Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU

Abstract

This article argues that current widespread characterisations of EU governance as multi-level and networked overlook the emergent architecture of the EU's public rule making. In this architecture, framework goals (such as full employment, social inclusion, 'good water status', a unified energy grid) and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units (such as national ministries or regulatory authorities and the actors with whom they collaborate) are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those pursuing other means to the same general ends. Finally, the framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures themselves are periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. Although this architecture cannot be read off from either Treaty provisions or textbook accounts of the formal competences of EU institutions, the article traces its emergence and diffusion across a wide range of policy domains, including telecommunications, energy, drug authorisation, occupational health and safety, employment promotion, social inclusion, pensions, health care, environmental protection, food safety, maritime safety, financial services, competition policy, state aid, anti-discrimination policy and fundamental rights.

Re-thinking FATF: an experimentalist interpretation of the Financial Action Task Force

“…Sabel and Zeitlin [10] identify four cornerstones to this Bexperimentalist architecture:1 ) Relevant actors (often states and international institutions) set framework goals (i.e., broad goals such as Bfull employment^or Ba unified energy grid^) and metrics for gauging progress; 2) Lower-level units are obliged to implement policies aimed at meeting those standards, but are given the autonomy to implement the policies they deem most appropriate; 3) In return for that autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review that compares their performance to others'; and 4) The collective wisdom gained from implementation and evaluation is taken into account as the goals, metrics, and procedures are periodically reviewed and revised by participants.…”

“…The evidence below shows that FATF's development is better understood as a case of Bexperimentalist governance^ [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. 1 Experimentalist decision-making is built around an inclusive, multi-level network of stakeholders who establish, evaluate, contest, and consistently revise standards in order to generate new knowledge about challenges and solutions [11].…”

The liberty of the moderns: Market freedom and democracy within the EU

“…Some analysts argue that these difficulties can be overcome by selective consultation with an emerging European public formed of transnational civil society groups (Sabel and Zeitlin 2007). Yet, in the absence of shared identities, reciprocal social relations and proper parties, the political liberties pursued by Union citizens are of a markedly individualistic rather than a collective kind (Scharpf 2009:176-78).…”

Implementing Ethics in Information Systems, Presuppositions and Consequences in Ethics and Information Systems

“…The criticisms started with Simon and his theory of bounded rationality [20], and have not stopped since. Such thinkers as Lenoble and Maeschalck [10], [12], Sabel [19], Schön [21], Ferry [5], Sen [22], Von Schomberg [25], and many others, are now addressing the conditions and consequences of a re-inclusion of values, beliefs, context, narrative, interpretation, life experience, and everything that was left to one side as a result of the procedural turn in ethics that led to procedural theories of norm construction. Most philosophers remain within the broad trend of proceduralism, but want to open up its framing 11 so as to open it up to more complexity 12 .…”