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This chapter reveals how increasing economic inequality among Americans engenders political inequality as well. Though every citizen should equally count in the area of politics and government in a democratic state, this chapter argues that affluent constituents are given more importance by public officials. Taken into account representation by US senators in the late 1980s and early 1990s, senators during this period were more responsive to the views of the elite while those with lower incomes were not considered in the policy making process. Though various reasons are presented on the reason for this disparity, the chapter reflects on the idea that affluent constituent's propensity to contribute to political campaigns are greater than less affluent ones.

This chapter reviews work on new social risks. It concludes that welfare state regime and policy‐making structure makes an important difference to the emergence and development of new social risk policies. Scandinavian social democratic regimes have the best developed policies, liberal regimes develop policies rapidly but are handicapped by reliance on market solutions; corporatist countries develop new social risk provision slowly, typically through compromise with a range of entrenched policy actors; and Mediterranean countries also move relatively slowly, in the context of an expanding welfare state and great reliance on family systems. Existing old social risk policies are also influential, both through the resources that they take up and the interest groups of political actors they create, who are likely to resist reform. New social risk policy‐making is highly important at the EU level for two reasons: the relatively undeveloped national policies in this area mean that cross‐national agencies can offer new policy directions; the policies are congruent with the open market ‘pragmatic monetarist’ approach of EU economic policy. The politics of new social risks differs from that of old social risks. Employers’ groups and modernising parties and unions play an important role and progress is often slow and dependent on compromise. By focussing on areas where reforms are urgent, to meet new needs, but also feasible, because they fit with the context of more globalized and competitive economies, the new social risks approach offers a new perspective on welfare state reform in Europe. This approach avoids the bleak emphasis on retrenchment of much previous analysis of the development of welfare policy.

This chapter focuses on two sets of stakeholders who have traditionally worked together in Western European states to shape and influence public policy: bureaucrats and interest groups. Its central thesis is that these two sets are increasingly filling the ‘hollow core’ of the EU, and provide much of the impetus for making and maintaining policy at the European level. The problem for political scientists is that the process of decision‐making, dependent and controllable within a national setting, is now self‐sustaining and uncontrollable in the EU setting.

Provides an account of the transformation of policy‐making. From the top‐down state‐centric approach and from the bottom‐up grassroots popularism of the 60s and 70s, policy‐making now reflects an increasing emphasis on the importance of ideas and institutions. How can we understand this shift in emphasis? Offers an account of the contracting approach, on the basis of the growing need for efficiency in public policy, credibility and reputation maintenance, and the rediscovery of the importance of institutions. Theoretical implications of the contracting approach are outlined.

The purpose of this Introduction to the book is to provide a point of reference and context for the eleven country studies that follow. It begins with a brief discussion of national co-ordination and why it matters to governments at the European level, and then outlines the tasks and difficulties that face national co-ordinators in Brussels, looking at the EU as a political system, and at its complex institutional structure (the Council of the Union, the European Parliament, the European Commission). The following section looks at the tasks that national co-ordinators are called to perform in routine policy-making, and identifies four phases: policy initiation, policy formulation, deliberation and decision; and implementation and enforcement. A brief section on ‘heroic’ decision-making by national governments follows, and then the matter of the emergence of an overall pattern in national co-ordination—of convergence or divergence—is considered. The next section looks at the effectiveness of national arrangements in Brussels, and the concluding one introduces the eleven country case studies.

King presents a historical account of the rise of expert influence on public policy and offers an explanation of how governments adopt illiberal social policies shaped by these expert ideas. He maintains that liberal democracy necessarily creates the need for expertise as a basis for social policy since first, it permits freedom of ideas and competition amongst them; second, it politically requires government intervention to establish equality of opportunity by rectifying sources of inequality or by expanding choice. King draws examples from his case studies focusing on what he views as the increasing professionalization of social science research in think tanks, research institutes, foundations, and universities. More broadly, King highlights the role of ideas in public policy, thus downplaying the relative importance of institutional arrangements or ‘policy networks’ as determining features of public policy‐making.

