Speak softly and carry a big stick: hardening soft governance in EU energy and health policies

ABSTRACT

EU governance is experiencing a shift towards soft governance frameworks that incorporate ‘harder’ elements. Using a qualitative case study approach and an original set of elite interviews, we examine two policy areas – health and energy – where similar such architectures – the European Semester and the Energy Union Governance Regulation – are now core governance tools. Three research questions are addressed: (1) What mechanisms are employed to harden these governance frameworks? (2) What is driving this shift? And, drawing on the more extensive experience of the Semester, (3) What lessons can be drawn for energy policy? We establish the experimentalist nature of these two governance architectures and identify a mix of ‘harder soft governance’ (HSG) mechanisms used in both cases. We show that, although similar in structure, the shift towards HSG frameworks is driven by different factors in each case. The more extensive experience of the Semester in health points to the importance of concrete implementation practices; the power of specificity to strengthen soft commitments; the role of policy coupling as a lever for implementation; the potential influence of strategic entrepreneurs; the role of politicisation in pressuring change; and the significance of periodic revision as windows of opportunity for incremental change.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy policy
• European Union
• experimentalist governance
• harder soft governance
• health policy
• European Semester

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr Pierre Bocquillon is a Lecturer in European Politics at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK). He completed his Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. He works on energy and climate change politics in Europe, as well as on European politics more generally. His current research interests include the external dimension of the EU’s energy and climate policies, the politics of renewable energy promotion and the democratic governance of energy and climate change.

Dr Eleanor Brooks is Lecturer in the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. She completed her Ph.D. at Lancaster University. Eleanor’s research focuses on EU health governance, considering the EU’s role in health and the politics of EU health policy and law. This includes work relating to the reform of the European Commission under President Juncker, the role of advocacy coalitions in EU health policy development and the dismantling of public (health) policy at the European level.

Dr Tomas Maltby is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London. He completed his Ph.D. in Politics at Manchester University. Tomas’ research focuses primarily on climate and energy policy. His research considers understandings of security in the development of climate and energy policy at the European and nation state level. This includes work related to energy transitions, the securitisation of energy, climate scepticism and also work on the politics of air pollution.

Notes

1 On its ‘socialisation’ see Zeitlin and Vanhercke (2018); on its undermining see Greer and Brooks (in press).