In this critical review I will be looking at the topic of Europeanisation and in particular its impact on the executive branch of national governments. The two articles in which I will be reviewing are

2.1 Strategic adaptation:

2.1.1 It is argued, in this section, by James that the EU can not only disempower national governments but can empower them as a number of strategic resources become available to them, such as more networking, alliance building, new policy and funding ideas. This can see national executives re-shape the power structures and adopt different policy procedures to ensure that they can strategically adapt to the power changes and ensure that there is a maximisation of the power shift.

2.1.2 James uses the reforms in the UK and Ireland to illustrate this model. Between 1997 and 2007, the Prime Minster and Taoiseach departments were progressively strengthened to provide stronger support to the Prime Minister and more strategic direction for EU policy. This research also indicated that this was to the determent of the foreign ministry and this department’s influence was undermined.  One aspect which is not elaborated on is the enhanced role of the Ministry of Finance, which the Barros study (reviewed below) and academics such as Kassim, indicate have also had increased role in line with Prime ministers.

2.1.3 James identifies three specific developments at EU level which accelerated these domestic trends. Firstly, the burden on the prime minister’s office has been exacerbated by the pace and nature of the integration process since the early 1990’s and the increasing competency of ‘high’ politics which required clear political leadership and direction from heads of state. Secondly, he identified the increased powers of the Council since the 1990s as a contributory factor. And the intensive scheduled summits which require the leaders of nation EU governments to meet at regular intervals. Finally, it is suggested that successive enlargements and inadequate institutional reform has rendered formal decision-making through the Council of Ministers increasable inefficient and unwieldy. James argues that this informal inter-governmentalism has contributed directly to the empowerment of prime misters offices because these negotiations tend to be in the hands of the prime ministers EU advisors, heads of governments ‘themselves as the ultimate negotiators’. James also notes that as ‘these actors become more important in driving EU agenda forward at the supranational level, the departmental policy leads at the national level, increasable look towards them for policy direction and to exploit opportunities for lobbying’.

2.1.4 James also notes  that these factors has led to increased, direct networking between various departments and thus less dependency on diplomats who have usually acted as the ‘gatekeepers.’ This is in line with his hypothesis and other academic analysis, noting the diminished EU responsibilities of Foreign Ministries.  

2.1.5 By noting the three above contributory factors, coupled with the research and analysis of the UK and Irish governmental process; James offers strong evidence in favour of his strategic adaption analysis.

2.2 Supranational learning:

2.2.1 James makes some interesting observations in this section of his article; he suggests that a process of ‘bench marking’ has increased between EU executives. EU governments have examined their counterparts and this has developed a system of ‘best practice’ throughout the EU. James differentiates it from strategic adaption because norms of ‘appropriate’ behaviour may underpin change, rather than calculations of strategic advantage and through this mode, national policy makers may share ideas and co-operate to find mutually beneficial forms of adaptation.’

2.2.2 The article also suggests that this greater networking has led to the internalisation of diplomatic functions within home based departments, responsibilities that in the past were the exclusive reserve of foreign ministries and their network of overseas embassies. This produces a gradual blurring of the distinction between diplomats and policy leads which helps facilitate co-ordination by ensuring that departments have a greater awareness of what is negotiable in Brussels

2.3 Administrative optimization

2.3.1 James makes three assumptions in this observation. First, national policy makers ‘compete to project their policy preferences into the EU arena, as efficiently and effectively as possible, and will inevitably compare their performance against one another. Logically those perceived as less successful at uploading may adapt their domestic administrative arrangements in order to maximize their influence in Brussels.’

2.3.2 Second, given that every government tries to project its policy preferences into the same EU-level institutions (working groups, COREPER, the Council of Ministers and the European Council),  one “would expect adaptation to foster ‘structural alignment’ – that is, member states will strive to find the most efficient (or optimal) way of engaging with these decision-making structures”.

2.3.3 Finally, domestic arrangements will continue to diverge because perceptions of administrative ‘optimization’ will continue to be contingent upon the nature of policy preferences, the domestic salience of European integration, the structure of the core executive and understandings of inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

2.3.4 It thus argued by James that Europeanisation through administrative optimization ‘exerts pressures for increased informality of domestic policy co-ordination at the early stages of the EU policy processes. He notes that while ‘informality remains characteristic of early stage co-ordination in Ireland, it helps to explain the shift towards more flexible and ad hoc arrangements in the UK in at least two respects. First, the increasing complexity of EU policy-making demands greater delegation of routine co-ordination to lead departments to prevent the system from being overloaded… [and] that the very nature of EU policy-making now militates against the use of semi-permanent structures. He continues ‘EU policy-making is increasingly unpredictable as it is subject to intensive bargaining between national policy-makers from 27 states, thereby undermining the utility of pre-planned meetings. Without the shift to greater informality, [it is] suggested that it would not have been possible to strengthen the capacity… because the system would have become severely overloaded’. I found these conclusions, which evidence of such was compiled from interviews with senior officials, to be compelling argument in favour of James hypothesis.  

