Why does the EU rely so much on policy networks to make its political system function - Essay Example

?Why does the EU rely so much on policy networks to make its political system function? Introduction The policy network model of 1970 first highlighted the aspects of post parliamentary politics. With Europeanization of various policies implementing sectors, EU has increased their dependence on policy networks (Richardson, 2006, p.1014).Such networks have provided the interest groups with multiple opportunities for framing policies (Richardson, 2006, p.1015). Policy changes have taken place only with the consent of the group. Interest groups have always favored state bureaucracies maintaining stable relationships with the groups. Hence policy networks have helped the policy makers fulfill their procedural ambitions and obtain a ‘negotiated order’ For this reasons even after decades of formulation, these policies for the functioning of political system continue to exist (Mazey & Richardson, 2001).The paper intends to trace out the possible reasons behind EU’s everlasting reliance on policy networks for managing the political system thereby addressing the background and importance of these policy networks. The European Union EU operating for 50 years possesses a unique background. Under the co-decision procedure the Council consisting of all member states works with the European Parliament for budget formulation and other decisions. Overall, the decision making body contains EU Council, Parliament and the European Commission. The legislations for EU comprises of Primary legislation influencing daily lives of member countries’ citizens and Secondary legislation containing directives, regulations and also certain recommendations. The decision based upon majority votes, can be simple or qualified, depending entirely on the addressed issue (Mazey & Richardson, 2001). It appears that the structure of the EU displaying behavioral traits and functioning is very different from the regular or traditional ones found in most other organizations (How does the EU work, 2008). State bureaucrats display efficiency in framing policies under the scope of their limited capacities and available information. The users who are served by these bureaucrats extend a high degree of external support to the political system on obtaining their desired benefits. Thus favoritism and institutional factors act behind decision making (Mazey & Richardson, 2001). Evolvement of European Political System: Horizontal and Vertical Over the years the European Union has developed a well governed and stable political system. An efficient government operates within the state with concentration of power at the center. Member countries like France, Britain and Sweden are known to possess an ideal political system. Decentralization has been the key to governance. It has always witnessed sharing of political power among large number of actors (Buxbaum, 1996, pp. 14-16). Policies framed under EU governance are concerned with regulation of markets. This has been noticed for environmental and social policies of EU which helps in preventing market failures. The budgetary policies have dealt with compensating potential losers who lose out in market integration. The adoption of a single currency has been aimed towards regulating markets. It has attempted creation and regulation of a single market. The Maastricht Treaty of 1993 has attempted to bring about economic and political union. Viewed form a vertical dimension EU can be termed as a regulatory state. From horizontal perspective it has acted as a hyper consensus government (Buxbaum, 1996, p. 16). The total policy making process has been divided between the governmental head in the European Council and Commission resulting in efficient allocation of power among the EU institutions. Political leadership has been rotational among the member countries. Such a governance framework has led to rising power of the European parliament. Under this multilevel EU framework, networks have helped to improve regulations in the areas of energy, transport and telecommunications. Background for policy networks Policy making under EU occurs within a set of subsystems containing interactions between interest groups and government officials. So under such EU system framing policies takes place through the policy network approach originated during 1960s. The main concern of these policy networks is to link the macro state theories to micro policies with regard to decision making, through analysis of the relation between pressure groups and governments. The behavior of the members with regard to specific areas of policy implementation is explained by this. The policy network approach helps to trace out the variations within pressure or interest groups (Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006). Policy networks under EU are coalitions of both the public and private organizations. They are interdependent on each other and exchange resources. Such policy networks having significant governmental support are autonomous when it comes to decision making but decisions are negotiable by member countries. Networks include close, exclusive, and stable policy communities on one side and open inclusive, unstable policy communities on the other. The stable community develops an understanding among themselves while for unstable community there are disagreements among members for most of the matters. The nature of communities depends upon the concerned member