Whereas domestic public policy is increasingly penetrated by international organisations, domestic government institutions seem less adaptive. This puzzle triggers the following question: To what extent is the Europeanisation of domestic Research and Higher Educational policy (R&E policy)...

The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in the social sciences. Yet beyond the bedrock agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no convergence about how it should be...

This paper argues that better yardsticks for inter-case comparison are indispensable to promote a process of additive insight on Europeanisation. Therefore, operationalisations are suggested here for aspects of both the independent and the dependent "variables" of Europeanisation. The empirical...

Within the discussion on European governance and constitutional reforms of the EU polity the so-called "open method of coordination" (OMC) has gained much attention as a procedure that occupies an intermediary place between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational legislation. In this...

Although one of the arguments for involving national parliaments in the European Union (EU) is to make EU politics more accountable, the literature has made few attempts to analyse under which conditions their involvement does have this impact. This article argues that it is not the sheer level...

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...

In this article we approach the functioning of bureaucracy in ESDP from a governance perspective that also focuses on informal patterns of interaction between the relevant bureaucratic actors. Following the governance and related network governance approaches, the interplay between formal and...

This article argues that against all odds, the corporatist inclusion of the major societal interests in public decision-making is still a relevant governance mechanism in the European multi-level system. At the national level,a diversity of systems continues to operate. At least in some cases,...

Comitology committees are often accused of not being accountable. This paper aims to provide building blocks to analyze the validity of this claim. After briefly discussing the meaning and aims of accountability, it is discussed where the actual accountability problems can be expected....