Experimentalist Governance in the European Union

Towards a New Architecture

Edited by Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin

Original theoretical argument about the emergent architecture of EU governance
Unified and coherent volume tightly integrated around a common theme
Provides authoritative, up-to-date analyses of EU governance in key policy sectors

Experimentalist Governance in the European Union

Towards a New Architecture

Edited by Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin

Description

This book advances a novel interpretation of EU governance. Its central claim is that the EU's regulatory successes within--and increasingly beyond--its borders rest on the emergence of a recursive process of framework rule making and revision by European and national actors across a wide range of policy domains. In this architecture, framework goals and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units 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 of others pursuing different means to the same general ends. The framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures are themselves periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation.

The editors' introduction sets out the core features of this experimentalist architecture and contrasts it to conventional interpretations of EU governance, especially the principal-agent conceptions underpinning many contemporary theories of democratic sovereignty and effective, legitimate law making. Subsequent chapters by an interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars explore the architecture's applicability across a series of key policy domains, including data privacy, financial market regulation, energy, competition, food safety, GMOs, environmental protection, anti-discrimination, fundamental rights, justice and home affairs, and external relations. Their authoritative studies show both how recent developments often take an experimentalist turn but also admit of multiple, contrasting interpretations or leave open the possibility of reversion to more familiar types of governance. The results will be indispensable for all those concerned with the nature of the EU and its contribution to contemporary governance beyond the nation-state.

Experimentalist Governance in the European Union

Towards a New Architecture

Edited by Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin

Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
1. Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU, Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin
2. Innovating European Data Privacy Regulation: Unintended Pathways to Experimentalist Governance, Abraham Newman
3. The Lamfalussy Process: New Forms of Financial Rulemaking in the EU, Elliot Posner
4. Experimentalist Governance in the Energy Sector, Burkard Eberlein
5. Networked Competition Governance in the EU: Centralization, Decentralization, or Experimentalist Architecture?, Yane Svetiev
6. Emerging Experimentalism in EU Environmental Governance, Ingmar von Homeyer
7. Responding to Catastrophe: Towards a New Architecture for EU Food Safety Regulation?, Ellen Vos
8. EU Governance of GMOs: Political Struggles and Experimentalist Solutions?, Patrycja Dabrowska
9. Stumbling into Experimentalism: The EU Anti-Discrimination Regime, Grainne de Burca
10. Experimentalist Governance in Justice and Home Affairs, Jorg Monar
11. The Role of Evaluation in Experimentalist Governance: Learning by Monitoring in the Establishment of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, Olivier De Schutter
12. Experimentalist Governance in EU External Relations: Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, Elsa Tulmets
Index

Experimentalist Governance in the European Union

Towards a New Architecture

Edited by Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin

Author Information

Charles F. Sabel is Maurice T. Moore Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. His publications include Learning by Monitoring, A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism, Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry, and more.

Jonathan Zeitlin is Professor of Public Policy and Governance, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam. He previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directed the European Union Center of Excellence and the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE).

Contributors:

Gráinne de Búrca, Fordham University Law School
Patrycja Dabrowska, University of Warsaw, Poland
Burkard Eberlein, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada
Ingmar von Homeyer, ECOLOGIC-Institute for European and International Environmental Studies, Germany/Belgium
Jörg Monar, College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium/Natolin, Poland) and University of Sussex, UK
Abraham Newman, Georgetown University
Elliot Posner, Case Western Reserve University
Olivier De Schutter, University of Louvain, Belgium, and at the College of Europe, Poland
Elsa Tulmets, Institute of International Relations, Czech Republic
Ellen Vos, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
Yane Svetiev, Brooklyn College Law School