Temporal coordination in European policy-making: Governing the short- and long-term under time pressure

Abstract

Social and political acceleration has put inclusive political systems under chronic time pressure. Researchers have used many labels such as acceleration, crises, urgency, or turbulence to describe how the frequency, pace, and duration of demands to responsiveness have been compressed. At the same time, political systems gain complexity which led some researchers to highly pessimistic conclusions about the future of inclusive decision-making, whereas others have described how the locus of power simply re-locates when acting under time pressure. Despite the broad acknowledgment of the challenge of time pressure for inclusive decision-making, we know surprisingly little about how political systems and policymakers go or could ideally go about it. The European Union is a case in point, where complex coordination mechanisms are confronted with an increasing frequency of urgency demands. This panel put the coordination of temporal preferences at its core. Marianne Riddervold explores emerging hybrid preparedness mechanisms, where member states delegate limited authority to the Commission to ensure coordination in times of crises. Vibeke Kroken and Zuzana Murdoch borrow the concept of entrainment to study the temporal synchronization of others in inter-organizational networks. Radu Triculescu and Klaus Goetz employ a related concept of synchronization to explain the evolution of the Common European Asylum System and how the Council has for a long failed but finally reached a decision. Wieke Pot and Jorren Scherpenisse delineate five temporal strategies that balance the short- with long-term objectives of policy makers. Finally, Leonce Röth provides a conceptual discussion as well as an empirical measurement of perceived time pressure in political communication applied to the rhetoric of the European Commissioners from the 1970s until 2024. Combined, these papers provide a rich account of how temporal strategies and their coordination (synchronization) improve our understanding of failed and successful policy-making at the European level.

Title	Details
Temporal strategies for long-term governance	View Paper Details
Getting in Line: Synchronizing Mechanisms in Inter-organizational Networks	View Paper Details
Synchronising out of gridlock: Temporal orderings in the Council	View Paper Details
Measuring perceived time pressure in political communication - The case of the European Commission	View Paper Details