Conceptual and Theoretical Perspectives on European Integration

Abstract

European integration is a phenomenal process, especially when it comes to its complexity, which is a challenge for researchers. The purpose of this panel is to contribute to the wide range of approaches, explanations and analytical tools in order to offer some new input into conceptual and theoretical perspectives on European integration. In the first paper, the panellists propose a policy-centred framework to analyze European integration that puts the policy and its characteristics at the centre of their analysis. By asking how a policy’s characteristics influence the extent of a policy’s integration in the European context, they offer a research agenda which can contribute to explaining the complexity of European integration which manifests itself mostly in the fact that the extent of integration differs significantly across different policies. In the second paper, the panellist refers to the question of the distribution of executive tasks across the layers of EU multi-level governance which is an issue of growing interest among scholars of European integration. The paper seeks to investigate whether variables such as voting rules, the growing involvement of the European Parliament in the legislative process, the use of QMV, the level of political conflict in the Council and divergences among the Council and the Commission have an impact on the amount of discretion granted to the European Commission and other executive bodies, as opposed to national administrations in the post-Maastricht period. The third paper contributes to a developing strand in the literature that conceives the EU as a ‘demoicracy’. The aim of the paper is to investigate what a ‘social demoicracy’ is, and if it can be identified as a desirable, yet realistic, aim for the European Union. Finally, the last paper addresses to the question of women’s representation in the European Parliament, adding an another chapter to the wide range of studies which have identified the institutional, socio-economic and cultural constituents of high women’s descriptive representation.