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Chapter 3: From Government to Governance: Running the state, making policy, and policing the constitution

• Chapter Summary
• Useful websites 
• Discussion questions
• Updates
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Chapter Summary

The executive in Europe no longer thinks that it knows best or at least that it should do everything - though this has always been the case in Europe's federal states, and in some of its unitary states, too. Accordingly, it has contracted out some of its work (though perhaps less of its power and its money) to regions and/or agencies

These bodies now form part of a not-altogether tidy network of policy-making and service delivery. But while most countries have arrived at what some observers call 'multilevel governance', they have taken many cultural and institutionally different roads to get there and by no means look the same when they do.

All over Europe, however, attempts have been made to offset any resulting loss in politicians' capacity to steer state activity, often via political appointments at the top level of the civil service. The latter varies considerably between countries, although none escape coordination problems and 'sectorisation' completely.

This sectorisation, plus the difference between 'norms' and 'behaviour' and the relationship between 'structure' and 'agency' make it difficult but not impossible to posit national policy styles.

These styles seem to have survived and adapted to greater involvement in the EU, whose effect on policy varies according to the role granted to it in different sectors.

For all these differences, European states share a tendency, via both their home-grown constitutions and (just as importantly) the EU, toward what some might regard as unwarranted interference in their prerogatives on the part of the second branch of government, the judiciary.

Useful websites

(For general web materials on European Politics see Tim Bale's Internet Guide)

Governments on the WWW

The University of Richmond has links to many countries' constitutions

Constitutional courts can be explored with the help of Concourts.net or Concourt.am

The official website of the EU's European Court of Justice

The official website of the European Court of Human Rights

More detail on administrative and civil service reform is provided by the World Bank

The OECD provides all sorts of info on public sector management

Discussion questions

1. Why do some analysts think it makes more sense to talk about governance rather than government? And why talk about multilevel governance?

2. Why does decentralisation seem to be the trend across Europe? Does the trend mean that traditional distinctions between unitary and federal countries are now a little outdated and/or overstated?

3. What are new public management ideas and why aren't they uniformly popular in Europe?

4. The neutrality of the civil service is valued in some European states but less so in others: can you think of any advantages of a more politicised bureaucracy?

5. How do you think that Europeanization has affected the state machinery of European countries?

6. Some talk about national policy styles. How can we explain them? Why and to what extent do they persist?

7. Why do you think most European states have written constitutions and judicial review? Is it possible - or advisable - to do without them?

8. Given the record of Europe's constitutional courts, would you say judicial interference in politics has been either extensive or dangerous?

9. Has 'rule by judges' been made more or less likely by European integration?

Updates

European Party Families and Domestic Politics

The Beach and the Ballot Box: the Catalan autonomy referendum of June 2006

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