Slowing down Social Europe? The role of coalitions and decision-making arenas
Report 1 - theory, literature review and methods
Research paper by Mikkel Mailand (October 2010)
The social dimension of EU is as old as the union itself. However, it is only in the mid-1980s that EU gradually developed a real social dimension to counterbalance the economic integration. In recent years, what can be labelled ‘the regulation-sceptical actors' have been strengthened and ‘the pro-regulation actors' have been weakened. Indeed, the number of socialist and social-democratic governments in the European Council has been reduced and the same political forces have weakened in the European Parliament. In addition, the Barosso-led Commission have followed a more liberal agenda than its predecessors and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has lost bargaining power due to loss of members among its affiliates and challenges from internationalization of production and labour migration. Also the enlargement in 2004 with new member states could also be expected to strengthen the regulation-sceptical actors and could furthermore be expected to make it more difficult to agree on new regulation.
These recent changes are expected to have influenced the development of Social Europe. The project, which theoretical and methodological framework will be described in this working paper, aims to explore whether the strengthening of the regulation-sceptical actors has affected the scope and content of the regulation as well as the relative weight between different forms of regulation. To address this question, the project will analyse recent decision-making processes within the four most important types of EU regulations - the directives, the Method of Coordination (OMC), the social partners' autonomous agreements and case law. In this regard, the stand taken by the main actors (the European Council/the member states, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European social partners and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) with regard to the extent and content of regulation and the choice between the above mentioned different types of regulation will be analysed. To do so, we will examine and compare four work and employment related areas simultaneously. The areas will be labelled ‘employment', ‘employee involvement', ‘work-life balance' and ‘posting'.
Following this, the research project - of which this working paper is the first report - will address the following questions: Has the strengthening of the regulation-sceptical actors affected the content or the range of work and employment regulation at the EU-level? Moreover, a number of sub-questions will be analysed: 1) What role have coalitions played in decision-making processes in work and employment related areas. 2) What role have coalitions played in decision-making processes in work and employment related areas and are they divided primarily in pro-regulation and regulation-sceptical groups? 3) Has the strengthening of the regulation-sceptical actors affected the different work and employment related areas to a different degree? 4) Why has it then been possible for the actors to agree on a number of new regulation initiatives when the regulation-sceptical actors have been strengthened?
In addition to the research-question, this report 1 presents: a literature review; the theoretical framework (theories of decision-making arenas and theories on coalitions); the projects hypotheses; and the four empirical areas to be analysed.
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