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What is the causal relationship between crisis, learning and change? How did causality unfold in the key years of 2009–2010 when the European Union had to face the most formidable attacks to the single currency and responded with substantial reforms of the euro area? We question the conventional identification of the cause-and-effect relationship provided by theories of crisis management, integration and policy learning. Drawing on models of contingent learning developed within psychology and behavioural economics, we theorize that surprise produces behavioural change via a fast-paced associative mechanism and that policy learning follows change. We then run our exercise in causal identification through a plausibility probe. We show that our argument passes the plausibility probe. Our conclusions on cognition and situational effects on learning during crises suggest a new research agenda, more sensitive to how individuals behave in the real world and more robust in its micro-foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under which conditions does the open method of co-ordination match the standards for demoi-cracy? To answer this question, we need some explicit standards about demoi-cracy. In fact, open co-ordination serves three different but interrelated purposes in European Union policy: to facilitate convergence; to support learning processes; and to encourage exploration of policy innovation. By intersecting standards and purposes, we find open co-ordination is neither inherently ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ for demoi-cracy, as it depends on how it has been put into practice. Therefore, we qualify the answer considering the empirical evidence on how normative principles hit the road of implementation. In the final part of this paper, we look into the demoi-cratic effects of the Eurozone's economic and financial crisis on our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's view of the theoretical foundation of cathedral. It reveals the theoretical foundations that informed its design and handle the European Union (EU) comparatively, with coherent political science framework covering other examples of integration and domestic politics. It suggests accepting the accept that other views of the Cathedral exist, are theoretically possible, and may be corroborated by empirical.

An important proposition in public policy analysis is that the design and selection of policy instruments is a manifestation of power relations; in other words, 'politics determines instruments'. However, except where it degenerates into tick-the-box routines, instrumentation can also generate its own political effects at the implementation stage - the 'instruments determine politics' argument. Examining the impact assessment (IA) element of the EU's Better Regulation agenda of the European Union, this article argues that procedures and meta-instruments are chosen by policy-makers when there is disagreement on fundamental issues of power. Policy-makers activate meta-instruments that do not address fundamental issues directly, but change procedures of policy formulation. In so doing, however, they create a new structure of opportunity, which produces its own effects on politics. Our findings point to unintended effects of IA, such as administrative coordination and organisational learning, as well as strengthening of the Commission Secretariat General. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including an analysis of competition policy and regional aid in the European Union, Europeanization program implementation, and new modes of governance in the European Union.

Drawing on the conceptual framework of Europeanisation, we trace the influence of the European Union (EU) on Italian politics by combining top-down analysis (that is, how Italy has adapted to pressure coming from Brussels) with a bottom-up examination of how Italian policy makers have encountered the EU in their attempts to pursue domestic policy goals. We find that the foreign policy orientation and policy preferences of the governing coalition determine the posture, style and choice of institutional venues. Taken together, bottom-up and top-down assessments of Europeanisation suggest that, during the second Berlusconi government, the influence of the EU in Italian politics was limited - although not trivial. When the Berlusconi government (2001-06) faced high pressure, it tried to reduce it at source rather than adapting to EU policies. By contrast, the centre-left governments (1996-2001) used pressure as a lever for policy change, while the governments of the 1980s responded to pressure by delaying implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Quality’ features in all initiatives for better regulation launched by the OECD and the European Union. Yet policy-makers who have tried to import regulatory impact assessment (RIA) from its original Anglo-Saxon context to other European contexts have found it difficult to scratch below the surface of new public management rhetoric and implement successful RIA programmes. One reason for that is that the notions of quality that circulate in the current debate are insensitive to context. This article shows that quality is intrinsically linked to context, and why assessing context will improve the chances of getting significant results in RIA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the European Convention on the Future of Europe as a political process, specifically a process of mobilization. Political value of the Convention; Indicative of the preference for approaches to Europeanization sensitive to the interrelations between European Union-level and domestic contexts; Result of the Convention in terms of mobilization, participation and deliberative governance.