Osnabrück - Research Project
8. Formal and informal mechanisms of cooperation in the governance of climate change policy.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Andrea Lenschow (Email: alenscho@uni-osnabrueck.de), Osnabrück University (2 ESRs)
PhD: Jan Frederik Braun (Email: Jan.Frederik.Braun@uni-osnabrueck.de)
PhD: Iulii Selianko (Email: iulii.selianko@uni-osnabrueck.de)
Short project description: A number of the EU’s political projects like Climate Change policy, immigration policy or democracy promotion policy, which contribute to the “profiling” of the Union both vis-à-vis the European citizenry and vis-à-vis other global actors in international organisations and regimes, share the feature of not only being “multi-level” character (connecting governance structures from the sub-national to the global level) but in their horizontal, i.e. cross-sectoral, nature. They pose novel demands (at least in degree) for coordination both within and across the EU institutions:
• Inside the European Parliament pressure on the permanent committees and the political party groupings to coordinate efforts has been rising due to the cross-sectoral character of policies. For instance, the climate issue links environmental, industrial, internal and external market, transport and energy policies; immigration policy connect social, economic and security concerns; etc. The perceived need for coordination may have formal (e.g. the use of the “enhanced cooperation” procedure between committees or the creation of the ad hoc committee on climate change) and informal consequences, changing “politics” inside the Parliament.
• Similar patterns can be observed inside the European Commission, where numerous DGs have docked on to certain policy agendas. Partly, this can be understood as a process of securing influence within the organisation; partly new patterns of coordinated governance emerge. Possibly in contrast to the EP the analysis of such governance dynamics in the Commission will have to take into account not only the cross-sectoral coordination (which got even more complex with the Lisbon Treaty) but also the role of hierarchy between the political (especially presidential) and administrative echelons.
Such intra-institutional studies would look at particular “policy packages”, which allocate prime responsibility to different parts inside the EP and the Commission, respectively, and which operate according to different formal rules and procedures.