Implications of Rule Change on Interinstitutional Power Dynamics in Regard to Economic Governance

This paper examines the mechanisms through which EMU governance has constrained or enhanced the options available to distinct political actors that are part of the domestic policymaking process ex-ante and ex-post to the crisis (cf. Börzel and Risse 2012). The research is embedded theoretically in the debate on policy change as well legitimated policy making. The later responds to the debate on authoritative modes of integrating core state powers against a deliberative understanding of collective policy-making. In what follows, the analysis focuses on the multi-level dimension of EU polity to provide a better understanding of policy change at the domestic level in a highly veto-prone institutional setting. EMU-governance consists of a centralized (supranational) and a decentralized (intergovernmental) part. This suggests a plurality of supranational, state and non-state actors with varying competences in policy-making on distinct territorial levels – supranational, national and subnational. With the European Semester, we face a clear shifting of the policy-making arena dealing with economic, social and fiscal policies onto the supranational level. The supranational advocacy, thus, is affecting domestic agendas through the filter of national policy legacies, expressed by political action of national governments at the expense of distinct national veto-players, e.g. social partners, line ministries dealing with social matters and labour protection, the parliament as well as federal state governments in federal republics. These changes might increase the likelihood of policy change as it, firstly, involves an impact on the institutional capacity to produce change by shaping the scope and type of executive leadership and respective veto players in a political system; and, secondly, shapes technocratic capture potential, legitimates policy discourses and has an impact on domestic advocacy coalitions.