"Who governs?"

Pollack, Mark A. and Shaffer, Gregory C. (2001) "Who governs?". In: UNSPECIFIED, Madison, Wisconsin. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this chapter, we attempt to provide some answers, on the basis of the empirical evidence presented in the preceding chapters, to the two sets of questions posed in the introduction to this volume. In the first section of this chapter, we attempt to explain the rise of new forms of transatlantic governance during the 1990s, addressing three core questions: What's new about these transatlantic governance mechanisms? Why are they developing now? And why have the various actors in the new governance networks chosen to organize at the transatlantic level, rather than in some other international forums? In the second section, we examine the evidence of transatlantic governance across a wide range of issue areas, ranging from trade and standard setting to food safety, consumer protection, labor, and the environment, and we assess the relative explanatory power of the intergovernmental, transgovernmental, and transnational models of governance laid out in the introduction. In the third section, we conclude that transatlantic governance is increasingly governance by mixed networks of all three types of actors, albeit with a leading role for the Clinton administration and the European commission, which emerge as the primary architects of the New Transatlantic Agenda. Finally, returning to Rhodes's model of governance by mixed networks of public and private actors brought together by resource interdependencies, we examine the relative power of various actors within these transatlantic networks as a function of their respective resource endowments, and we speculate about the development of those networks in the coming years.

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