Neyer, Jurgen. (2003) "Efficiency and effectiveness in European decision-making: Insights from discourse theory". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)
Abstract
[This paper] reviews some of the most crucial stumbling blocks that the EU faces in its efforts to conduct efficient and effective policymaking in the EU, contrasts them with available data on efficiency and effectiveness in EU policymaking, and argues that neither supranationalism nor intergovernmentalism can convincingly explain the surprisingly good performance of the EU. Section 3 introduces a positive deliberative approach that is better equipped for explaining the observable degree of efficiency and effectiveness of European governance. The following argument leads along two lines of reflection. The first line distinguishes among three modes of interaction-voting, bargaining, and arguing-and shows that arguing is functionally superior to its two alternatives when it comes to coping with the complexities of European Union politics. The second line of reasoning analyses the EU's institutional set up as seen from the perspective of a discourse analytical approach and interprets it as a response to a demand for deliberation. Some of the most crucial institutional features of the EU such as its gradual opening for non-governmental participation, its highly legalistic character, and its technocratic bias are accordingly interpreted as means for promoting argumentative interaction in the EU. In conclusion, the astonishingly good policy performance of the EU is explained as the product of an institutional design that overcomes a great number of the difficulties associated with EU policymaking by systemically providing incentives to transform strategic interaction into deliberative problem-solving.
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