The Lisbon Strategy's empowerment of core executives: centralizing and politicizing EU national co-ordination

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of the Lisbon Strategy on the way in which national executives co-ordinate EU policy at the domestic level. Comparing seven countries (Denmark, the United Kingdom [UK], Austria, Slovenia, Spain, France and Poland) it finds evidence that the Lisbon Strategy has been advancing (further) centralization and politicization in national patterns of EU policy co-ordination, empowering core executives. The Lisbon Strategy's ideational elements (‘grand’ goals and politically visible targets) as well as organizational requirements (Spring Council, national programming and annual reports) are factors behind this phenomenon. These results have implications for the literature on Europeanization, international politics, and governance studies in what is eminently an empirical research agenda about how far and how changes in international governance architectures affect the redistribution of power within national executives.

Keywords:

• Empowerment
• European Union
• Europeanization
• executive politics
• horizontal co-ordination
• nNational core executives
• new modes of governance
• policy co-ordination

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our gratitude to the four anonymous reviewers, as well as colleagues at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and at the Lisbon and Exeter seminars for constructive comments. Funding from the World Class Initiative at CBS SONIC project is gratefully acknowledged, as well as Louise Andersen's research assistance.

Notes

i In 2006 Italy and Belgium had interim appointees.

ii Those seven countries are Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Spain and the UK.

iii Two Slovenian respondents were interviewed twice: before and after the November 2008 elections.