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A new concept of deepening European integration? – The European Research Area and the emerging role of policy coordination in a multi-level governance system

Robert Kaiser and Heiko Prange

European Integration online Papers (EIoP) Vol. 6 (2002) N° 18; http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2002-018a.htm

Date of Publication in : 24.10.2002

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Kaiser and Prange’s article analyses the EU’s recent attempt to introduce the “open method of coordination” into its R&D policy. The aim of the article is to examine if and when this new mode of policy-making can contribute to the EU’s goal of “deepening integration”. Section two identifies the OMC as a specific operating mode of the EU multi-level governance system, which potentially undermines parliamentary control and regional autonomy. Section three introduces the EU’s new programme to establish a “European Research Area” in order to ensure that “measures taken at the different levels will be mutually consistent” (6). While voluntary networks between national research programmes oriented around a common objective should enhance innovation itself, similar networks between policy-makers should foster the quality of the research strategies developed by national policy-makers. The OMC is an answer to the specific problem of R&D policy in the EU. Innovation systems are primarily national and regional, not European: policy competencies are unequally spread across different territorial levels within the member states, some having strong regional competencies while others not; innovation systems differ structurally, for example, according to the weight of the public and the private sector; they have different levels of performance. Section four assesses the possible future consequences on the basis of the policy blueprint developed so far. It comes to a rather sceptical assessment. Greater coherence of national and regional R&D requires that the OMC be based on single “guidelines or reference indicators agreed upon at the Community level” (10). This centralisation of rule-making is likely to have a detrimental effect on the performance of innovation systems (since it does not allow the differentiation necessary for comparative advantage). Furthermore, these rules “per se reduce the scope of autonomy of regional parliaments and governments” (10). This is likely to lead to a backlash against OMC in which the Council, the Parliament and the regions will try to redress the unfavourable balance introduced by it. The main normative point here is: “OMC can only be successful if the European Union renounces harmonisation” (11). In section five the authors conclude that OMC will foster integration only if it goes beyond benchmarking and guidelines. Nevertheless, the authors see a role for OMC in deepening European integration that comes close to the role set out in the White Picture Books published by the Commission: it is to respect autonomy and allow a contribution of the EU to many sensitive and important policy areas.

The is a highly interesting paper. It is the first paper I have read that discusses the OMC in the area of research policy. Everybody interested in Europe’s new modes of governance will now closely follow developments in this area. Also, it contains an important observation: at least in the area of R&D policy, OMC will not be implemented as a voluntary and decentralised mode of governance, but it is likely to be hijacked by the European Commission, which will use it as an alternative harmonisation mechanism. This in turn will reduce the performance of this mode of governance.

Despite its merits, in my view the paper has an important shortcoming: it does not develop a normative standard for evaluating the OMC that is independent from that offered by the OMC policy-makers or the R&D policy blueprint. Admittedly, in section two there is an attempt to place the OMC in the discussion of multi-level governance in the EU. But what is missing here is a deeper understanding of the rationale of the OMC. Why should it be such an attractive coordination mechanism? What are the advantages of decentralised local decision-making coordinated by a system of benchmarking or jointly produced best-practice rules? Why could such a mechanism possibly be “effective” and “democratic”? Only if we understand its full potential to foster learning and participatory democracy can we decide whether the hype is justified or not. In the essay, these questions are not answered, at least not with a distance from the sales talk of the policy-makers who are propagating this method. Given that there are still no empirical lessons to be drawn from the OMC in the area of R&D policy (5), this lacuna causes a problem for the rather ambitious aim of the authors: the desire to assess the OMC in “different policy areas” (1). The essay does not make it possible to decide whether the legitimacy problems are inherent in the mode of policy coordination or whether they are due to the specific use within the EU in general or its R&D policy more specifically. For example: does OMC require a “top-down definition of European guidelines and reference indicators” (10) to function, or is this an unfortunate European aberration? Answers to questions like these would make it possible to decide whether the OMC needs to be reformed or abandoned.

Burkard Eberlein and myself have propagated the work on “democratic experimentalism” (Eberlein/Kerwer 2002) as a starting point for a theoretical reconstruction of the OMC. Since the OMC’s basic concepts of benchmarking and innovation networks were developed in reference to product innovation in manufacturing and in reference to R&D policy (e.g. Sabel 1996), the approach seems to be especially suitable for the case at hand. It seems, we did not convince the authors of its usefulness. There is no room here to correct the obvious shortcomings of our attempt. Suffice to say that against the background of democratic experimentalism, the story of the OMC in the “European Research Area” strikes me as highly peculiar: if it shall evolve as the authors anticipate, it is simply not going to be a case of democratic experimentalism. The fundamental principle is violated: benchmarks should not be imposed ex ante by the coordinating centre but should be the result of the experience of decentralised experiential learning. No wonder those actors that in theory profit most from a decentralised decision-making mode, such as the OMC, are among those that complain – even before the process gets started: i.e. the regions. In the light of the theory of democratic experimentalism, these are severe distortions, whatever the policy rhetoric may be. They raise doubts about the viability of “democratic experimentalism” in the form of EU’s OMC. Maybe the fluidity of the EU’s institutional set-up, which fosters permanent domain conflicts, makes the EU a hostile environment for the intricate division of labour between formal and informal institutions necessary for initiating a process of democratic experimentalism. If this is the case, a closed rather than an open method of coordination is likely to prevail.

Reference
Charles Sabel, 1996: A measure of federalism: assessing manufacturing technology centers, in: Research Policy 25, 281-307.