Linking EU and National Governance

European governance ranks high on the present research agenda on the EU and Europeanization and has attracted considerable attention in public and academic debate over the past decade. This book – a well-chosen selection from recent studies of leading scholars in the field – takes a special approach to the subject as it highlights the multi-faceted interconnectedness of EU and national governance. It reveals the extent to which the EU has been transformed from a multi-level polity to a system of penetrated governance embracing a ‘communicative universe’ and a European public space. The individual chapters are colourful representations of the different facets of European governance, which come to light when policy formulation and implementation in the EU is understood as network governance linking both different levels of policy-making and a wide variety of state and society actors. On the one hand, the EU and, especially, the Commission refer to an extensive repertoire of ’hard‘ and ’soft‘ procedures and instruments to link a multitude of actors and arenas and, thereby, trigger off substantial change in the member states. On the other hand, national, subnational and societal actors show differentiated modes of response and adaptation to manage the new challenges within the expanding EU system, to cope with common problems and to shape problem-solving strategies according to their own ideas. As the contributions focus on the diverse mechanisms which link EU and national governance they demonstrate the many constraints state and society actors are facing within the Union but also the readiness and capacity of these actors to deal with demands for adjustment and institutional reforms. They also reveal that compliance is a reaction to hierarchical coercion as well as to horizontal enforcement. Eventually, apart from this more functional view, the penetrated system of European goverance is looked at from a normative perspective, thus, investigating both the prospect of improving multi-level representative democracy and the formation of a European public sphere.