This paper is interested in the role of knowledge as resource, medium and product of governance as well as in ways of studying knowledge and processes of knowledge construction in EU governance. Its particular focus in this context is on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) and the Lisbon...

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...

During recent decades improved supply chain management, innovation in information technology, new financial instruments, etc. have changed the economic environment for production in the EU significantly. This led to and was accompanied by increased coordination of economic policy and the use of...

This article elaborates analysis of the normative foundations of the European Union's policy for reconciliation of work and family life, with a specific focus on the shifts produced by the introduction of the Open Method of Coordination in the field of childcare policy. The main objective is to...

One of the most common arguments about ‘new governance’ is that it is characterised by heterarchy rather than by hierarchy, creating horizontal modes of governance among a multitude of actors – public and private – involving all relevant stakeholders. Often implicitly, but sometimes...

AbstractThe complexity of the multi-level European polity is not adequately represented by the single-level theoretical concepts of competing intergovernmentalist and supranationalist approaches. By contrast, empirical research focusing on mul-tilevel interactions tends either to emphasize the...

EuropeÕs economic governance is not only highly complex, but also increasingly inefficient and unsustainable in the long run. This conclusion is reached from the theory of collective action and the difficulties in democratic legitimacy. The solution would be the creation of a European...

This paper discusses recent developments in Euro-Mediterranean relations following the establishment of the European Neighbourhood Initiative (ENP) and attempts to put these empirical insights into theoretical perspective. By relating selected elements of the theory of world society - in...

The European Union’s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is a method that in principle assumes that coordination of policies can be achieved without the use of “hard law”. This paper addresses the question what the OMC represents as an instrument for European integration in the context of...

This article aims to provide a better understanding as to why different institutional arrangements have the particular structural properties which they are found to have. Drawing on the system theoretical tradition in sociology and on ‘complexity theory’, this paper presents an analytical...