Suchergebnisse

Over the past three decades, processes of assessing and governing mental healthcare have emerged at the European Union level. Consisting almost entirely of 'soft law' instruments, EU mental health governance (EUMHG) has incorporated policy-makers, mental healthcare providers, research scientists, non-governmental organizations, and patients and families across Europe in processes of mental health governance. This paper explores the role of the European Commission in EUMHG. It proposes that recent attempts to theorise the Commission's role in European integration over-emphasise EU-level institutional relations and thus neglect the knowledge relations that are central to policy areas such as mental health. It therefore adopts an analytic framework based on Actor Network Theory that enables more accurate understanding of those relations. Applying this framework to EUMHG over time, it identifies three distinct networks that have emerged in EUMHG, all built via Commission initiatives. This analysis reveals the Commission's central but not independent role in EUMHG's survival, and illustrates how different kinds of actors held 'expert' roles in EUMHG depending on the way in mental (ill) health was problematised in EUMHG. The paper therefore suggests a new concern regarding the nature of 'soft' EU law, namely, its influence on knowledge and authority in transnationally constructed policy.

This article examines the implications of EU governance tools for social activism in Europe, specifically whether benchmarking, best practices, the open method of co-ordination, or mainstreaming delimit the kinds of activism non-governmental and other organizations can pursue under EU auspices. This is possible because EU governance models give member states ultimate discretion on the design and implementation of EU social policies, and EU governance principles are based on specific normative commitments. I explore whether EU governance therefore renders activist confrontation of states unlikely, constrains policy participants' learning, particularly of perceived radical lessons, or allows only state-led challenges to market and social structures. To the extent that any of these dynamics entails EU governance, the models should be viewed with caution, and European social activists should be prepared to choose between conceding to state agendas or working outside EU governance margins. Cases include EU gender and social inclusion policies.