Clumsy Solutions in the EU Context: The Key to Successful Policies?

Cultural theory argues that there are four distinct ways of organising social relations – hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism. It is suggested that attempts to solve policy problems can be effective only if all four types are invoked in a balanced manner. The European Union is a perfect setting to test this claim. Designing and adopting policy solutions in the EU involves a multiplicity of actors – from low level civil servants to top politicians, from members of political parties to representatives of the member states, not to mention the wide range of organised interests who try to influence the policy-making process or the potential for diffusion of ideas from international or other cross-national fora. The complex multi-stage and multi-level manner in which policy making is organised implies that multiple viewpoints need to be considered when working out solutions. The aim of this paper is to disentangle the necessary conditions for successful policy solutions. The approach is a nested case study design, in which EU failures and success stories, i.e. extreme negative and extreme positive cases, are analysed via cultural theory.