Based on the research of the EU-6th framework funded research consortium on 'New Modes of Governance in the European Union', this volume explores the roots, execution and applications of new forms of governance and evaluates their success.

This book brings together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of European and American scholars to analyze the core theoretical features of the EU's new experimentalist governance architecture and explore its empirical development across a series of key policy domains.

The emergence, execution and evolution of new modes of governance across several policy fields - and encompassing all three pillars of the European Union - are mapped, analyzed and evaluated. In particular, the expert contributors focus on the ways in which these innovative mechanisms and practices interrelate, how they relate to ?old' methods of governance, and what their implications are both for the effectiveness and efficiency of policymaking. Conclusions are drawn in the form of an integrated new framework that explains the dynamics of EU governance with an ?integrative spiral' driven by the interrelation between the legal and the living architecture of the EU. Linking research on modes of governance to the analysis of the basic legal, institutional and procedural features of the EU up to the Lisbon Treaty, this book will prove essential reading for scholars, researchers and policy makers in the fields of European studies, law and economics, and political science and theory.

This is a remarkably ambitious work of scholarship. What can Europe bring to private law, and what can it take away? And how do we shape the institutional design of the governance model(s) that comprise Europe ? A stellar collection of contributors provides important fresh insights into the evolving and varied patterns according to which private law is generated in Europe. Stephen Weatherill, Somerville College, Oxford, UK The debate concerning the desirability and modes of harmonisation of European Private Law (EPL) has, until now, been mainly concerned with substantive rules. The link between rules and institutions suggests that governance of both the process of harmonisation and its outcome is necessary. This book covers various perspectives on the challenge of designing governance for EPL: the implications of a multi-level system in terms of competences, the interplay between market integration and regulation, the legitimacy of private law making, the importance of self-regulation, the usefulness of conflict of law rules, the role of intergovernmental institutions, and the aftermath of enlargement. In addressing these, the book s achievements are to successfully link two areas of scholarship that have so far remained separate, EPL and new modes of governance, and to address institutional reforms. The contributions offer different proposals to improve governance: the creation of a European Law institute, the improvement of judicial cooperation among national courts, the use of committees for implementation of EPL. Suggesting practical institutional reforms that can improve the process of Europeanisation of private law, this book will be of great interest to scholars of law, politics, political science, sociology and economics. It will also appeal to policymakers, and members of both European institutions and national institutions dealing with European matters.

Mutual recognition is generally forgotten in debates about new modes of governance, even though it is a particular powerful example. Its invention was crucial for the completion of the European Union’s single market, and in the late 1990s it was transferred to the field of Justice and Home Affairs. Outside of the EU, mutual recognition is also gaining in importance. This book discusses mutual recognition in the context of the debate on new modes of governance and analyzes its potential to solve governance problems, focusing on the preconditions it needs for its functioning (e.g. trust of the Member states), the positive implications of achieving coordination through it, as well as its negative side effects (e.g. the danger of a regulatory race to the bottom). Particular focus is on the contentious services directive as a prominent example of using mutual recognition. In addition, contributions look at the application of mutual recognition in the market for goods, in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, in tax policy, and in the World Trade Organization, so that the book achieves a comprehensive assessment of mutual recognition as a new mode of governance. This book was previously published as special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.