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Abstract
Understanding Europeanization through its instrumentation raises the issue of the supposed neutrality of policy tools used as soft modes of action. The aim of this article is to assess how this ‘new governance’ tends to guide policy-making on a specific path. Indeed, European construction cannot be restricted to the direct impact of Community law or to the indirect effects of economic integration. A new form of non-constraining co-ordination has been developing since the mid-1990s. In order to explain how the cognitive mechanisms of Europeanization work, we open the ‘toolboxes’ that allow European institutions to have an effect on national representations and practices. The use of benchmarking for building the European Research Area, the elaboration of gender equality policy according to the principle of mainstreaming, and the open method of co-ordination (OMC) in the field of pension reforms, illustrate how such policy instruments lead national governments to meet the competitiveness requirements of the Lisbon strategy.
Acknowledgements
The arguments in this article were developed in a research seminar on Europeanization (Européanisation des Politiques Publiques et Intégration Européenne – EPPIE) co-ordinated by Bruno Palier and Yves Surel at Sciences Po (Paris). The work of EPPIE's members was presented at a conference in February 2004. http://www.sciences-po.fr/recherche/forum_europeen/prepublications/papiers.htm. We are greatly indebted to Elizabeth Sheppard and Cornelia Woll for their meticulous and helpful reviewing of the English version of this paper. We also thank the editors of this special issue for their accurate comments.
Notes
1. According to Pierre Bourdieu: ‘Strictly speaking, political action is possible because agents, who belong to the social world, have a (more or less adequate) knowledge of this world, and because one can act on the social world by acting on the knowledge of this world. This action aims at producing and imposing representations (mental, verbal, graphic or theatrical) of the social world which will be able to act on this world by acting on the agents' representation of it’ (Bourdieu Citation2001: 187; authors' translation).
2. Along with the OMC, legislation, Social Dialogue, Structural Funds, Action Programmes.
3. The Beijing conference, enlargement of the EU to new Nordic member states, conflict between the European Parliament and the Commission concerning the nomination of the Irish Commissioner Padràig Flynn to the equal opportunities portfolio.
4. Mainly based on self-supervision, gender mainstreaming is an instrument which a priori does not require the attribution of a specific budget.
5. The three types distinguished by Paraskevas Caracostas and Ugur Muldur (Citation1997: 16–21) are, first, research policies based on ‘Defence/Sciences’ (1950–1975), then those based on ‘Industry/Technologies’ (1975–1995), and finally the current era characterized by ‘Innovation/Society’.
6. ‘The “European innovation paradox” (hypo)thesis, a much debated and controversial topic within a confined circle of European economists, was widely discussed in the European political sphere from the mid-1990s. Since then, it has progressively constituted a powerful argument for changing European policies related to research and innovation as well as industry’ (Muldur Citation2000: 185; authors' translation).
7. The final report of the first benchmarking cycle was delivered in June 2002 and dealt with four themes (human resources; public and private investment in RTD; scientific and technological productivity; impact of RTD on competitiveness and employment). On this basis, subsequent cycles were designed and started mid-2002.
8. Finnish presidency: political participation and decision-making; French presidency: reconciliation between work and private life; Belgian presidency: pay gap; Danish presidency: domestic violence; Greek and Italian presidencies: decision-making in economic life.
9. A Group of Experts on Gender and Employment (EGGE) has been created by the Fourth Action Programme on Equal Opportunities. The experts are in charge of the evaluation of the National Action Plans with regard to their impact on women and men respectively.
10. See, for example, the title of a press release from the Employment and Social Affairs DG: ‘According to the Commission, the Lisbon objectives remain attainable if the Member States focus on women's and ageing workers' employment’ (6 September 2002).
11. Even if the 2001 Commission report acknowledged that the promotion of low paid and part-time employment (which has been otherwise encouraged) can be in contradiction to the objective of the reduction of gender pay gaps – women representing the majority of low-paid workers. However, the demand for evaluation of employment policies, taking into account their impact on pay gaps, seems to have largely been ignored.