Explores the efficiency and effectiveness of new modes of European governance that are not based on legislation and include private actors in policy formulation. Focusses on the emergence, functioning, and impact of these new modes of governance, which include the open method of co‐ordination, voluntary accords, and regulatory fora. Héritier answers important theoretical and normative questions by identifying when and how new modes of governance become institutionalized, as well as specifying conditions under which new modes of governance offer improved policy performance. The general aim of the chapter is to raise the various issues regarding the new modes of governance, and the general question is posed as to why these new modes have become more popular among policy makers, arguing that this is because the new modes are putatively considered to have greater political capacity and policy effectiveness. Based on political transaction cost theory, principal‐agent theory, and political science policy analysis, claims are developed regarding the political institutional capacity as well as the instrumental policy effectiveness of the new modes of governance in different policy areas; these general claims are then explored against the background of four empirical cases in different policy areas, and the general insights gained are used to modify and refine the original claims.

Starts by briefly comparing and contrasting the institutional structures and policy‐making processes in the USA and the EU. Two interrelated arguments are presented in the rest of the chapter: (1) that the EU has quasi‐federal institutional structures and quasi‐pluralist policy‐making processes, which in many ways resemble those of the USA; and (2) that although the EU imposes general adaptational pressures on all member states’ institutions, it, nevertheless, has a differential impact on these member states depending upon whether they are unitary or federal in structure and whether they are statist or corporatist in processes. The different sections of the chapter are: The Institutional Structures of the European Union; The Impact of EU Institutional Structures on Member States; EU Policy‐Making Processes; and The Impact of EU Policy‐Making Processes on Member States.

This chapter summarizes and analyses the findings from the comparative analysis of abortion policy debates in 11 countries. The first section describes similarities and differences in abortion politics, including how abortion reform came to the public agenda, which institutions are responsible for abortion policy, and the pattern of conflict. In the second section, the summary of frames of the abortion debates show policy makers eventually incorporating gendered ideas that promote the status, rights, and autonomy of women, leading in most cases to increased substantive and descriptive representation of women. The third section shows that most women's movements have been unified in support of women's abortion rights, but have not achieved their full demands. The fourth section reports comparative findings testing the five hypotheses of the state feminist theory, and showing conditions under which states’ women's policy agencies have helped women's movement activists achieve feminist policy and participation goals.

There has been considerable rethinking on the part of governments when it comes to social policy, in particular, about the relationships between the labour market, the family, and the state, and about the role of the state and the nature of governance. Very little of the post-war welfare settlement remains unquestioned, whether the nature of the risk addressed; the nature of entitlements and the form of conditionality to be applied; or the best means of making provision. This chapter outlines these welfare state changes and discusses possible explanations for them including political pragmatism, rapid structural change and the role of political ideas. It argues that whether referred to as ‘Third Way’ or not, many similarities in the welfare reforms adopted by industrialized welfare states can be identified. The chapter offers an examination of the US, the UK, and Australian cases to argue that in order to understand why an explicit discourse of policy reconfiguration and reform was actively embraced in some countries but avoided in others, an analysis of the impact of both the political history and constraints of institutional structures is necessary.

Illustrates why the present institutional framework of the EU is no longer able to face new policy challenges. Provides an overview of general modes of EU policy‐making and then addresses concrete new policy challenges faced by the EU (common foreign and security policy, eastern enlargement, and monetary union) with regards to the strengths and limitations of these policy‐making procedures. Scharpf presents an argument for limitations in recent EU reform debates, from the White Paper on Governance to the European Convention, and argues for new modes of European governance that will allow effective ‘Europeanized’ responses to new policy challenges accommodating ‘legitimate diversity’ at the national level. Begins with a brief overview of the principal ‘modes’ of EU policy‐making—defined by participation rights and decision rules—for which the labels of ‘intergovernmental negotiations’, ‘joint decision making’, and ‘supranational centralization’ are used, and then the new policy challenges with regard to the strengths and limitations of these present modes of policy making are discussed. The seven sections of the chapter are: The Challenge of Present Constitutional Debates; The Plurality of European Governing Modes; New Policy Challenges; The European Dilemma: Consensus Plus Uniformity; Two Non‐Solutions: Subsidiarity and Majority Rule; European Action in the Face of Legitimate Diversity; and Conclusions.