2.3.5 Second, the expansion of qualified majority voting over the 1990s ‘necessitates that national negotiating strategies can be reshaped at short notice to facilitate effective bargaining Inflexible standing committees – with fixed memberships and timetabled meetings – may be well-suited to achieving short-term objectives, but are ill-suited to the longer-term iterative game that majority voting enshrines.’

3 The Lisbon Strategy’s empowerment of core executives: centralising and politicizing EU national co-ordination: Susana Borras and B. Guy Peters:

This paper looks at the implementations of the Lisbon strategy by seven different MS and looks at its effects on the national executives. It focuses on three Theories and hypotheses’:

1. When dealing with the Lisbon strategy matters, national executives co-ordination executives exhibit trends towards centralisation
2. When dealing with Lisbon Strategy matters, national executives co-ordination institutions exhibit trends towards politicisation
3.  When dealing with Lisbon Strategy matters, national executives exhibit path dependent changes largely following their pre-existing institutional patterns of national EU policy co-ordination

3.1 Centralised or De-Centralised?

3.1.1 This section of the article incorporates examinations from various different EU member states and thus gives the reader a critical look at whether the first hypothesis is true. It begins by looking at traditionally centralised countries, UK, France and Slovenia. It references the above article by James and notes that in the UK that  EU policy has been concentrated upon the executive and notes that this has been emphasised in other studies which have documented that this centralisation has been supported by the UK unified executive and preferences for one-party governments. The author then makes a further observation which has built upon James study. They note that the Ministry of Finance’s role has been highly relevant during the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy, as it has co-ordinated ‘the downstream aspects of national reform plan and reporting, and is actively involved in the upstream aspect in conjunction with the prime ministers cabinet office’. I think this an intriguing observation and deals with one of the criticisms that I levelled against James article.

3.1.2 The authors go on to note that the Ministry of Finance in France has also played a strengthened role in EU affairs since the incorporation of the Lisbon Strategy. In France, the General Secretary for European Affairs and the president have worked very closely and thus a strong core executive has been developed to deal with EU matters.

3.1.3 The authors then consider traditional de-centralised countries such as Spain, Austria, Poland and Denmark.  It observes that, in Spain, that traditionally the core executive is not involved in general EU matters’ co-ordination However, the author’s note that this trend appears to be changing, they state that the co-ordination of the Lisbon strategy matters shows a clear centralisation, as the office of the Prime Ministers Economic Bureau has been given the dossier. This trend towards centralisation has also been demonstrated in Poland where the Ministry of Economy has been given the responsibility to implement the Lisbon Strategy. This has moved the responsibilities away from the more de-central Committee for European Integration.

3.1.4 The authors make a very valid case in support of their first hypostases; however I think they have excluded a crucial point.  This point is made by Larasson and Trondalwhen they observed that the Council strengths the political leadership of the national executive and the centre of national decision making, while the Commission strengthens the lower echelons of professional civil service in the national line ministries.  

3.2 Control by politicians or Bureaucrats?

3.2.1 The article then goes on to consider whether this centralisation has lead to control being concentrated in a political or a bureaucrat’s process. They analyse this by focusing on the nature of the national Lisbon co-ordinator and by looking at the practical leadership when dealing with the Lisbon strategy. Since 2005 every member state has a ‘national Lisbon Co-ordinator’ and these co-ordinators have held regular meetings with Barosso and other commissioners to exchange opinions to ensure that there is continued ‘political momentum’. These co-ordinators have been from both from political and administrative members of national governments. It is noted that in 2006, 13 of the 25 member states had a political Lisbon co-ordinator, this figure has risen to 19 in 2011. This is demonstrated as evidence that the ‘member countries are recognising the political importance of Lisbon, and hence are politicising its management.’ This is well gathered evidence which clearly supports that theory that there is a trend towards politicisation.

3.2.2 The article does clearly show that there is a trend towards politicisation with regards implementing EU policy. However, I believe it neglects to give insight into whether this politicisation has led power away from the bureaucrats. Laegrid, Steinthorsson and Thorhallson suggest that bureaucratic officials do not have time to clear policy issues with the political issues with political leadership and that the volume of EU business prevents them from involving the political leadership.  I thus have not be fully convinced by this article that, in reality, there has been a serious trend towards politicisation of EU affairs.

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