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The Treaty of Amsterdam formalized the idea of a ?European Employment Strategy? (EES), a supranational instrument to boost European employment rates and competitiveness. The European strategy is ruled by the ?Open Method of Coordination? (OMC), a new governance regulatory instrument for developing the ?social dimension? of the European Union that is not legally binding and is voluntary in nature. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand how non-binding measures, specifically the EES, influence policy-making processes and outcomes on member States. To sustain and illustrate my argument, I present data from interviews conducted in Sweden, Spain and Belgium, and from patterns of spending on active and passive labor market policy in fifteen member States. This paper seeks to expand the literature on ?Europeanization? of domestic configurations by providing a theoretical framework to analyze how non-binding measures affect policy-making processes in member States. In addition, it makes a contribution to the policy-making literature by trying to comprehend: a) the relationship between ?soft institutions and instruments? and the process of policy-making; b) policy settings that do not necessarily require the creation of legislation; and finally c) how exogenous, i.e., non-domestic, inputs affect policy-making processes on domestic settings. The analysis is grounded on the reasoning researchers should open the ?black box of policy-making? when understanding the effect of non-binding and non-domestic governance instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political scientists have recognized that European welfare states are increasingly embedded in the multi-level polity of the European Union, the precise consequences of this development are unclear. Against this background, this paper analyzes the impact of popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of national welfare state arrangements on EU support. Data from the 2002 European Social Survey show a negative effect in a majority of member states: citizens dissatisfied with welfare state policy outputs are more prone than others to hold eurosceptic attitudes. Moreover, this effect is stronger in institutional environments where elites and citizens should reasonably perceive greater EU-induced threats to the welfare state, as well as where such threats already appear to have become a reality in the form of welfare state cutbacks coinciding with the post-Maastricht EMU process. Similarly, effects are stronger in member states where the most eurosceptic parties also tend to be the most welfare state-supporting ones. Under such conditions, we theorize, it is more probable that citizens receive cues from leftist/euro-sceptic parties saying that welfare state deterioration is related to European integration. In contrast, we find that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens hold too little EU information and knowledge. On the contrary, the link between welfare dissatisfaction and low EU support grows stronger with more knowledge and information. This suggests that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens know little about Europe, but rather because of the institutional environment that Europe?s large welfare states are finding themselves in, and because of how many European political actors have chosen to interpret and explain that environment to citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the impact of the print media on attitudes to European integration and European Monetary Union during the General Election campaign in Britain in 2001. We find that newspapers do have an impact on attitudes to Europe, but that these effects are relatively small. Identification with a political party is found to exert greater influence on public opinion, and when individuals receive reinforcing cueing information from both parties and the media these effects are stronger still. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the process of enlargement of the European Union (EU). Nature of the bargaining asymmetries that have affected the association and membership negotiations with Central and Eastern Europe; Terms of the EU membership agreement and the ways in which the interests of the Central and East European countries have been marginalized; Ways in which the Europe and membership agreements have been crafted to protect the interests of the old EU member states.

Examines the European judicial integration in the context of the European Union's (EU) inter-institutional disputes. Cause of conflict between EU institutions; Overview of the decision-making process of the European Court of Justice; Static and dynamic models for judicial integration; Outcomes of inter-institutional disputes.

The national parliaments of the member states of the European Union (EU) have been losing power. Decisions that parliaments traditionally had the right and power to decide are increasingly being made either within the institutions of the EU or by the national executives of the member states. But as the EU has been extended to include more and more policy areas, national parliaments and parliamentary party groups acting therein began to realize the loss and adapted their institutional structures to claw back some lost power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]