Institutional Change in the Emerging European Polity

Abstract

Few researchers in international and comparative politics and public administration would disagree with the observation that, as a result of the spectacular rise of internationalization and globalization — ‘the spatial and temporal implosion of the globe’ (Ruggie, 1993: 168) — the nation state is in full retreat. For such people it is more or less common knowledge that the enormous increase in interdependence on a worldwide scale during the last few decades has seriously, and perhaps even fatally, weakened the efficacy of the nation state. This applies a fortiori to the nation states that make up the European Union (EU). Although the EU was initially set up by these states for the very reason that they wanted to cope with the negative effects of increasing interdependence (cf. Milward, 1992; Moravcsik, 1998), it is widely accepted that the member states of the EU ‘are no longer ‘Westphalian’ in terms of their substantial statehood. They exemplify a new type of statehood... For lack of a better term, this new form of statehood can be labelled ‘postmodern’ (Sorensen, 1999: 602).