Informal governance in the European Union: an introduction

The World Trade Organization

“…The dichotomy of formal-informal was specifically used in public administration and empirically oriented administrative law studies (Woll 1963;Bohne 1981) as well as in constitutional law research (Schulze-Fielitz 1984). Recently, the concept of informal governance has been applied to the analysis of the European Union (Christiansen et al 2003).…”

Adapting to Enlargement: The Role of Formal and Informal Processes of Institutional Adjustment in EU Committee Governance

“…The emphasis on consensus generation and problemsolving invariably implies an institutional set-up which is different from one which emphasizes final decision-making and related formal procedures such as qualified majority voting. Informal institutional adjustment in this respect should be understood as being an important aspect of what has been coined 'informal governance in the European Union' (Christiansen, Føllesdal, and Piattoni 2003). Expert committees represent an integral part of those policy networks within EU decision-making which are conducive to such a governance mode.…”

Theorising regions through changes in statehood: rethinking the theory and method of comparative regionalism

“…96 97 More recently, critics have pointed that the perception of European regionalism as highly institutionalised and legalised is only partly accurate and increasingly less so, 98 both because informal relations and governance arrangements have always been an important part of European regionalism and because the nature of European regionalism has itself changed in recent decades through new modes of governance like the OMC. 99 What is perhaps more puzzling however, is the emergence, though in a more limited and tentative form, of new modes of regional governance in Asia, some of which are apparently inconsistent with common perceptions of what Asian regionalism is like. 100 Particularly in the wake of the Asian economic crisis we have witnessed the development of regional regulatory instruments, such as the Chiang Mai Initiative and the Asian Bond Market Initiative, previously thought unthinkable in Asia.…”