The Impact of Expansion on European Union Institutions

Heidbreder, Eva G.

doi:10.1057/9780230118584

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 85 publications

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“…The second significant cognitive idea in the background is the notion of a ‘European administrative space’, which was explicitly invented as wildcard to display an essentially absent bureaucratic model of the EU. In the run-up to eastern enlargement (2004/2007), the candidate states’ ability to implement the large body of EU law was increasingly questioned, leading to the introduction of ‘administrative capacities’ as an accession criterion (European Council, 1995; see also: Heidbreder, 2011a: 67–73). However, in order to formulate concrete measures to monitor the extent to which the acceding states met this criterion, some template was necessary.…”

Section: Instrumentation In Eu Multilevel Administration2mentioning

confidence: 99%

European Union governance in the shadow of contradicting ideas: the decoupling of policy ideas and policy instruments

Heidbreder

2012

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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The institutional architecture of the European Union is based on two fundamentally competing ideas: supranational rule and national sovereignty. These two underlying ideas are not reconcilable and work at different levels in the background of the policy debate. While on the normative level public sentiments remain strongly linked to the idea of state autonomy, on the cognitive level the paradigm of a functional necessity to cooperate is decisive for actual policy making. Only in some policy domains, such as the single market program, have policy-makers attempted to re-couple normative and cognitive ideas. In contrast to this, the central argument is that policy-makers mostly adhere to an alternative strategy: the systematic decoupling of normative and cognitive ideas. Focusing on public administration, it is shown how deft policy instrumentation allows actors to realize program ideas that satisfy demands for increased supranational governance. At the same time, however, these instruments are in dissonance with how policies are framed against the background of public sentiments that assume domestic bureaucratic independence.

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Section: Instrumentation In Eu Multilevel Administration2mentioning

confidence: 99%