Frameworks of the European Union's Policy Process Competition and Complementarity across the Theoretical Divide
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Biographical note
Nikolaos Zahariadis is professor and director of the political science program at the Department of Government, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. He is the co-chair of the public policy section of the European Union Studies Association, former president of the International Studies Association-South, a Fulbright scholar, a Policy Studies Organization Fellow, and the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his work on comparative public policy.The book advances the state of the European Union’s policy theory by taking stock of seven promising frameworks of the policy process, systematically comparing their limitations and strengths, and offering a strategy to develop robust research agendas. Frameworks may constitute competing policy explanations depending on assumptions they make about EU institutional and issue complexity. The frameworks include detailed analyses of multi-level governance, advocacy coalitions, punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, policy learning, normative power Europe, and constructivism. Besides generating a fertile dialogue that transcends the narrow confines of EU policy, contributions highlight the value of intellectual pluralism and the need for clear and rigorous explanations of the policy process.
This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
The book advances the state of the European Union’s (EU) policy theory by systematically comparing the limitations and strengths of seven frameworks of the policy process and by offering a strategy to develop robust research agendas based on how each framework deals with complexity.
This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
1. Building better theoretical frameworks of the European Union’s policy process 2. Twenty years of multi-level governance: ‘Where Does It Come From? What Is It? Where Is It Going?’ 3. Advocacy coalitions: influencing the policy process in the EU 4. Punctuated equilibrium theory and the European Union 5. Ambiguity, multiple streams, and EU policy 6. Constructivism and public policy approaches in the EU: from ideas to power games 7. A normative power Europe framework of transnational policy formation 8. Learning in the European Union: theoretical lenses and meta-theory