. (2000). Why there is no ‘southern problem’. On environmental leaders and laggardsin the European Union’, Journal of European Public Polcy 7(1): 141–162.

Brzinski, J.B. (1995). Political group cohesion in the European Parliament, 1989–1994, in C.Rhodes & S. Mazey (eds.), The state of the European Union, Vol. 3: Building a Europeanpolity?, Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Bueno de Mesquita, B. & Stokman, F.N. (1994). European community decision making. NewHaven and London: Yale University Press.

Burley, A.-M. & Mattli, W. (1993). Europe before the court: A political theory of legalintegration, International Organization 47: 41–76.

Caporaso, J.A. (1998). Regional integration theory: Understanding our past and anticipatingour future, Journal of European Public Policy 5(1): 12–16.

Caporaso, J.A. (1999). Toward a normal science of regional integration, Journal of EuropeanPublic Policy 6(1): 160–164.

Christiansen, T., Jørgensen, K.E. & Wiener, A. (1999). The social construction of Europe,Journal of European Public Policy 6(4): 528–544.

Ciavarini Azzi, G. (2000). The slow march of European legislation: The implementation ofdirectives, in K. Neunreither & A. Wiener (eds.), European integration after Amsterdam.London and New York: Oxford University Press.

Cox, R. (1999). Susan Strange: A personal reflection, IEPG news, newsletter of the BISAInternational Political Economy Group, February, pp. 3–4.

Dehousse, R. (1998). The European Court of Justice. London and New York: Macmillan andSt Martin’s Press.

Dunn, W.M. (1994). Public policy analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Edwards, G. & Wiesala, G. (1998). Editorial: Flexibility, legitimacy and identity in a post-

Amsterdam Europe, in G. Edwards & G. Wiesala (eds.), The European Union 1997:Annual review of activities. Oxford: Blackwell for Journal of Common Market Studies.

European Commission (1997) Agenda 2000 – For a stronger and wider union, COM(97) 517final, 15 October.

European Parliament (1999). Committee of Independent Experts – First Report on AllegationsConcerning Fraud, Mismanagement and Nepotism in the European Commission, Brussels,15 March.

Galloway, D. (1999). Agenda 2000 – Packaging the deal, in G. Edwards & G. Wiesala (eds.),The European Union: Annual review 1998/1999. Oxford and New York: Blackwell for theJournal of Common Market Studies.

Garrett, G. (1995). The politics of legal integration in the European Union, InternationalOrganization 49: 171–181.

316 JOHN PETERSON

Garrett, G. & Tsebelis, G. (1996). An institutionalist critique of intergovernmentalism,International Organization 50(2): 269–299.

Golub, J. (1996b). State power and institutional influence in European integration: Lessonsfrom the packaging waste directive, Journal of Commom Market Studies 34(3): 313–341.

Gomez, R. (1999). The Mediterranean policy of the European Union. Unpublished PhD thesis,Department of Politics, University of Glasgow.

Grande, E. (1996). The state and interest groups in a framework of multi-level decision-making: The case of the European Union, Journal of European Public Policy 3(3):318–328.

Haas, E. (1964). Beyond the nation-state: Functionalism and international organization.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Haas, E. (1968). The uniting of Europe: Political, social, and economic forces, 1950–1957.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Haas, E. (1975). The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory. Berkeley, CA: Institute ofInternational Studies.

Haas, P. (1992). Epistemic communities and international policy coordination, InternationalOrganization 46(1): 1–35.

Harcourt, A.J. & Radaelli, C.M. (1999). Limits to EU technocratic regulation?, EuropeanJournal of Political Research 35(1): 107–122.

Helco, H. (1978). Issue networks and the executive establishment, in A. King (ed.), The newAmerican political system. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.

Hindmoor, A. (1998). The importance of being trusted: Transaction costs and policy networktheory, Public Administration 76(1): 25–43.

Hix, S. (1998a). Elections, parties and institutional design: A comparative perspective onEuropean Union democracy, West European Politics 21(3): 19–52.

Hix, S. (1998b). Contribution to ‘Integrating Left and Right: Studying EU politics’, ESCAReview, Fall, pp. 2–3.

Hix, S. (1999). The political system of the European Union. London: Macmillan.Hoffmann, S. (1982). Reflections on the nation-state in Western Europe today, Journal of

Common Market Studies 21(September/December): 21–37.Hooghe, L. (1998). Contribution to ‘Integrating left and right: Studying EU politics’, ECSA

Review, Fall, pp. 4–5.Hooghe, L. & Marks, G. (1997). ‘Contending models of governance in the European Union,

in A. Cafruny & C. Lankowski (eds.), Europe’s ambiguous unity. London and Boulder,CO: Lynne Rienner.

Jönsson, C., Bjurulf, B., Elgström, O., Sannerstedt, A. & Strömvik, M. (1998) Negotiations innetworks in the European Union, International Negotiation 3(3): 319–344.

Jordan, A. (1999). The implementation of EU environmental polity: A policy problem withouta political solution, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 17(1): 69–90.

Krasner, S. (1984). Approaches to the state, Comparative Politics 16(2): 223–246.Levitt, M. & Lord, C. (2000). The political economy of monetary union. Basingstoke and New

York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press.Lindberg, L. & Scheingold, S.A. (1970). Europe’s would-be polity: Patterns of change in the

European community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Lindberg, L. & Scheingold, S.A., eds. (1971). Regional integration: Theory and research.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Marks, G. (1996). Exploring and explaining variation in EU cohesion policy, in L. Hooghe

(ed.), Cohesion policy and European integration. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press.


Marks, G., Hooghe, L. & Blank, K. (1996). European integration from the 1980s: State-centricversus multi-level governance, Journal of Common Market Studies 34(3): 341–378.

