The Evolution and Transformation of European Governance. IHS Political Science Series No. 58, November 1998

Kohler-Koch, Beate. (1998) The Evolution and Transformation of European Governance. IHS Political Science Series No. 58, November 1998. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

From the Introduction. The essence of governance just like that of government is to reach binding decisions. The difference between government and governance is that government is the organisation in charge of making binding decisions, resting on a constitutionally defined authority. A government is – in principle – a unitary actor furnished with explicit rights and subject to control according to established procedures. In a democracy, it comes to power and will be substituted in a legally prescribed and publicly controlled process. Compliance to government decisions will be assured by the legitimacy of institutions channeling in an efficient and normatively accepted way the input process and assuring output performance. Governance is the process of bringing about binding agreements. Any kind of governance is embedded in institutions, enframed in norms and is dependent on authority to assure compliance. Institutions, normative orientations and the source of authority will, however, vary and be different when governance takes place without government. The interrelationship between institutional settings, norms, and sources of authority and modes of governance is a central focus of this contribution. It starts from the assumption that the European Union (EU), more precisely the European Community (EC),2 is governed in a particular way, and that the predominant mode of European governance disseminates into member states. Two hypotheses will be tested: Europe’s supranational Community functions according to a logic different from that of the representative democracies of its member states. Its purpose and institutional architecture are distinctive, promoting a particular mode of governance. The process of ‘Europeanisation’, i. e. extending the boundaries of the relevant political space beyond the member states, will contribute to a change of governance at national and sub-national levels. Being a member of the EU is concomitant with the interpenetration of systems of governance; any polity which is part of such a ‘penetrated system’3 is bound to change in terms of established patterns of governing.

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