How bureaucratic élites imagine Europe: towards convergence of governance beliefs?

Abstract

Does the emerging parallel Community administration share a common set of beliefs about governance and the broad policy direction of European integration? Or do different policy arenas, institutions, and types of committees shape governance beliefs? This article compares original evidence from two policy areas, that is, better regulation and direct corporate taxation. Within economic policies, these two sectors provide the most dissimilar cases in terms of conflict around institutions, the purpose of EU-level co-ordination, and the distribution of pay-offs among the member states. We use the ‘most dissimilar cases’ strategy to probe hypotheses about (a) common governance beliefs, (b) the influence of policy-level variables on beliefs, and (c) the role played by the EU institutions, namely Council and Commission. We find more evidence for the ‘shared governance beliefs’ hypothesis than for the ‘policy-matters’ or ‘institution-matters’ explanations. Common beliefs revolve around a technical approach to public policy-making, an under-estimation of the role of the European Parliament, and more attachment to the paradigm of competitiveness than to social protection.

Keywords:

• Beliefs
• corporate taxation
• élites
• European Union
• governance
• regulation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded by a grant from the INTUNE project (Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe) financed by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union, Priority 7, Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society (CIT3-CT-2005-513421).

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.