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The political control of the bureaucracy is a major theme in public administration scholarship, particularly in delegation theory. There is a wide range of policy instruments suitable for the purpose of control. In practice, however, there are economic and political limitations to deploying the full arsenal of control tools. We explore the implications of the costs of control by examining cross-country patterns of fire alarms. We identify and categorize a set of control instruments and their rationale using accountability typologies. We then code the presence or absence of different instruments by drawing on an original dataset of 14 instruments in a population of 17 European countries. Using configurational analysis, we analyse cross-country patterns. In the conclusions, we reflect on the patterns identified, their implications for controlling bureaucracy in advanced democracies and the literature on administrative traditions. We finally propose how our empirical findings may be extended to further explanatory analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the European regulatory state be managed? The European Union (EU) and its member states have looked at better regulation as a possible answer to this difficult question. This emerging public policy presents challenges to scholars of public management and administrative reforms, but also opportunities. In this conceptual article, we start from the problems created by the value-laden discourse used by policy-makers in this area, and provide a definition and a framework that are suitable for empirical/explanatory research. We then show how public administration scholars could usefully bring better regulation into their research agendas. To be more specific, we situate better regulation in the context of the academic debates on the New Public Management, the political control of bureaucracies, evidence-based policy, and the regulatory state in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vivien Schmidt's Democracy in Europe represents a major contribution to the analysis of Europeanization and the legitimacy deficit in Europe. In this paper, we critically discuss three core components of Schmidt's argument: the analytical distinction between simple vs compound polity, the definition of discourse and its role in political change, and the relevance of bureaucracies in the generation of `misfit' between the domestic and European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we contribute to the debate on research design and causal analysis in European integration studies by considering the sub-field of Europeanization. First, we examine the awareness of research design issues in the literature on Europeanization through a review of the debate on causality, concept formation and methods. Second, we analyse how much of the discussion of the trade-offs in causal analysis in mainstream political science has percolated into Europeanization studies. We therefore construct a sample of the Europeanization literature, comparing it to a control group of highly cited articles on European integration. This enables us to control if some patterns are specific to the Europeanization literature or reflect a more general trend in European integration. We then look at trade-offs in the Europeanization sample and in the control group. Our findings indicate that awareness of research design is still low. Europeanization articles differ from the control group in the focus on mechanisms (rather than variables) and the qualitative aspects of time in politics. Complex notions of causality prevail in Europeanization but not in the control group and the cause-of-effects approach is preferred to effects-of-causes in the control group but not in Europeanization – in both cases, however, the difference is slight. We conclude by explaining differences and similarities and make proposals for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides some reflective thoughts on current research on regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in Europe. The narrative draws on the author's fieldwork diaries. It starts from the methodological problems of identifying and analysing regulatory impact assessment in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. This leads to more fundamental theoretical questions about research design, the relationship between supply and demand of research and, ultimately, the aims of academic research in this area. The conclusions draw lessons for the emerging research agenda on better regulation. The main problem is not whether 'real' RIAs exist or not, since this would be equivalent to trying to fit the amoeba-like RIA 'substance' into our abstract 'forms'. The interesting problems are: what are the functions of different approaches to assessment, how are they used and how can they improve governance? [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.

Examines policy change and the role of discourse in Europe. Relationship between the power of ideas and interests as seen through discussions of arguing versus bargaining; Europeanization; Transformative power and limitations of discourse; Scope of learning in policy change.

Examines conceptual and methodological issues in policy change and discourse in Europe. Factors in policy change; Role of discourse in institutional learning; Ontological and epistemological foundations of discourse.

The article offers information on the research "Harmonizing Direct Taxes in Europe: Knowledge and Power in the European Policy Process." It mentions that the European Union Human Capital and Mobility Fellowship has funded the research. It mentions that the research explores direct tax harmonization in Europe. It mentions that the research links three public policy literatures including the literature on the politics of taxation and fiscal federalism, the literature on European integration, and the literature on policy change and learning. It also explores the development of corporate taxation and national interests in Great Britain and Italy.