country (Bogason, Kensen and Miller, 2004). The European Parliament controls and checks over EU’s political activities. Parliamentary seats are shared by member countries. The members of parliament are elected after every years based on the majority votes of minimum 74%. The figure below shows the share of each member country in parliament (Bogason, Kensen and Miller, 2004): Figure 1: Column chart showing country wise sharing of seats in parliament: Source: How does the EU work? 2008 From the figure it is seen that the majority of seats are enjoyed by Germany, UK, France and Spain giving them advantages as far as claiming majority in votes is concerned. The mode of governance under EU is through policy networks because it is dependent for administration on the system of ‘governance by committee’. EU policy implementation is concerned with sharing functions and responsibilities of governance between public and private sectors. Such a networking structure is used for spreading information. The policy procedure in this case is disaggregated (Peterson, 2003). Interest Groups The term interest groups denote groups of people engaged in a particular sector and having influential power to adopt or change some policies within governance. They play a key role in liberal governance by channelizing expressions of interest between government and society. Such groups having shared attitudes or occupations are also known as pressure groups. They help the citizens to favor or protest against certain policies apart from the system of general elections. These groups can also be engaged in promotional activities. Trade unions, Automobile Association can be thought of as interest groups. Independence and permission from the workplace association is very important for formation of pressure groups. People, rely more on these pressure groups than mass political parties to express themselves and to deliver their views. Hence in 1945 mass political parties enjoyed lesser powers. The pressure groups put up various demands before the governing political party as public interest. The party has to comply by those demands for implementing sectoral policies. Some mass political parties such as the UK Independence party have features similar to pressure groups (Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006, pp. 418-419). Pressure groups can be classified based on their approach. Such a classification is shown in a tabulated format below: Table 1: Classification of interest groups Type of groups Approach Promotional Supporting particular social causes Sectional Represent the interests of their respective sectors Insider Can directly approach the key policy makers Outsider Do not have access to the powerful policy making authorities Source: Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006, p.423 Under a corporatist system where pressure groups show interests in economic policies, there exists close connections between government and corporate houses which has been supported by pressure groups considering these ideal for work. Pressure Groups have unlimited members since group leader can deliver membership to unspecified number of people (Rhodes, RAW, 1997, pp.30-31). Governance under Policy networks Under the 1988 cohesion policy reform, EU governance has reached a standpoint advocating promotion of policy networks, including both private and public sectors. The proposal was accepted for regional development. Such a reform led to inclusion of sub national and supranational actors (Hooghe and Marks, 2001, p.106). However the policy reform came under serious criticisms in 2006 due to its elaborate spending pattern. The spending pattern is demonstrated by the figure below: Figure 2: Line diagram spending under policy reform as percentage of EU budget Source: Hooghe and Marks, 2001, p. 107 As seen in the line diagram, the spending for programs was brought down considerably by 2006. Although with huge spending it enabled the government to allocate funds in needed areas and in poorest regions. Under the cohesion policy those areas were targeted specifically whose GDP constituted less than “75% of the EU average”. The areas incurring problems of unemployment were also included. Overall this policy network approach had concentrated on regional development (Hooghe and Marks, 2001, pp.106-108). The special fact about governance under policy networks is allowance of multiple actions. This has brought out the importance of each implemented policies for any particular sector. Simultaneously it has dealt with the defects as well as problems arising out of the implemented policy. The methodology considered by policy networks includes both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative approach has dealt with the social structure of governance focusing mainly on the issues raised by the interest groups and their opinions. The quantitative analysis has captured the interactions between policy makers and the pressure groups. Policy network as a governance instrument has mobilized and allocated widely dispersed political resources between the public and private enterprises. It has vividly dealt with the structural relationship between politicians and policy making procedure. Under this approach cost benefit analysis has been simplified (Borzel, 1997). Sectoral policy networks have mainly undertaken the task of regional arrangements. It has solved the unsolvable adjustment problems relating to institutional configurations (Kenis and Raab, 2003). Policy network