Suchergebnisse

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, wie Wirtschaftsakteure den Zyklus der Rechtsetzung auf europäischer Ebene zu beeinflussen suchen. Untersucht wird insbesondere, warum europäische Wirtschaftsverbände in drei Sektoren (Kunststoffindustrie, Haushaltsgerätehersteller, Elektronikbranche) Selbstregulierung und Prozessführung in unterschiedlicher Weise nutzen. Konzeptuell schlägt die vergleichende Fallstudie eine Brücke zur Governanceforschung sowie der Literatur zur Internationalen Politischen Ökonomie (IPÖ). So ergänzt die Perspektive auf sowohl konflikthafte wie auch kooperative Strukturen die Diskussion um den sogenannten Schatten der Hierarchie in der Governanceforschung. Mit Bezug auf die in der IPÖ etablierten Kategorien zur Analyse wirtschaftlicher Macht weist der Befund darauf hin, dass der Blick auf instrumentelle Macht, also die direkte Einflussnahme auf Gesetzgebung, zwingend ergänzt werden muss um eine systematische Erfassung struktureller Macht. Diesbezüglich zeigt die Untersuchung, dass Wirtschaftsverbände gerade außerhalb der legislativen Arena vielfältige regulative Strategien mobilisieren, die darauf abzielen, Regelsetzung mitzugestalten, zu substituieren, zu verhindern, zu blockieren oder rückgängig zu machen.

AbstractIndependent regulatory authorities hold comprehensive policy mandates that cover both economic and social goals. They take on various roles in market regulation, competition policy, consumer protection, and labor inspection. This article questions whether policymakers are driven by different rationales when delegating the realization of social, as opposed to economic goals, and analyzes how regulators accommodate their various roles in practice. The conceptual framework links the literature on delegation and organizational models. Comparative analysis of postal policy in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom covers a serious area of potential conflict between social and economic regulation. Variation in delegation points to the relevance of instrumental considerations, but also to the politics of institutional arrangements. Variation in regulatory practice shows that organizational models make a difference in accommodating conflict. The article makes a strong case that social and economic regulation need to be addressed as two distinct, yet interacting spheres. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

European energy policy dates back to the founding days of integration, yet the emergence of supranational governance is a recent development. The article examines the extent to which European policymakers have succeeded in building up governance capacity, and what the facilitating and impeding factors were that have shaped the governance mix. The conceptual framework differentiates between orders of governance in the multilevel context, and between policy modes involving hierarchical and non-hierarchical settings and varying actor constellations. The article finds that governance capacity has emerged where second order governance (institutional and procedural rules) is concerned, while first order governance (the concrete policy process) remains the remit of national and private actors. This becomes even more obvious once the interaction between policy modes is taken into account: governance networks enhance governance capacity in the area of competition policy and agency governance; self-regulation by industry constitutes a fall-back option in case of insufficient governance capacity on cross-border issues; soft governance helps to bridge multiple policy areas and levels of governance. The article concludes that second order governance may prove effective where it combines with hierarchy but that it may fail to overcome both trade-offs between contradicting goals and resistance at lower levels.

European energy policy dates back to the founding days of integration, yet the emergence of supranational governance is a recent development. The article examines the extent to which European policymakers have succeeded in building up governance capacity, and what the facilitating and impeding factors were that have shaped the governance mix. The conceptual framework differentiates between orders of governance in the multilevel context, and between policy modes involving hierarchical and non-hierarchical settings and varying actor constellations. The article finds that governance capacity has emerged where second order governance (institutional and procedural rules) is concerned, while first order governance (the concrete policy process) remains the remit of national and private actors. This becomes even more obvious once the interaction between policy modes is taken into account: governance networks enhance governance capacity in the area of competition policy and agency governance; self-regulation by industry constitutes a fall-back option in case of insufficient governance capacity on cross-border issues; soft governance helps to bridge multiple policy areas and levels of governance. The article concludes that second order governance may prove effective where it combines with hierarchy but that it may fail to overcome both trade-offs between contradicting goals and resistance at lower levels.

Postal reform has become a global trend in the age of liberalisation and privatisation. At the same time, change in this politically entrenched policy field meets with domestic resistance. This article sheds light on the politics of reform and regulation in four European and Asian countries. It is found that reform trajectories are far from being uniform and so are the emerging regulatory regimes: in view of domestic resistance France engaged in minimal change which was exclusively driven by European Union (EU) pressure; Germany initially introduced far-reaching measures, but for political motives deviated from this reform path over time; in Japan postal reform has been a side-effect of restructuring the country's financial and banking sector, running short of introducing a regulatory framework which would effectively open up the market to competition; the preconditions for change were most favourable in Singapore, yet remaining bottlenecks may prevent that full liberalisation lives up to reality.