The relationship between the European Commission and the various lobbying groups in Brussels is explored, and it is argued that there is now a ‘mature’ institutionalized policy-making style governing interactions between the Commission and interest groups. The formal and informal rules by which the Commission receives and seeks to organize lobbyist’s views, and interest groups influence the Commission’s development of legislative proposals are catalogued. It is found that there has been a steady evolution of some formal, but more often informal, rules and procedures for lobbying organizations. These include: willingness to participate in early discussions; presenting rational/technical arguments based on reliable data; viewing European policy as an opportunity, not a threat; formulating European, not national or particularistic, solutions; understanding the problems and perspectives of other stakeholders in the process; and investing in the entire policy-making process. This development of a stable system of interest group representation for the European Union (EU), sited in Brussels, impinges heavily not only on policy processes and outcomes but also on how democracy in the EU will be conceived and debated.

This chapter explores the issue of Europeanization primarily at the horizontal level of European Union (EU) policy formulation and the adaptation and Europeanization of large and small business interests in the new opportunity structures of Brussels. The movement of business and other societal interests towards the European level has long been associated with a neofunctional perspective on European integration and societal change. Business interests have always been associated with the changes in policy and polity described by the term Europeanization, begging the question of how does the study of ‘Europeanization’ add to the understanding of European business lobbying. To answer this, the first section of the chapter, ‘Europeanization and the Application to EU Public Policy’ defines what Europeanization is understand to be, and set outs a number of European policy-making process propositions to be explored empirically in the next section ‘The Europeanization of Business Interests in a Differentiated Policy Process’. This section looks at how institutional and organizational capabilities have affected representative ability over time, how firms of all sizes have developed ‘venue shopping’ strategies in a multilevel governance structure, and, finally (in resource dependency terms), how firm size affects the distinct rules and norms of interest representation with the European Commission.

Looking at what the republican state should do, the first thing to notice is that republicanism offers the state a pluralistic language in which to formulate the grievances it should seek to rectify: a language of freedom in which it is possible to make sense of a variety of claims that are made on the state. The significant features of the ideal on the policy front are as follows: one, that the ideal is politically less sceptical than the ideal of freedom as non‐interference, since it recognizes the possibility of non‐dominating government; and two, that it is socially more radical, since it requires not just the absence of arbitrary interference but also the absence of capacities for arbitrary interference. In five large areas of policy‐making—external defence, internal protection, personal independence, economic prosperity, and public life—it is possible to discern the broad and often distinctive outlines of what a republican philosophy of government would require; but the requirements can only be detailed in the light of empirical information: republicanism is a research programme for policy‐making, not a once‐for‐always blueprint.

The emergence of EMU on the European agenda caught Whitehall off guard. The task soon became one of resistance. Two alternative plans were launched—for a competing currency, then for a common currency—but their motivation and purpose remained uncertain. Mrs Thatcher saw them as a means to delay or dilute EMU. Lawson, Howe, and Major favoured a more constructive engagement in the EMU debate. Both the alternative plans failed to restructure the debate in Europe, a feature to be explained by both short‐ and long‐term conditions affecting British policy‐making. Strategic miscalculations (concerning the Delors Committee, as well as the British alternatives) were evident in the perception of the balance of political forces and the ability of Britain to reshape them.

This study of the German permanent representation at Brussels unravels the complexities of co-ordination in a domestic political system characterized by vertical and horizontal pluralism, administrative fragmentation, and parallel competition from the ‘foreign relations systems’ of the Länder. Success in high politics at the European level contrasts with the ‘diplomacy of improvisation’ that is the outcome of ‘autonomy, polyphony, and organized anarchy in routine policy-making. The first section of the chapter conceptualizes the ‘Janus-like character of permanent representations at Brussels and discusses various theoretical approaches to these bodies. The following sections look at the history, growth and differentiation of the German permanent representation, its tasks, the German Länder system as a complicating factor, and the co-ordination and communication activities of the German permanent representation, which orients its European policy-making activities in six directions—between Bonn/Berlin and Brussels, within Brussels, within Bonn/Berlin, with the Länder, with the European Commission and the European Parliament, and with Brussels-based interest groups.

The author describes three policy debates in Austria: initial legalization in the early 1970s, the defeat of an anti‐abortion referendum initiative in 1978, and the authorization of Mifegyne—the ‘abortion pill’—in the late 1990s. The women's movement has been very influential in all abortion debates through their activism in the left‐wing Austrian Social Democratic party and the long‐term commitment of that party to women's right to self‐determination. In all debates as well, the women's policy agencies acted for the movement inside the state policy‐making processes. Austrian abortion politics is an example of movement success in part through state feminism.