Analysing the distribution of power among political actors is at the heart of political science. I propose a way of analysing changes to the institutional equilibrium of the EU institutions as well as changes in the relationship between the supranational level and the member states from a...

Although they have formerly constituted distinct traditions in the European integration process, EU regulatory activities in environmental and energy policy have now become highly interwoven. Environmental concerns increasingly influence the formulation of the EU’s energy policy, especially...

Environmental concerns have played a key role for institutionalizing energy policy at the level of the European Union. There is thus a tendency in research literature to assume that the objectives of these cognate policy areas are compatible and mutually reinforcing. There have been only few...

This paper analyzes if and how citizens' attitudes towards European Union (EU) integration are correlated with their ideological and partisan positioning, using France as a case study. We challenge traditional measures of citizens' support for European integration, which are one-dimensional. We...

This article investigates how the European Social Fund (ESF) is being employed to translate Lisbon/Europe 2020 goals on employment into domestic agendas. The emphasis is not only on how European priorities are taken into account by ESF national programming documents (talking the EU talk), but...

Tackling pensions' problems means engaging with what Pierson (2001) has called 'immovable objects'. Additionally, the EU competence for drafting specific legislation in this area remains unfulfilled potential, while EU legislation in other policy areas creates indirect pressures on national...

This article re-examines the division between 'optimists' and 'pessimists' within the literature on the Open Method of Coordination’s (OMC) effectiveness. Each of those 'camps' tends to focus on a different question. 'Optimists' are more concerned with the question of whether the OMC exerts an...

This introduction provides a brief overview of the existing OMC literature with regard to the introduction of the OMC, its theoretical conceptualisation of effectiveness and legitimacy and related empirical findings. The main part of the introduction, however, focuses on chosen shortcomings of...

The aim of this paper is not only to assess whether the European Employment Strategy (EES) has had an impact on national labour market reforms, but to also evaluate the effects of partisan politics on the EES and vice versa. After establishing three causal mechanisms through which the EES may...