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This introductory chapter starts by summarizing the main conclusions of the earlier companion volume (European Integration and Supranational Governance), and describes the current volume as focusing on the institutionalism of Europe per se, rather than the question of how supranational arenas emerged and were institutionalized. It looks at the sources and consequences of institutionalization, i.e. the process through which European political space – supranational policy arenas or sites of governance, structured by European Union (EU) rules, procedures, and the activities of the EU’s organizations – has evolved. The five main sections of the chapter look at the institutionalist challenge, discuss institutions and institutionalization (institutional change, social and political space, institutions in relation to power, and rule-making and legitimacy), attempt to explain institutional change in the European Union (examining institutional innovation and its assessment), provide a brief overview of the book, and offer conclusions on the dynamics of institutionalization and the future of the European Union. The next nine chapters of the book are described as falling into three groups: the first set addresses the processes of institutionalization (Chs 2–4); the second set explores how specific European policy spaces have emerged, mutated, and stabilized through ‘endogenous’ processes of institutionalization (Chs 5–7); and the third set is concerned with the processes of institutional innovation – the creation of new policy spaces (Chs 8–10). A final chapter concludes by discussing the institutional logic of integration.

The general process of institutionalization in the European Union is examined from a macro perspective, building on the theoretical materials developed in the earlier book European Integration and Supranational Governance, and examining the extent to which linkages between rule-making (legislation), dispute resolution, and different forms of transnational activity have created a dynamic, inherently expansionary system. The process is evaluated from the standpoint of institutionalist theory by testing specific hypotheses against relatively comprehensive quantitative measures of integration: trading, legislating, litigating, and lobbying within the context of the Treaty of Rome. The main findings are that (1) increasing economic transactions, (2) the construction of the Brussels complex, (3) the capacity of supranational authorities to produce legislation, and (4) the operation of the European Commission (EC) legal system have become linked through a complex set of feedback loops that binds them together in a self-reinforcing system that broadly determines the course of integration. Although the perspective used is a macro one, the authors emphasize actors and agency: as increasing numbers of actors learn how to be effective in the EC, they build and consolidate new arenas for political activity, thereby bolstering the centrality of supranational governance.

Concerns decision-making in the European Union (EU), given the ever-present threat of deadlock, and argues that a set of informal and more formal tactics, serving to facilitate rule-making, has evolved to deal with this problem. Three basic modes of overt and covert institutionalization are identified and discussed: overt and formal modes of rule-changing; overt change through informal strategies and patterns; and covert institutionalization through committing actors at an early stage, shaping policy behind closed doors, and re-labelling and restructuring a choice situation. The theoretical foundations of each of these are discussed, and each is illustrated by empirical examples of European policy-making, including various examples of initiatives that were initially blocked by the Council of Ministers, but eventually became EU law and policy. Finally, the question is raised as to the consequences of these different modes of institutionalization and the conditions under which these different paths of deepening European institutionalization do not normally occur.

The institutionalization of European administration space is examined through one of the least visible or understudied, but most important, outcomes of integration: the development of administrative law for the European Union (EU). As positive integration came to constitute a central priority for EU organizations, the European Commission’s administrative responsibilities and capacities multiplied, so that it is now expected not only to monitor and enforce compliance with an increasingly dense and technical body of supranational rules but also to determine how that law is to be applied to specific individuals and situations. Neither task could be performed without appropriating a great deal of discretionary authority, and it is argued that, in Western democracies, the problem of controlling rising administrative discretion has inevitably been felt, and has typically been dealt with through the development of judicial mechanisms. Using the American (US) experience as a comparative backdrop, it is shown that once judges require that administrators furnish formal justifications for their actions, the judicial review of the ‘reasonableness’ of administrative acts follows. The author traces how these and other forms of judicial control of the EU’s administrative acts developed through litigation and the rule-making of the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance, despite the absence of explicit Treaty of Rome provision, so that the basic foundations of EU administrative law are now in place.

An analysis is presented of the creation and development of rules governing the organizational form and the policy content of the European Central Bank (ECB). The establishment of the ECB and the launching of the Euro constitute an extraordinary innovation, one that opens and organizes a new institutional space in Europe. The ECB system is assessed in the light of three broad theoretical approaches emphasizing, respectively, power politics, institutions as rational solutions to collective problems, and pre-existing normative (social) structures. Power politics and functional rationality approaches are found to fail to account for important aspects of the ECB’s rules and policy mandates, while, in contrast, a sociological emphasis on institutional context is useful in explaining the continuities linking the ECB to the normative structure that had previously developed – largely within the network of central-bank governors – and diffused throughout the organizational field in which monetary policy-making was embedded. It was the need to legitimize the new ECB in terms of these broader norms that shaped the ECB’s organizational structure and governing rules: in particular, pre-existing norms influenced three key aspects of the ECB – its political independence, its criteria for membership, and its rules for price stability.

Provides a detailed assessment of the single market ‘1992’ programme and the renewed efforts by the European Union in the 1980s to address barriers to trade. The chapter covers the political and institutional reforms undertaken to relaunch European market integration, and the new regulatory strategies that involve states and firms in a complex ‘new approach’ to address the discriminatory effects of national regulations and standards. These efforts at regulatory reforms enable the European Union to delegate certain responsibilities to the private sector and shift from a ‘statist’ to a more market‐oriented policy style. Through the new approach and a related ‘global approach’ to testing and certification, the European Union has blurred the boundaries between the public and private sector in decision‐making and promoted new modes of governance by increasing competition among rules.

