Institutional Dynamics in the European Union

Abstract

This panel engages with key challenges in the analysis of executive power in the political system of the European Union (EU). A first paper analyses cross-time variation in the European Commission’s public communication, which may well have shifted from a broad civic engagement with the citizens of Europe to merely addressing those as consumers. A second paper explores how the scrutiny of executive power in the EU is limited by bureaucratic collusion between European and national administrative actors and a limited scrutiny capacity of the European Parliament. A third paper conceptualizes key properties of delegation in the EU in such a way so as to facilitate comparison with other systems of government. Executive power in the EU however, is not only exercised by the European Commission. Especially the increase of financial and monetary policy coordination in response to the 2008/2010 Euro crisis, has also affected the exercise of executive power by national governments and the European Central Bank (ECB). A fourth paper hence explores the centralization of executive power in the hand of the chief of national government at the detriment of specialized ministries (in casu in Germany), while a fifth paper explores the extent of change in the policy paradigm that guides ECB policy.