approach has given more importance to the multiple interest groups and the freedom they enjoy over the territories or their concerned sectors. It has prioritized networking exchanges over intergovernmental relations. Under policy network approach the multi governance models adopted can either be generalized or task specific. The generalized version for multi governance has been adapted by EU (Creitaru, 2009, pp. 10-15). EU has excluded significant actors for extending autonomy to sub national actors. Here intergovernmental relations are not considered for policy making (Creitaru, 2009, p. 22). The applicability of policy networks on EU governance can be explained with the help of the hypothetical below: Table 2: Applicability of policy networks to EU governance EU governance Policy networks As dependent variable Interest intermediation Policy results Structures of policy making Transnational policy-making As an independent variable Impact of European policies on domestic structures Developing the state Source: Creitaru, 2009, p. 15 Under EU governance fragmented policy networks deal with different issues and matters. Policy networks are categorized separately for information and assistance, consultation while scrutinizing a policy, implementing and adapting the policies and for development (De Bruine and Clarotti, 2001, p. 8). This is very important and helps the political system to function well. Policy making process involves professional networks containing only one specific group in policy making and local bodies forming a community denoted as intergovernmental networks (De Bruine and Clarotti, 2001, p. 10). Issue networks have less interdependence than other networks. Such characteristics of different types of networks have also been mentioned in the Rhodes model which has very wide usage (Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006, p.428).The networks with their typical characteristics have been summarized in the table below: Table 3: Networks and their characteristics Type of networks Characteristics Policy community Stability, restricted membership, vertical interdependence Professional Stability, restricted membership, occupational interests Intergovernmental Limited membership, vertical interdependence, extensive horizontal articulation Producer Fluctuating membership, limited vertical interdependence Issue Unstable, Unlimited membership, limited vertical interdependence Source: Creitaru, 2009 Application of policy network approach The applicability of policy network approach can be found in Dutch- German cross border region EUREGIO adopted since cohesion policy in 1980 (Perkmann, 2003, p. 4). It is a good example for development of cross border regions under CBC (Perkmann, 2003, p. 6).Various funds like ERDF and ESF have flowed here. In such a case cohesion policy has been proved effective for weaker economies. The collaboration has remained quite stable between the subnational authorities here. Spatial planning; environmental externalities and transport issues have been effectively handled. Labor market related matters and economic policies are now being dealt with (Perkmann, 2003, pp. 7-10). The research and development (R&D) sector of EU has adopted the policy networks approach for its governance. The sector has been divided mainly into three committees for undertaking three different tasks. Thus within the sector there is existence of three policy networks. One network is directed towards formulating policies and proposals for functioning of such a framework. Another network works towards shaping up different policies for governance. The third network performs the task of managing these implemented policies. The responsibilities are placed under different committees and heads. The pioneers of industry research are given the task of policy formulation. Policy shaping is undertaken by COREPER and Council Working groups. Task forces and regulatory committees do the job of policy management. The Commission is placed at the top of each head. This system has been adopted by Antonio Ruberti for R&D into energy, biotechnology Reference and other sectors selected for European Union Activity under Framework IV (Peterson, 1994). Such a system has grown up deliberately and has been supported through huge government spending amounting to 2790 million euro in 1992 (Peterson, 1994). Utilities and Importance of policy networks under EU governance With implementation of the policy reforms there was a revival for integration of EU during 1980s bringing much larger area under EU governance (Richardson, 2006, p. 14). This has injected strength and competition to EU political system. This approach came into being when the government was facing a lot of tension regarding integration of EU in 2003. Since then policy networks have facilitated reconciliation and better settlement of the arising issues (Jones and Clark, n.d.). Networks have a wide usage in EU governance in almost all areas concerned for implementing policies (Richardson, 2006, p. 14).Certain policies under policy networks have become important and illuminating. Here it can be claimed that network policies approach can be beneficial for EU governance. Such an approach helps to concentrate deliberately on stakeholders while framing policies for EU. It suggests networking with wide range of actors in accordance to their usefulness in policy implementation. The policies implemented under this approach with a sensible strategy are stable. Moreover with effective policy