This chapter addresses three questions: what are the main features of the liberal solidarist conception of international society? What are the major forces and factors that not only explain the emergence of solidarist forms of international society but also demand that international society move further in this direction? In what ways has liberal solidarism complicated the search for legitimacy? It builds on earlier usages of the term solidarism, taking it as a composite label for a qualitatively different kind of international society, in which four dimensions are especially important: the move to institutions and expansion of global rule-making; changes in the making, development, and justification of international law; the increasing emphasis placed on the enforcement of international norms and rules; and a changed understanding of the state and of state sovereignty. It is shown that all political orders struggle with the trade-offs amongst the different dimensions of legitimacy. They dominate politics even within the most well-established example of governance beyond the state, namely in Europe.

This chapter presents a typology of global regulation, which differentiates the institutional setting for rule-making, which is either public or private, from the global selection process, which is either market based or nonmarket based. Four types of global regulatory governance are discussed. The first type, termed “public (governmental) nonmarket standard-setting,” involves collaboration through traditional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) or transgovernmental cooperation among domestic regulators. The second type is market-based private regulation, which entails rule-making by firms or other bodies competing, individually or in groups, to establish their preferred technologies or practices as the de facto standard through market dominance or other strategies. The third type of global regulation—private yet nonmarket-based—is regulation by focal rule-making institutions, such as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The fourth type of regulation results from market-like international competition between public regulatory agencies.

This book has explored global private governance by three focal rule-making institutions: the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It has shown that, in rapidly growing areas of global private regulation, where central state institutions are not directly involved, the representation of domestic regulatory preferences is to a large extent mediated by, or channeled through, domestic governance structures that are also private. This concluding chapter considers the implications of these findings for public policy and for normative debates over global governance more generally. It highlights two key issues: institutional reform to improve the fit between domestic and international institutions, and the questions of legitimacy raised by private rule-making.

Judges confront rules in two ways, as rule-makers and as rule-followers. When a judge decides a case that is not governed by an existing rule, the judge must formulate a rule of decision and calculate the effects of the rule in future cases. Rule-making is a highly deliberative process, in which the judge must select the rule that will best realize relevant values over the range of cases to which it applies. When a judge decides a case that is governed by a precedent rule, the judge is expected to treat the precedent rule as authoritative. To do this, the judge must follow the rule mechanically, without reflecting on the relationship between the outcome of the rule and the values on which the rule is based. These two tasks — rule-making and rule-following — make different, and possibly conflicting, cognitive demands on judges.

This book examines the delegation of regulatory authority from governments to a single international private-sector body by focusing on three powerful global private regulators, or focal rule-making institutions: the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The book shows how the simultaneous privatization and internationalization of governance is driven, in part, by governments' lack of requisite technical expertise, financial resources, or flexibility to deal expeditiously with ever more complex and urgent regulatory tasks. Its main argument is that technical expertise and financial resources are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful involvement in global private-sector standardization. To make its case, the book explores global private regulation in global financial and product markets.

This chapter examines the distributional consequences of shifting rule-making to the international private and nonmarket sphere. In particular, it asks who wins, who loses, and why when international standard-setting takes place in private focal rule-making institutions. It considers what is distinctive about the politics of rule-making in these transnational institutions, what defines power in these organizations, and how it operates. The chapter answers these questions using institutional complementarity theory. It first provides an overview of the institutional setting of nonmarket private governance, focusing on actors and sources of power, before discussing institutional complementarity, effective representation of domestic interests at the international level, and timeliness of involvement and information. It shows that domestic standardization systems characterized by institutional hierarchy facilitate the accommodation of the new institutional layers of standardization activity above the national level.

This chapter examines the role of private regulators in global product markets, with particular emphasis on institutional structure and institutional complementarity in product regulation. It first provides an overview of how the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) became, for most industries, the focal rule-making institutions for setting international product standards. It then considers the global institutional structure and decision-making procedures before describing the domestic structures in Europe and the United States. It shows that the institutional structure for setting product standards in the United States is characterized by institutional fragmentation and contestation among competing standard-setters. In Europe, by contrast, the domestic standard-setting institutions are characterized by a high degree of coordination and organizational hierarchy.

This chapter examines how companies affected by international product standards assess these standards and the extent to which they are able to influence rule-making in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Drawing on the results of a business survey among standards experts in firms in the United States and four European countries (Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), the chapter considers the importance of institutional complementarity in international standard-setting across five industries: chemicals; rubber and plastic products; medical instruments and medical devices; petroleum products; and iron and steel products. It shows that high complementarity between standard-setting institutions at the domestic level and the institutional structure of standardization at the international level favors European over American interests in ISO and IEC. By contrast, the relatively poor fit between U.S. domestic institutions and the international structure puts U.S. firms at a disadvantage.

This chapter examines the implications of complementarity for our theoretical understanding of the relationship between power and institutions. It also evaluates the contributions of the book's empirical investigation of private standard-setting in transnational focal rule-making institutions to several current debates among scholars of political science, sociology, law, economics, and business administration about issues such as the changing nature of regulatory politics and nontariff barriers to trade. Institutional complementarity theory implies that we should be more cautious than optimistic when looking to standards as a way to overcome asymmetries. Unless proponents of good standards succeed in shaping the—national yet nongovernmental—positions of their respective countries, international standardization may not yield major improvements for overcoming information asymmetries.

This book has examined how private rule makers are contributing to the management of global environmental problems by rethinking the meaning of private authority. It has shown that private authority is diffused through and among a diverse set of actors, creating multiple loci for rule-making and governance. It has also distinguished two different types of private authority: delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's findings and considers their theoretical implications—namely, appropriate ways to evaluate the effects of private authority in world politics. It suggests potential contributions of private authority to the climate change regime as it moves forward. Finally, it outlines future avenues for inquiry, situating this study within a much broader set of questions about institutional complexity and density and the effects of private authority over time.