European Union’s Economic System.

http://www.urgentcustomessays.com/blog/2011/07/european-union%e2%80%99s-economic-system/European Union’s Economic System.Essay Blog

The concept of the European multi-level system and especially the term multilevel governance has been extensively criticized. The main criticisms state that (a) multi-level governance is a description of the European Union (EU) rather than a theory, (b) it overstates the role of sub national actors, and (c) it ignores the international level of interaction (Jordan 2001: 201). Most of these analyses confront the reader with the following shortcomings: (1) they confuse the multi-level governance approach with a theory which tries to explain European integration; (2) they stick to the particularities of the most prominent field of multi-level governance, that of structural policy, and (3) they thus ignore the general character of the approach, which makes it applicable to the analysis of external European governance. This paper will respond to the criticisms by pointing out the characteristics of the multi-level governance approach and its specific focus of analysis: the institutional characteristics of decision-making in contrast to an intergovernmental perspective. It will be made clear that the emancipation of the approach from its ‘structural policy’ origins makes it applicable even to the analysis of external governance. The overall theme of this paper is to find out how governance functions in an expanded multi-level system. The aim of the article is to analyze institutional change within the EU which is caused by the EU’s international embeddedness. The paper develops the hypothesis that embeddedness affects not only the formal organization of the decision-making process, but also routines, guiding ideas and concepts of legitimate order. The case used to analyze the effects of the international context will be the World Trade Organization (WTO). The reason for choosing the WTO as a case stems from the fact that the WTO is the international organization vith the highest capacity to act, compared to other ad hoc multilateral negotiation systems and international regimes. The WTO contains coherent commitments at a high level, more effective administrative and organizational capacity as well as a more effective dispute settlement than other types of international organizations. Above all, it serves extremely well for the analysis of institutional change at the EU level, because the reform and transformation from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to WTO in 1995 represents a clear change within the international context for EU decision-making. The article will elaborate on the concept of an expanded European multi-level system and on the concept of institutional change used here in a first step. Then the hypothesis that the WTO caused a broad institutional change will be confronted with empirical findings. The conclusion will ask whether these changes have led to a centralization of the EU.

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Tags: European multi-level system, European Union, multilevel governance