Uusi institutionalismi EU-tutkimuksessa : suurista integraatioteorioista päätöksenteon ja verkostojen tutkimukseen

Authors

• Olli Rehn

Abstract

The rebirth of European integration in the 1980s has led to a revival of the study of integration during the current decade. The conventional approaches to studying the European Union, neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, have been found useful in studies that focus on the entire integration process and its outcome. However, these Grand Theories have been less successful in explaining and understanding everyday policymaking processes in the EU. Therefore, conventional approaches need to be complemented by such approaches that focus on governance, institutions and policy networks. Moreover, it is argued that the analysis of EU policy networks should incorporate theories of new institutionalism and communicative action in order to enrich the understanding of its policy-making processes. The probability of policy networks is higher in such policy areas that are highly communatarized and where the societal interests in the member states are strongly organized. By contrast, in such policy areas where the prevailing policy style is intergovernmental and where the societal interests are weakly organized, the probability of policy networks is lower. The choice of research strategy can be assisted by drawing a distinction between large-scale ’history-making’ decisions, medium-level ’policy-setting’ decisions and everyday ’policy-shaping’ decisions. Consequently, network analysis has proven most useful in studying policy-setting and policy-shaping decisions in such sectoral EU policies that have been strongly communatarized and where societal interests are highly organized.