Abstract Europe’s ‘political space,’ its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states’ governments, has never been studied in a...

This paper looks at the introduction of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) to EU policy-making. This new mode of governance has been developed over the last decade and has received considerable attention in the literature. However, much of this writing fails to put the OMC into the broader...

In this article, we analyse the development of new modes of governance in EU employment and social policy over the past two decades. In this field, a number of innovations can be observed. First, with the Maastricht Treaty, the right to draw up legislation was given to European social partners....