ARENA Working Papers 2007
ARENA working papers are pre-prints of research articles and chapters analysing and documenting new European orders of governance.
Taking Evolution Seriously
This paper examines evolutionary theories developed in the life sciences and explores the ways in which specific concepts and/or insights from these theories can be profitably applied to social and political institutions.
Politicisation of European Integration: Bringing the Process into Focus
This conceptual paper provides a working definition of politicisation of European integration, based on a literature review.
National Agencies in the European Administrative Space: Government driven, Commission driven or networked?
Applying large-N questionnaire data this paper investigates which institutions are influencing national agencies when they are practising EU legislation.
The Constitutional Debate Revisited. Patterns of public claims-making in constitutional debates in France and Germany 2001-2005
This article aims to understand how the dynamics of the public debate about the European Constitution changed when the baton was passed from the Convention to the Intergovernmental Conference and to the different national arenas that were expected to ratify the Constitution.
EU Governance in an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Logics of Decision-making in the Justice and Home Affairs Council
This paper specifies the scope conditions of the logics of appropriateness and consequentiality in the JHA Council.
The Ups and Downs of Bureaucratic Organization
In spite of relentless criticism over many years bureaucracies and bureaucrats are possibly experiencing a renaissance. The aim of this paper is to make sense of this puzzle by exploring bureaucracy as a specific way of organizing public administration in democratic societies. Through what processes and under what conditions is administrative organization likely to come close to the Weberian ideal type?
Understanding Institutions and Logics of Appropriateness: Introductory Essay
This paper presents three landmark articles on “The new institutionalism” that are part of a research agenda launched more than twenty years ago.“The new institutionalism” offers a perspective on how political life is organized, functions and changes in contemporary democracies. In contrast with an older institutionalism that used formal-legal rules as proxies for political action, the new institutionalism is behavioral.
Who Consults? Expert Groups in the European Union
The EU is frequently understood as a special kind of governance system characterized by its strong degree of interpenetration of different levels of government and a plethora of interactions between EU institutions, administrations from national and subnational levels, as well as organized non-state interests. Nowhere is this kind of multi-level governance as evident as in the committees system of the EU. This article examines and explains a crucial property of this system, the committees and experts groups organised by the European Commission.
Safe Enough To Argue? Giving Reasons in the Council of the EU
This paper aims at contributing to the empirical turn in deliberative theory, by analysing the presence of arguing and bargaining in the working groups of the Council of the EU.To what extent is arguing an important mode of decision-making in the Council, what circumstances make arguing more likely to occur and what types of actors are most inclined to argue?
Bilateral diplomacy in an integrated Europe: the co-existence of institutional orders?
This paper discusses the hypothesised decline of bilateral diplomacy in the EU and presents an empirical indicator of such decline, measuring the number of diplomatic staff over time in bilateral embassies.
Bicameral Politics in the European Union
This paper contributes to the empirical knowledge in the field by investigating bicameral political dynamics based on a combined data set covering legislators’ behavior in both the Council and the Parliament.
Mellom økonomi og kultur: Det europeiske universitetet i endring
Is the European Research University going to be a historical parenthesis? University dynamics is seen as driven by tensions between three of the key institutions of modern society - science, representative democracy and the market economy - and between different policy-sectors and levels of governance. What kind of university and what kind of academics are we likely to see in future, and what will be the University's role in society?
The Public Administration Turn in Integration Research
This article addresses the study of public administration and how this is brought back into the study of European integration and European Union (EU) governance.
Institutional Stimulation of Deliberative Decision-Making:Technical Regulation in the European Union
Institutions based upon the systematic separation of different decision functions may stimulate deliberative decision-making, if they hinder negotiators from introducing their bargaining power into the negotiation process. Such arrangements exist for the regulation of requirements for health and safety of products within the Single Market. The article explores the underlying causal mechanism and examines the cases of machines and toys.
EUROPEAN GOVERNMENT(S) Executive Politics in Transition?
This paper discusses the ‘agencification’ and fragmentation of national governments, and questions whether a ‘methodological nationalism’ has hindered us from seeing the emerging executive centre at the level above, i.e. the European Commission, and the re-coupling of nationally decoupled agencies into a multilevel Union administration.
The Anatomy of Autonomy: Reassessing the Autonomy of the European Commission
The European Commission occupies a pivotal role as the key executive institution of the European Union (EU). This paper aims to re-assess the behavioural autonomy of the European Commission, as well as organisational conditions thereof.
“Europe of Knowledge”: Search for a New Pact
How is the University as an institution affected by ongoing processes of European integration?
Networking Administration in Areas of National Sensitivity - The Commission and European Higher Education
How should we account for the emerging networked-based administrative capacity at the EU level? This paper analyses developments in the higher education sector.
Organization theory, public administration, democratic governance
This paper sketches an organization theory-based approach to the study of public administrative behavior, institutions and developments in the context of democratic governance.