framework it helps to realize mutual benefits. Network policies, involving an underlying uncertainty, also generate opportunities to individuals to grab power. Issues containing technical uncertainties provide the scope for mutual learning and solving problems together (Richardson, 2006, pp.1014-1026). Policy network approach provides quick solution even for complex issues. The EU contains member countries with distinct cultural and natural structures. Policy Network has been considered effective and reliable by EU for dealing with this huge diversity. The merit for policy networks under EU governance lies for the fact that this approach has significantly helped to bridge the gap between community policies and intergovernmental policies (De Bruine and Clarotti, 2001, p.10).It has facilitated interaction of the management with useful individuals like the pioneers, the corporate houses and the general citizens interested in giving opinions. Tools developed for communication and networking have tremendously helped in efficient functioning of the political system (De Bruine and Clarotti, 2001, p.11). Post war policy network approach has extended to various sectors like agriculture, transport, health care and others where state intervention was considered necessary (De Bruine and Clarotti, 2001, p.15).The policy making procedure has been simplified and prediction of policies has also become easier (Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006, p.431). A major reason for extensive use of policy network approach by EU governance lies in its informal interactions taking place outside the EU institutions. Interactions, not being represented in coded form have deeply supported such informality. The effects of such interactions have been more influential than regulatory principles and institutional practices. The valuable persons having technical expert, are easily approachable (Creitaru, 2009). Policy network approach has helped in framing those policies which have practical implications. Applying various methodologies and procedures these approach assure derivation of satisfactory results for the specified agenda (Versluis, van Kerulen, and Stephenson, 2011, p.181).Overall such policy networks have solved the problem of ‘governance dilemma’ that was encountered with integration of various international powers (Eberlein and Newman, 2008). Defects of policy network approach The policy networks have limited abilities for analysis. The broader state macro theories have not been applied for analysis. Under this approach power has been resting totally in the hands of these state elites who have molded the policies in accordance to their own benefits. Moreover pluralism among the interest groups have scattered the European political system (Kavanagh, Richards, Geddes & Smith, 2006, p.437).The process of policy making has become very much negotiable and it has allowed interference of unwanted shareholders in the process. Further the access towards the policy arenas have not been within the reach of every interested political group (Jones and Clark, n.d). There has been poor specification of the link between horizontal and vertical government and poor handling of the nexus between organizations of different international powers and those Transgovernmental networks (Eberlein and Newman, 2008). Reasons for excessive dependence on policy network approach A more systematic governmental process under EU demands separation of powers to inject more legitimacy to the governance system for conditions prevailing under EU union. Committees formed under the Commission act as a driving force for administration with the help of public private collaboration. Such a network system adopted with separation of powers helps in implementing effective laws and policy making. The problems arising from multilevel executive branch under EU governance due to constraints in delegation can be diminished (Ballmann, Epstein and O’Halloran, 2002). Multilevel EU governance system demands increasing capacity of organizations for organizational and governmental learning. Increasing organizational capacity is expected to overcome underperformance of the adopted instruments. Another important precondition is that such developments need to occur simultaneously. This again creates the dependence on policy networks for EU governance. Such networked governance increases policy making standards (Schout, 2009). Conclusion Policy networks have remained a dominant part of EU governance. It has given relief to the political system during integration problems. Rise of interest groups has helped in funding various social causes and flow of funds in targeted areas (Richardson, 2002, p. 1024). The policy network has helped to bring in certain experts under the net of governance. All this features have obviously contributed to EU’s everlasting reliance on policy networks. But preference for policy networks has also remained for fulfilling procedural ambitions of the bureaucrats and framing policies according to their interests. Thus governance has continued with such an approach although it has got analysis limitations. The policy implication part of the paper suggests improvisation of the analytical part by highlighting the broader parts of the state theories. The policy networks for governance can be continued with only if it ensures more focus on developmental matters rather than fulfilling the interests of bureaucrats. References 1. 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