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.

This Oxford Handbook will be the definitive study of governance for years to come. 'Governance' has become one of the most popular terms in contemporary political science; this Handbook explores the full range of meaning and application of the concept and its use in a number of research fields.

This book analyses the current state of transnational regulation within the European Union (EU).

What does non-hierarchical governance mean? Under what conditions are actors likely to engage in it? Which trajectory best captures its long-term evolution? Through which mechanisms does it overcome gridlock? To respond to these questions at the heart of regulatory governance, Experimentalist Governance develops an analytical framework that draws on contemporary debates but seeks to overcome their limitations. Notably, it offers a definition of non-hierarchical (experimentalist) governance that goes beyond institutional structures, focusing attention on actors' choices and strategies. It shows that, contrary to expectations, functional and political pressures were more influential than distributions of legal power, and bolstered one another. Strong functional demands and political opposition influence actors' capacity of using powers which, de jure, might be concentrated in their own hands. Indeed, actors can use non-hierarchical governance to aid learning and mould political support. Conversely, they may override legal constraints and impose their views on others, insofar as they are equipped with confidence and powerful coalitions beforehand. This book also challenges conservative views that non-hierarchical governance is doomed to wither away, showing that, on the contrary, it is often resilient. Finally, it demonstrates that, far from being alternatives, positive (shadow-of-hierarchy) and negative (penalty-default) mechanisms to avoid gridlock are frequently complementary. By analysing five crucial domains (electricity, gas, communications, finance, and pharmaceuticals) in the European Union, an examination is made of when, how, and why non-hierarchical institutions affect policy processes and outcomes. Combining temporal, cross-sectoral, and within-case comparisons with process-tracing, this book ultimately illustrates the conditions, trajectories, and mechanisms of non-hierarchical governance.

"The principal aim of this book is to chart the emergence of experimentalist governance in the implementation of EU competition law as a combined response both to subsidiarity concerns in EU federalism and to an increasingly dynamic and heterogeneous economic environment. The book will contribute to ongoing debates about the current state of EU competition law and supply an alternative account of both emergent trends and its future direction. By focussing on experimentalist governance it is offering a truly innovative perspective on the question of the implementation of EU competition law"--

This book researches the role that interest groups play in new modes of EU governance, with a specific focus on the role of interest representation in experimentalist governance frameworks. The research asks how lobbying in the legislative process contributes to the governance framework and its institutional arrangements and subsequently asks how the relevant interest groups participate in policy implementation – in which broad policy goals are concretised. The research is based on four in-depth case studies: the Industrial Emissions Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Combating Child Abuse Directive, and the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision Directive. Of special interest in these cases are the balance between types of interest groups (most notably business and NGOs) in policy formulation and implementation, and the changing dynamics between interest groups and public policy-makers in such ‘horizontal’ governance. The book’s findings are required reading for all those concerned with effective and democratic policy-making in the EU.

This collection of anthropology of science essays explores the new forms of capital, markets, ethical, legal, and intellectual property concerns associated with new forms of research in the life sciences.

After the perceived failure of global approaches to tackling climate change, enthusiasm for local climate initiatives has blossomed world-wide, suggesting a more experimental approach to climate governance. Innovating Climate Governance: Moving Beyond Experiments looks critically at climate governance experimentation, focusing on how experimental outcomes become embedded in practices, rules and norms. Policy which encourages local action on climate change, rather than global burden-sharing, suggests a radically different approach to tackling climate issues. This book reflects on what climate governance experiments achieve, as well as what happens after and beyond these experiments. A bottom-up, polycentric approach is analyzed, exploring the outcomes of climate experiments and how they can have broader, transformative effects in society. Contributions offer a wide range of approaches and cover more than fifty empirical cases internationally, making this an ideal resource for academics and practitioners involved in studying, developing and evaluating climate governance.

Annotation. Far-reaching transformations in the nature of contemporary governance can be observed, within and beyond the nation-state. At the heart of these transformations, Jonathan Zeitlin argues, is the emergence of new forms of 'experimentalist' governance, based on framework rule-making and revision through comparative review of alternative approaches to advancing common objectives in different local contexts. The proliferation of these new organizational forms can best be understood as a response to increased environmental volatility and complexity, which have overwhelmed in many settings the capacities of conventional hierarchical governance and 'command-and-control' regulation. Although robust examples can be found in many jurisdictions, including the United States, the epicenter of these developments is the European Union, where experimentalist governance arrangements have been institutionalized across a wide range of policy domains over the past 15 years. These have not only facilitated the extension of European integration into new, politically sensitive policy fields, but also enabled the EU in many areas to produce high-quality, revisable rules capable of broad application across a diverse polity of 500 million inhabitants and 27 member states. In this inaugural lecture,Zeitlin analyzes the properties of these experimentalist arrangements, examines their development within the EU, and opens up new research questions about their influence on governance processes within the member states and beyond the Union's borders. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789056296742.

Novel collection of essays addressing contemporary trends in political science, covering a broad array of methodological and substantive topics.