The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the EU - Hardcover

Pollack, Mark A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199251185 ISBN 13: 9780199251186

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2003

Synopsis

The European Union is composed of its fifteen member governments, yet these governments have chosen repeatedly to delegate executive, judicial and legislative powers and substantial discretion to supranational institutions such as the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. In The Engines of European Integration, the first full-length study of delegation in the European Union and international politics, Mark Pollack draws on principal-agent analyses of delegation, agency and agenda setting to analyze and explain the delegation of powers by governmental principals to supranational agents, and the role played by those agents in the process of European integration.

In the first part of the book, Pollack analyses the historical and functional patterns of delegation to the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the Parliament, suggesting that delegation to the first two is motivated by a desire to reduce the transaction costs of EU policymaking, as predicted by principal-agent models, while delegation of powers to the Parliament fits poorly with such models, and primarily reflects a concern by member governments to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Union.

The second part of the book focuses on the role of supranational agents in both the liberalization and the re-regulation of the European market, and suggests that the Commission, Court, and Parliament have indeed played a causally important role alongside member governments as "the engines of integration," but that their ability to do so has varied historically and across issue-areas as a function of the discretion delegated to them by the member governments.

About this title

Review

Anyone contributing to the study of the Europe Union should take serious notice of this book. s

Pollack has written an excellent book from a fresh perspective which provides a most welcome challenge to much conventional writing on the European Union and its institutions. (Journal of Public Policy)

... will interest scholars, students and policy researchers of EU affairs. (KnowEurope)

For scholars of EU institutions, and particularly those interested in modelling institutional relationships via principal-agent dynamics, this in an important book. (Ian Bache, University of Sheffield)

This book is well structured, well written and develops a clear line of arguement form the approach taken. (Ian Bache, University of Sheffield)

About the Author

Mark A. Pollack is at University of Wisconsin-Madison and European University Institute.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199251185
• ISBN 13: 9780199251186
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 510