The social construction of the participatory turn: The emergence of a norm in the European Union

At the beginning of the 1990s a new discourse emerged at the European Union level, insisting on the necessity of ‘civil society’ participation in decision‐making processes. Based on a ‘strategic‐constructivist’ research design, this article addresses the question of the emergence of this participatory turn in the official discourse and its transformation into a norm. It argues that the continued activism of an elite forum, consisting of political and administrative actors as well as academics, created the momentum that brought the concerned actors to accept the participatory norm and to play the roles required by it. However, due to internal competition amongst norm entrepreneurs, and a changed political situation, this norm is still contested, making it difficult to assess how its implementation will function.     

Government, interest groups and incrementalism

Abstract. This paper is concerned with the two underlying dimensions of the people's welfare – economic growth and social protection – and their realization in the diverse processes which determine the character of budgeting and of budgetary outcomes. These conflicting conceptions of welfare and the diverse agents involved in the budgetary process generate a government fiscal policy, which expresses the clash between ideology and political feasibility and between politicians' intentions and actual outcomes. This paper focuses primarily on the budgetary process in West Germany, but also makes some reference to fiscal policy in the UK and the USA.     

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR THE ‘CLASSICAL CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATION’: MODERNIZATION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IN GERMANY,FRANCE AND ITALY

The article is aimed at analysing New Public Management (NPM) reforms at the local level in Germany, France and Italy. The case selection is justified by the fact that these three ‘classical’ Continental European countries have largely been missing from comparative administrative research thus far. The article focuses on local governments, since in all three countries these are considered the NPM forerunners and are acknowledged to be more advanced in reform implementation than are upper levels of government. Against this background, the purpose of this contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to show to what extent and with what effects the NPM agenda has been taken up at the local level in Continental Europe. On the other hand, taking a comparative perspective over time, we wish to ask whether or not there has been increasing convergence or divergence between the three countries as a result of these reforms.     

The judicialisation of EMU politics: Resistance to the EU's new economic governance mechanisms at the domestic level

Courts are increasingly asked to deal with fundamental political disagreements in liberal democracies. Because of its political salience and the extent of its consequences, the crisis of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has exposed such fundamental disagreements between and within its member states, which numerous plaintiffs have brought before domestic courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). This article analyses this judicialisation of the EMU crisis. Using a database on lawsuits introduced in all 28 member states with regard to crisis measures and the new EMU governance mechanisms introduced since 2010, the authors study which actors use the courts and under which circumstances. Based on a combination of judicialisation and political economy approaches, the article develops a series of assumptions on actors’ motivations in order to understand the reasons for judicialisation in debtor and creditor countries.