RESEARCH PROJECT OF THE SIENA UNIT - MODEL B
Year 2005 - prot. 2005127580_002
Year 2005 - prot. 2005127580_002
technocratic means. There is disenchantment with traditional forms of policy making and regulation and belief that more flexible
approaches which stress problemsolving are necessary. At the same time, the tendency to give all stakeholders a voice in reforms to
ensure both legitimacy and effectiveness of new policies is increasing. The need for a more flexible, participatory, experimental,
multi-level governance system for European policies leads to a growing interest in developing new tools and strategies.
The project is focused on the investigation of these new forms of policy coordination through the following steps:
First Step
· An overview of the literature (actually increasing) in this area and of the different approaches;
· An historical reconstruction of the European governance and of the more useful tools starting from the traditional harmonisation
mechanisms to the soft law mechanisms. This methodological approach will highlight the differences between the new governance
and the previous one;
· A review of the different tools involved in an "ambiguous" concept such as "soft law";
· A systematic classification of these coordination forms and tools according to specific features.
Second Step
More specifically, the project will focus the most relevant approaches among the soft law ones such as the open method of
coordination established by the European Council held in Lisbon in 2000 and included in the EU Consititutional Treaty (even if no
procedures have been formalized for its adoption). The OMC was presented as the appropriate tool for an integrated approach
toward achieving an economic and social renewal. Since its introduction, it has gained ground in European policy. Many areas
previously considered to fall under the sovereignty of Member States are now tackled at a European level. While this method was
first designed to promote a European problem-solving approach in the field of employment, it has now expanded to several other
sensitive fields, i.e. pensions, health care, immigration, environment, education, research and economic development.
Regarding the latter, the OMC could be traced back to the Stability Pact, since it constitued the basis for developing the institutional
body in that arena. However, the implementation of the new mechanism of governance within the economic system may give rise to a
conflict between the constraints and limits of the internal market and the discretionary power left to the Member States when
coordinating national policies.
In addition, the OCM seems particularly suitable for network coordination. This form of "cognitive convergence" was first adopted
by the European banks, and thereinafter it has influenced the relationships among the regulation authorities (i.e. either energy or
telecommunication area) and antitrust authorities of each Member States and among these one and the European Commission.
Then, the aim of the research will be to describe how the open coordination procedures have enabled the European Union to
penetrate in areas where the Treaties do not envisage common policies, as they are largely considered the preserve of the member
states. In particular, attention will be paid to the environmental sector, as one of the most recent application of the OMC.
So, the project will take into account specific fields, where the open procedures have already been introduced as well as other
sectors, such as the economic regulation one, where the OMC has not been implemented yet, in order to test its potential
applicability.
Third Step
Besides the traditional legal analysis, the methodological approach to European governance could be, among others, the so called
"proceduralization" (De Shutter - 2001) and "democratic experimentalism" (Sabel and Cohen - 2002). These two methods point out
that the ideal governance regime should have elements of both decentralized and vertical coordination. More precisely, the first one
moves from the "bounded rationality" theory that states that cognitive limits on human mind operate as an important constraint on
public actors and institutions. Therefore, in order to solve problems descending from a complex environment, private and public
actors and institutions should cooperate in deciding public policy. The procedural method would open decision-making arenas to
multiple players by emphazising procedural norms and procedural rationality, setting up of mechanism to promote self-learning
within the organization.
On the other hand, the democratic experimentalism method states that good governance may follow from the establishment of
centralized regulatory regimes that facilitate decentralized ordering through negotiation and deliberation - through regolatory
competition and coordination, challenging the notion that decentralized coordination has to be devolutionary. This model encourages the ongoing exchange of information, mutual monitoring, revision of regulatory mechanism and collaborative goal
setting among complex coalitions of public and private actors and institutions.
Finally, a useful instrument to enrich our analysis will be coalitional game theory -mainly the core theory and Shapley's value
(Shubik-1982 ; Friedman-1986), - and theory of reputational and repeated non-cooperative games (Fudenberg e Maskin-1986).
