Legitimacy and/or policy effectiveness?: network governance and GMO regulation in the European Union

Abstract The article examines the legitimation imperatives of EU-level regulatory governing, the institutional capacity to respond to these imperatives, and the resulting implications for policy effectiveness. It argues that both output and input legitimacy are necessary for authoritative supra-state regulation in certain policy domains. To secure both democratic legitimation and effective policy-making, input legitimation mechanisms should function as integrative rather than aggregative institutions. In a case study of formulation of EU genetic engineering policies, the structural attributes of network governance and features of the policy domain are shown to affect the potential of network governance as an integrative institution. Keywords: Aggregative InstitutionsGmosInput LegitimacyIntegrative InstitutionsNetwork GovernanceOutput Legitimacy