The Coordination of the European Union: Exploring the Capacities of Networked Governance

Having realized that its traditional mode of coordinating--essentially issuing regulation--no longer commands sufficient political support, the European Union (EU) has turned to what are increasingly referred to as 'new' modes of governance, which rely upon different actors working together in relatively non-hierarchical networks. This book provides the first extended account of how effective they are at addressing 'wicked' policy problems which simultaneously demand greater levels of horizontal and vertical coordination. Taking, as an example, the thirty year struggle to integrate environmental thinking into all areas and levels of EU policy making, it offers a stark reminder that networked governance is not and is unlikely ever to be a panacea. In doing so, it strips away some of the rhetorical claims made about the novelty and appeal of 'new' modes, to reveal a much more sober and realistic appraisal of their coordinating potential.

Dr. Andrew Jordan is Reader in Environmental Politics and Philip Leverhulme Prize Fellow in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. He is a Manager of the ESRC Programme on Environmental Decision-making (PEDM) in the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment's (CSERGE). He has edited the international journal Environment and Planning (Government and Policy) since 1998, and published over a hundred peer reviewed papers and chapters, as well as eight books on different aspects of contemporary environmental policy and politics.

Dr Adriaan Schout works as Senior Researcher for the Clingendael European Studies Programme in the Hague (Netherlands) and as Associate Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht (Netherlands). He has extensively studied the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, European agencies, EU governance and the multilevel coordination of EU policies. His research has involved organizational analyses of national ministries, the Commission and the European Parliament as well as several European Agencies. He has worked for a number of different clients, including national and EU institutions.