"The path to EU environmental policy: Domestic politics, supranational institutions, global competition"

Golub, Jonathan. (1997) "The path to EU environmental policy: Domestic politics, supranational institutions, global competition". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Born of dual Community objectives--providing goods while simultaneously completing the common market--EU environmental policy offers a richly textured terrain for testing the competing theoretical models which have been advanced to explain the dynamics driving European integration. These models attribute radically different levels of significance to domestic political factors, market forces, and supranational institutions such as the Commission and European Court of Justice as mechanisms of policy change. The diversity of mechanisms gives rise to several explanations for the content and development of EC environmental policy. This paper represents an initial attempt to adjudicate between these competing explanations. In so doing, it highlights the relative strengths and weaknesses of functionalism and liberal intergovernmental bargaining as competing theories of European integration. Analysis focuses on secondary community law, and on decision making under conditions of unanimity 1972-87. The first part of the paper examines how intergovernmentalists and functualists might account for the development of EU environmental regulation--specifically, which mechanisms each theory identifies as the source of "ratcheting." Expectations about the role of various mechanisms are represented as testable hypotheses against evidence from the period 1972-1987, and identify additional mechanisms by which ratcheting occurs. The final section draws conclusions about the role of domestic politics, functionalist dynamics, and unintended consequences within the environmental integration process.

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