Synopses & Reviews
How does policy-making trigger the institutionalization of steering capacities? This book investigates this question by tackling why the European Commission expanded competences that were intentionally limited to the specific pre-accession context prior the 2004/07 EU enlargement. Five cases studies trace the policy development from before to after enlargement. Based on a two-level functional explanation that links neo-functional and the arena of powers approaches, the author shows that member states tolerate far-reaching capacity expansions, but intervene actively if policies are expected to entail political clout that threatens to strengthen direct political relationships between the EU-level and citizens.
Review
"Based on impeccable methodological underpinnings, the book explains how and when the action capacities of the European Commission go beyond the Treaties with the benevolence of the Member States. In five cases, an illuminating and surprising view of the real life of the Union."--Giuliano Amato, Member of the Senate of the Italian Republic
"Eva G. Heidbreder's examination of the impact of expansion in the European Union is a clear demonstration of the politics that reside at the center of the Union. She integrates several theoretical perspectives and a number of cases to provide an interesting and important analysis of the European Union before and after expansion. This will be crucial reading for all scholars interested in the European Union and in European politics more generally.”--B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh
"The hidden side of the EUs enlargement to the East of Europe is revealed in this enlightening and theoretically sophisticated book. Against the generally held assumption that widening the EU precludes the deepening of EU integration, Heidbreder demonstrates conclusively that the accession process actually increased EU Commission action capacities in ways unanticipated by the Treaties—but only in certain cases. The EU Commission was able to gain ‘creeping competencies primarily in those areas where it was able to frame policies in non-political ways, as distributive or as low-key soft regulation—the cases of administrative capacity building, cross-border cooperation, and minority protection. Where policies were seen as political, or as impinging on national competences because involving hard regulation or redistribution, by contrast, they were stopped by the member-states—as with nuclear safety and anti-corruption policy."--Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Boston University
About the Author
Eva G. Heidbreder currently lectures on Public Policy and European Studies as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence after completing various degrees in EU Studies in Vienna, Osnabrück, and London.
Table of Contents
Part I: Introduction * Research Question and Empirical Puzzle * Part II: Theoretical Framework * Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Policy-generated Institutionalization * The Analytical Framework: Design of the Empirical Study * Part III: Empirical Analyses * Institutional Capacity Building: Extending Conditional Distributive Instruments * The Respect for and Protection of Minorities: Exploiting Legal Grey Areas and Patronage Policies * Cross-border Cooperation: Executing Intergovernmental Competences * Nuclear Safety: Resisting Unintended Consequences * Anti-Corruption: Out-Sourcing Responsibility * Part IV: Conclusions * Comparative Summary and Empirical Results * Conclusion: Policy-Generated Institutionalization