Explaining institutional change in Europe / Adrienne Héritier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Windhoff-Héritier, Adrienne, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social institutions--European Union countries.

Social institutions.

Social change--European Union countries.

Social change.

Decision making--European Union countries.

Decision making.

European Union countries.

Physical Description:

viii, 271 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

How and why do institutions change? Institutions, understood as rules of behaviour constraining and facilitating social interaction, are subject to different forms and processes of change. A change may be designed intentionally on a large scale and then be followed by a period of only incremental adjustments to new conditions. But institutions may also emerge as informal rules, persist for a long time and only be formalized later. Why? The causes, processes and outcomes of institutional change raise a number of conceptual, theoretical and empirical questions. While we know a lot about the creation of institutions, relatively little research has been conducted about their transformation once they have been put into place. Attention has focused on politically salient events of change, such as the Intergovernmental Conferences of Treaty reform. In focussing on such grand events, we overlook inconspicuous changes of European institutional rules that are occurring on a daily basis. Thus, the European Parliament has gradually acquired a right of investing individual Commissioners. This has never been an issue in the negotiations of formal treaty revisions. Or, the decision-making rule(s) under which the European Parliament participates in the legislative process have drastically changed over the last decades starting from a modest consultation ending up with codecision. The book discusses various theories accounting for long-term institutional change and explores them on the basis of five important institutional rules in the European Union. It proposes typical sequences of long-term institutional change and their theorization which hold for other contexts as well, if the number of actors and their goals are clearly defined, and interaction takes place under the 'shadow of the future'.

Contents:

3 Theories of Institutional Change 5

3.1 Institutions: Definition 5

3.2 Institutional Change 7

3.3 Institutional Change: Rational Choice Institutionalism 10

4 Empirical Cases 67

4.1 Methodology 67

4.2 Institutional Rule One: The European Parliament's Role in Legislation 69

4.3 Institutional Rule Two: The Presidency of the Council 121

4.4 Institutional Rule Three: The Parliament and the Investiture of the Commission / Adrienne Heritier, Catherine Moury 139

4.5 Institutional Rule Four: The Composition of the Commission 159

4.6 Institutional Rule Five: Controlling the Implementation Powers of the Commission (Comitology) / Carl-Fredrik Bergstrom, Adrienne Heritier 171

5 Conclusion: Explaining Institutional Change in Europe...and Beyond 228

5.1 The Long-Term Institutional Change of the Five Rules 229

5.2 The Five Institutional Rules in Comparison 240

5.3 Theoretical Lacunae and Model Specification 243

5.4 Conclusion: Scope Conditions and Generalizability 244.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [247]-263) and index.

ISBN:

0199298122

9780199298129

OCLC:

73954041