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Public administration has traditionally been characterised with such bureaucratic features as hierarchical and formalised organisational structure, clear and rigid career paths, lifetime tenure, full-time employment, principle of seniority, advantageous pension schemes and rigid remuneration systems. These features were introduced in late 19th century to reduce the risk of excessive political influence, corruption, misconduct and instability of government. Today, however, numerous administrative and managerial reforms are affecting these longstanding aspects of public employment. Size and composition of workforce, its working and employment conditions, nature of work, and values and legal status are all undergoing a process of change. The various reforms are also gradually shrinking the size of central public administrations of the EU-27 Member States. They are becoming more decentralised and fragmented, more diversified, more aligned and less specific. The on-going financial crisis and the introduction of hasty austerity measures have a strong impact on the public workforce in most EU Member States. So far, restructuring programmes and effects of austerity measures have not been a subject of rigorous scrutiny. Similarly, the effects of public management reforms have not been studied either and have resulted in national administrations having no longer a single coherent framework. Filling this important gap, this comparative study attempts to assess the effects of these developments in public employment in the central public administrations of the EU Member States offering insight into the future of public employment.

Constructing a Policy-Making State? sets out to examine the processes by which Europeanization takes place. Europeanization is defined as the process by which the key decisions about public policies are gradually transferred to the European level (or for new policy areas, emerge at the European level). This is in contrast to definitions of Europeanization which focus on the adaption of member states to European public policies. Thus, the main focus is whether a European Union'policy-making state'is being created via changes in the distribution of power between member states and the European level institutions over time. In addition to several overview chapters (such as on agenda setting in the EU), there are twelve sectoral studies which analyse the differing trajectories and outcomes of the Europeanization process and the extent to which the European Union can make'authoritative allocations'. The case studies have been selected in order to illustrate the degree of cross-sectoral variation in the process of Europeanization, from sectors which have yet to see very much Europeanization, such as health, to sectors such as competition policy which are almost fully Europeanized. The book is consciously multi-theoretic in its approach, drawing on a range of theories and concepts, from theories of European integration, to theories of public policy processes.

Qu'est-ce que l'européanisation? Cet ouvrage questionne ce phénomène à la lumière des politiques européennes intergouvernementales (enseignement supérieur et justice) et des politiques nationales (politique étrangère et de sécurité, politique de défense et politique sociale). Il aborde aussi la question sous l'angle de la construction d'instruments d'action publique (benchmarking, gender mainstreaming et Méthode Ouverte de Coordination), de la participation des acteurs non étatiques ou encore des stratégies locales de promotion identitaire.