The dynamics of European integration. Intistutional or policy effects in European legislation

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Project objective

European integration, often defined by and understood as a 'process whereby two or more actors form a new actor' (Galtung 1968: 377), promotes two lines of arguments: The first, the 'form follows function'-hypothesis, focuses on the material integration effects of sensitive policy domains which themselves were partially or exclusively regulated by European politics (Mitrany 1975, Haas 1958). The second, the 'function follows form'-assumption, emphasises the integrative impact of European institutional settings. Both arguments, the material and the institutional, have often been used for the explanation of either the constitutional or the operational European integration, but seldom applied to empirical analyses. This study focuses on the theoretical and empirical analysis of operational European integration which concerns the internal integration by regular European legislation. Operational integration itself is measured by the amount, and the duration, of collective European decision making. We will be asking whether European legislation can be explained more by institutional variables than by material variables. The empirical part will cover more than 30 years of European legislation. To be more precise, our data analysis will be based on a sample of 6800 legislative proposals initiated by the Commission under various procedural rules and in different European policy domains. Our first part of analysis will refer to policy-specific effects on European legislation. Although some policy domains are formally controllable at the European level, they are seldom negotiated here, whereas other domains tend to be over-regulated by European politics. As a consequence, our first empirical step will take into account the regulation densities of different European policy domains. This will then allow us to examine the domain-specific effects on European legislation over time. The second part of our analysis, the study of the impact of institutional settings on European legislation, will require first and foremost a method which is capable of representing the various procedural rules of European legislation as well as their modifications during the past 30 years. In this context, formal power distribution is decisive for the adoption or the failure of a proposal. The distribution varies according to either the decision rule or the set of European authorities involved. Besides the central European bodies, the Commission and the members of the Council, the European Parliament has become increasingly involved in European legislation. Legislative success is thus determined by the solution of both, an inter-coalition problem between different European bodies as well as their internal coalition problem which alters for different decision rules. We will examine the various legislative procedures by the application of an appropriate game-theoretical power index which subsequently will be brought into the empirical analysis of the European legislative output. In this way, we will be able to check whether European policy-making is significantly determined by European politics, or whether European legislation is merely affected by the policies themselves.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN · GRONINGENCoordinatorNetherlands
• Not availableCity levelGermany

Links

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