COMITOLOGY CHOICES IN THE EU LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: CONTESTED OR CONSENSUAL DECISIONS?

Studies show that the EU institutions have strong preferences with regard to the design of the EU comitology system which, consequently, is the result of intense inter‐institutional negotiations. However, the exact choice of comitology procedure to install in a given legislative proposal has received much less scholarly attention. Based on a behavioural logic of control maximization, this article investigates the comitology preferences of the Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament in the legislative process. The findings from an analysis of all new directives and regulations in the years 1999–2006, a total of 686 acts, show that the Council seeks strict comitology control while the Commission and the Parliament both seek permissive control. This holds even though the legislative process is characterized by a high degree of agreement on comitology. The analysis indicates that this is because the actors strategically anticipate each other's preferences, not because there is a true alignment of preferences.     

THE IMPACT OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT ON OUTCOMES IN GOVERNANCE NETWORKS

There is a large amount of literature and research on network management strategies. However, only a limited portion of this literature examines the relationship between network management strategies and outcomes (for an exception, see Meier and O’Toole 2001 ). Most of the research focuses on managerial activity or networking rather than on the question of which types of strategies matter the most for outcomes of complex processes in networks. This paper attempts to address the question of whether managerial strategies matter for outcomes and also explores which types of strategies have an effect on outcomes. The research is based on a survey sent to respondents involved in environmental projects in The Netherlands. The findings show that the number of employed network management strategies has a strong effect on perceived outcomes. The few variations in the effect of four constructed types of network management strategies found include exploring content, connecting, arranging, and process agreements.     

Governmental Mismanagement and Symbolic Violence: Discourses on Corruption in the Yucatán of the 1990s1

Abstract — Departing from a conceptualisation of corruption as a form of symbolic violence, this article analyses the character and impact of the discourses about corruption which were produced in Yucatán in the beginning of the 1990s. The discourses produced by official and oppositional forces are scrutinised against the background of the federal government's neoliberal policies and the sociopolitical situation in the region during 1992 and 1993. The analysis gives some insights into the character of Mexican's and Yucatecan's experiences with corruption in their own setting. It explores some of the conflictual processes involved when social forces turn this form of symbolic violence into the object of moral critique in public discourses, drawing in this way also attention to how the state is imagined by those who exercise state power and those who are subject to it.     

Social Structure and Citizenship: Examining the Impacts of Social Setting,Network Heterogeneity,and Informational Variables on Political Participation

In this study, we develop a model of the interplay between sociostructural determinants of an individual's discussion behavior, such as the setting of primary discussion networks (work, church, and volunteer groups) and the nature of discussion (i.e., level of exposure to non-like-minded ideas), and individual-level outcomes, such as hard news media use, political knowledge, and participation in political processes. In doing so, we synthesize many of the different and sometimes competing models that political communication scholars have used to examine the link between more macroscopic sociological variables and the individual-level behaviors that political scientists often focus on. Data to test our theoretical model come from a national telephone survey conducted in October and November 2002. Our analysis showed that the social setting in which citizens discuss politics is an important antecedent of political participation. Discussion networks as part of volunteer groups, for example, indeed serve as important networks of recruitment. In other words, discussing politics frequently in this setting is positively and directly linked to political activity. The impact of conversational networks in church and work settings on participation, however, is only indirect. In fact, our data show that the impact of church and work networks on political participation is to a significant degree mediated by the different viewpoints that individuals are exposed to when they discuss politics in these settings.