Milner, H. (1998). Rationalizing politics: The emerging synthesis of international, American,and comparative politics, International Organization 52(4): 759–786.

Moravcsik, A. (1993). Introduction: Integrating international and domestic theories of in-ternational bargaining’, in P.B. Evans, H.K. Jacobson & R.D. Putnam (eds.), Double-edged diplomacy: International bargaining and domestic politics. Berkeley: Universityof California Press.

Moravcsik, A. (1998). The choice for Europe. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UniversityPress and ICL Press.

Moravcsik, A. (1999a). The choice for Europe: Current commentary and future research,Journal of European Public Policy 6(1): 168–179.

Moravcsik, A. (1999b). A new statecraft? Supranational entrepreneurs and international co-operation, International Organization 53(2): 267–306.

Moravcsik, A. & Nicolaïdis, K. (1999). Negotiating the Treaty of Amsterdam: Interests,influence, institutions, Journal of Common Market Studies 37(1): 59–85.

Nugent, N. (1999). The government and politics of the European Union, 4th edn. London andNew York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press.

O’Toole, L. (1997). Treating networks seriously: Practical and research-based agendas inpublic administration, Public Administration Review 57(1): 45–52.

Peterson, J. (1995). Decision-making in the European Union: Towards a framework foranalysis, Journal of European Public Policy 2(1): 69–93.

Peterson, J. (1998). Introduction: The European Union as a global actor, in J. Peterson &H. Sjursen (eds.), A common foreign policy for Europe? Competing visions of the CFSP.London and New York: Routledge.

Peterson, J. (1999). The Santer era: The European Commission in normative, historical andtheoretical perspective, Journal of European Public Policy 6(1): 46–65.

Peterson, J. & Bomberg, E. (1998). Northern enlargement and EU decision-making, in P.-H.Laurent & M. Maresceau (eds.), The state of the European Union, Vol. 4: Deepening andwidening. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner.

Peterson, J. & Bomberg, E. (1999). Decision-making in the European Union. London andNew York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press.

Pfetsch, F.R. (1998). Negotiating the European Union: A negotiation-network approach,International Negotiation 3(3): 293–317.

Pierson, P. (1998). The path to European integration: A historical institutionalist analysis,in W. Sandholtz & A. Stone Sweet (eds.), European integration and supranationalgovernance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pollack, M. (1997). Delegation, agency and agenda-setting in the European Union, Interna-tional Organization 51(1): 99–134.

Puchala, D. (1972). Of blind men, elephants and international integration, Journal of CommonMarket Studies 10(2): 267–284.

Puchala, D. (1999). Institutionalism, intergovernmentalism and European integration: Areview article, Journal of Common Market Studies 37(2): 317–331.

Radaelli, C.M. (1999). Technocracy in the European Union. Harlow and New York: Longman.Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding governance: Policy networks, governance, reflexivity

and accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.Rhodes, R.A.W., Bache, I. & George, S. (1996). Policy networks and policy making in the

EU: A critical appraisal, in L. Hooghe (ed.), Cohesion Policy and European integration.Oxford University Press.

318 JOHN PETERSON

Richardson, J. (1996a). Actor based models of national and EU policy-making, in H.Kassim & A. Menon (eds.), The European Union and national industrial policy. London:Routledge.

Richardson, J. (1996b). Eroding EU policies: Implementation gaps, cheating and re-steering,in J. Richardson (ed.), European Union: Power and policy-making. London: Routledge.

Risse, T. & Wiener, A. (1999). ‘Something rotten’ and the social construction of socialconstructivism: A comment on comments, Journal of European Public Policy 6(5):775–782.

Sandholtz, W. & Stone Sweet, A., eds. (1998). European integration and supranationalgovernance. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Sbragia, A. (1993). The European Community: A balancing act, Publius 23: 23–38.Scharpf, F.W. (1999). Selecting cases and testing hypothesis, Journal of European Public

Policy 6(1): 164–168.Shackleton, M. (2000). The politics of co-decision, Journal of Common Market Studies 38(2):

323–343.Strange, S. (1988). States and markets. London: Pinter.Strange, S. (1998). Who are EU? Ambiguities in the concept of competitiveness, Journal of

Common Market Studies 36(1): 101–114.Torreblanca, J.I. (1998). Overlapping games and cross-cutting coalitions in the European

Union, West European Politics 21(2): 134–153.Tranholm-Mikkelsen, J. (1991). Neo-functionalism: Obstinate or obsolete? A reappraisal in

light of the new dynamism of the EC. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20:1–22.

van Buitenen, P. (2000). Blowing the whistle. London: Politico’s Publishing.Wallace, H. (1997). Introduction, in H. Wallace & A. Young (eds.), Participation and policy-

making in the European Union. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Wallace, H. (1999). Piecing the integration jigsaw together, Journal of European Public Policy

6(1): 155–159.Wallace, H. (2000). Analysing and explaining policies, in H. Wallace & W. Wallace (eds.),

Policy-making in the European Union, 4th edn. Oxford and New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Webber, D. (1999). The Franco-German relationship and Economic and Monetary Union, WestEuropean Politics 22(1): 45–67.

Weiler, J.H.H. (1999). The constitution of Europe. Cambridge and New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Zito, A. (1995). Integrating the environment into the European Union: The history of thecontroversial Carbon Tax, in C. Rhodes & S. Mazey (eds.), The State of the EuropeanUnion, Vol. 3: Building a European polity? Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Address for correspondence: John Peterson, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow,Adam Smith Building, Glasgow G12 8RT, ScotlandPhone: UK + 141 330 5076; Fax: UK + 141 330 5067: E-mail: [email protected]

Documents

The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common framework for analysis