Joint Institutional Frameworks in bilateral relations are circumscribed in policy scope, can lack adequate instruments for dynamic adaptation and provide limited access to decision-making processes internal to the contracting parties. Informal governance, the involvement of private actors as well as rules such as equivalence provide avenues to remedy these limits in bilateral relations in sectoral governance. Through bilateral agreements, the scope of territorially bound political authority is expanded. The formalised and institutionalised frameworks and bodies established are, however, frequently accompanied by mechanisms of informal cooperation and special rules either to cover policy fields where no contractual relation exists, to provide for flexible solutions where needed, or to involve both public and private actors that otherwise do not have access to formal decision-making bodies. This SAFE working paper conceptualises formal and informal modes of cooperation and varying actor constellations. It discusses their relevance for the case of bilateral relations between the European Union (EU) and Switzerland in sectoral governance. More specifically, it draws lessons from EU-Swiss sectoral governance of financial and electricity markets for the future relations of the EU with the United Kingdom (UK). The findings suggest that there are distinct governance arrangements across sectors, while the patterns of sectoral governance are expected to look very much alike in the United Kingdom and Switzerland in the years to come. The general takeaway is that Brexit will have repercussions for the EU's external relations with other third countries, putting ever more emphasis on formal and rule-based approaches, while leaving a need for sector-specific cross border co-operation.

Joint Institutional Frameworks governing the EU's relations with third countries often fail to address important issues of sectoral governance. Non-EU countries benefit from access to EU sectoral bodies, but this is limited, and alternative avenues of co-operation are therefore needed. This article contributes to existing research on EU bilateral relations, which has thus far not paid sufficient attention to the external face of sectoral governance. The qualitative case comparison studies the well-established, yet increasingly politicized bilateral co-operation with Switzerland in order to draw insights for UK–EU relations, and contrasts two strategically important areas of market integration, namely electricity and financial markets. The findings show that politicization and (external) disintegration have repercussions for allegedly 'technical' areas of co-operation where formalized requirements for EU sectoral bodies, public and private, become more stringent and less permissive to accommodate informal modes of co-operation that in the past facilitated external participation.

This working paper suggests to analyse agencification as a double process of institutional and policy centralisation. To that end, it develops a categorisation of agencies that incorporates these two dimensions. More specifically, it is argued that mixed outcomes where the levels of institutional and policy centralisation diverge can be expected to be the rule rather than the exception, in line with the hybrid nature of EU agencies as inbetweeners. Moreover, the fiduciary setting hits important legal constraints given the limits to delegation in the EU context. Against this backdrop a process whereby institutional centralisation develops incrementally and remains limited, yet is accompanied by a process of substantial policy centralisation, appears as the most promising path for EU agencification. A fiduciary setting, where a strong agency enjoys a high degree of independence and operates in a centralised policy space, by contrast, should be the exception. The comparative study of the process of agencification in the energy and banking sector is insightful in the light of these expectations. The incremental nature of institutional change in energy exemplifies the usual path of agencification, which is conducive to a weak agency operating in a relatively centralised policy space. Agencification in banking, by contrast, has led to a rather unusual outcome where the strong agency model combines with a fragmented policy context.

Wettbewerb und Regulierung werfen sowohl aus einer wirtschafts- als auch aus einer politikwissenschaftlichen Perspektive interessante Fragestellungen auf und haben daher in beiden Disziplinen umfangreiche Beachtung gefunden. Während die Wirtschaftswissenschaften zwischen den Subdisziplinen Wettbewerbs- und Regulierungsökonomik trennt, begreift die Politikwissenschaft die marktschaffende als auch marktkorrigierende 'regulative Politik' weitgehend als Einheit (Abschnitt 2). Der Hauptbeitrag der Wirtschaftswissenschaften liegt im Bereich einer wettbewerbsökonomischen Wirkungsanalyse (Abschnitt 3), während die politikwissenschaftliche Domäne in der Analyse von Institutionen und Prozessen der regulativen Politik zu verorten ist (Abschnitt 4). Aus einer interdisziplinären Perspektive kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass beide Sichtweisen in erster Linie komplementär sind und sich gegenseitig befruchten können. Insbesondere das Verständnis jüngster Entwicklungen in den Bereichen Wettbewerb und Regulierung, die eine stärker industriepolitische und geostrategische Ausrichtung beinhalten, kann von einer politökonomischen Perspektive profitieren.

Wettbewerb und Regulierung werfen sowohl aus einer wirtschafts- als auch aus einer politikwissenschaftlichen Perspektive interessante Fragestellungen auf und haben daher in beiden Disziplinen umfangreiche Beachtung gefunden. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über beide Herangehensweisen. Dabei werden zunächst die grundlegenden Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten offengelegt (Abschnitt 2), bevor die disziplinären Schwerpunkte in der Analyse vorgestellt, und aus Sicht der jeweils anderen Disziplin kommentiert werden (Abschnitte 3 und 4). Wir kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass beide Sichtweisen in erster Linie komplementär sind und sich gegenseitig befruchten können.