An Ever Closer Fusion? A Dynamic Macropolitical View on Integration Processes

Wessels, Wolfgang

doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00060

Cited by 310 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…This conforms to the fact that most competences are shared between the EU and national or sub-national governments and that they are applied in patterns of multilevel governance. Scholars describe this reality with concepts like "condominio", "consortio" (Schmitter 1996), the "fusion of levels" (Wessels 1997) or "network governance" (Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999). In response to this development, scholars began to elaborate theories of multilevel governance.…”

Section: Living Reviews In European Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

The EU’s competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system

Benz¹,

Zimmer²

2008

Living Rev. Euro. Gov.

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This Living Review deals with the division of competences between the EU and its member states in a multilevel political system. The article summarises research on the relations between the EU and the national and sub-national levels of the member states. It provides an overview on normative and theoretical concepts and empirical research. From the outset, European integration was about the transfer of powers from the national to the European level, which evolved as explicit bargaining among governments or as an incremental drift. This process was reframed with the competence issue entering the agenda of constitutional policy. It now concerns the shape of the European multilevel polity as a whole, in particular the way in which powers are allocated, delimited and linked between the different levels.The article is structured as follows: First of all, normative theories of a European federation are discussed. Section 2 deals with different concepts of federalism and presents approaches of the economic theory of federalism in the context of the European polity. The normative considerations conclude with a discussion of the subsidiarity principle and the constitutional allocation of competences in the European Treaties. Section 3 covers the empirical issue of how to explain the actual allocation of competences (scope and type) between levels. Integration theories are presented here only in so far as they explain the transfer of competence from the national to the European level or the limits of this centralistic dynamics.Normative and empirical theories indeed provide some general guidelines and conclusions on the allocation of competences in the EU, but they both contradict the assumption of a separation of competences. The article therefore concludes that politics and policy-making This review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Austria License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/at/ 2 Arthur Benz and Christina Zimmer in the EU have to be regarded as multilevel governance (Section 4). The main theoretical approaches and results from empirical research on European multilevel governance are presented before the article concludes with recommendations for further discussion and research in the field (Section 5). Following Fritz Scharpf, it is recommended that research on the vertical allocation of competences and the application of shared competences in the European multilevel governance should stop searching for holistic approaches (grand theory) explaining unique features of the European political system; instead, research will best succeed when relying on a variety of simpler theories and models to describe European governance modes.Living Reviews in European Governance http://www.livingreviews.org /lreg-2008-3 How to cite this article Owing to the fact that a Living Reviews article can evolve over time, we recommend to cite the article as follows:Arthur Benz and Christina Zimmer, "The EU's competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel sy...

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Section: Living Reviews In European Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

The EU’s competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system

Benz¹,

Zimmer²

2008

Living Rev. Euro. Gov.

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“…23 GG der Bundestag zu den Verlierern der Europäisierung zähle (Beyme 1998, Wessels 1999. Während in der Regel dabei insbesondere eine abgehobene, zentralisierte EU-Bürokratie verantwortlich gemacht wird (Vaubel 1994, Sidjanski 1989, sehen andere hingegen Tendenzen zu einer transnationalen Koalitionsbildung zwischen den nationalen Bürokratien, hin zu einer vollständigen Fusionierung der nationalen und europäischen Administrationen (Wessels 1996(Wessels , 1997.…”

Section: Die Diskussion Um Die Effektivierung Regierungsinterner Entsunclassified

Interministerielle Netzwerke: Formale und informelle Koordinationsstrukturen bei der Vorbereitung der deutschen Verhandlungspositionen zur Regierungskonferenz 1996

Thurner

Stoiber

2002

PVS

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“…But such an 'organic' fusion of power can be perceived as much a threat to democratic legitimacy as unwarranted transfers of power to the centre (Wessels, 1997). Citizens face a system of governance where lines of accountability are blurred and available channels for expressing voice unclear.…”

Section: From Distributed To Shared Competences: Networked Cooperatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Conclusion: The Federal Vision Beyond the Federal State

Nicolaïdis¹

2001

The Federal Vision

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Fleshes out some of the common horizontal themes emerging from the book, and presents the broad elements of federal vision that have been discussed. The vision calls for five concurrent shifts in understanding what matters about federal contracts, each central to fashioning a ‘federal’ response to the challenge of legitimacy. In particular, it is suggested how the notion of ‘subsidiarity’ as commonly understood—that political decisions should be made and policies conducted at the lowest, or most appropriate, level—should be fine‐tuned, reinterpreted, or even relabelled. The five shifts that are discussed in the different sections of the conclusion are: from allocative outcomes to the process of change—legitimacy and flexibility; from distributed to shared competences—networked cooperation, proportionality, and changing forms of governance; from separation of powers to power checks—governance structures, procedural subsidiarity, and the safeguards of federalism; from power containment to empowerment—proactive subsidiarity, managed competition, and mutuality; and from multi‐level (hierarchical) to multi‐centred governance and horizontal subsidiarity. The concluding section looks towards a model of global subsidiarity.

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An Ever Closer Fusion? A Dynamic Macropolitical View on Integration Processes

Cited by 310 publications

References 48 publications

The EU’s competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system

The EU’s competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system

Interministerielle Netzwerke: Formale und informelle Koordinationsstrukturen bei der Vorbereitung der deutschen Verhandlungspositionen zur Regierungskonferenz 1996

Conclusion: The Federal Vision Beyond the Federal State

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