Susana Borrás - The Politics of the Lisbon Agenda: Governance Architectures and Domestic Usages of Europe

The Politics of the Lisbon Agenda

In the year 2000, in Lisbon, the European Union launched an agenda for growth, jobs, sustainability and competiveness with a ten-year target. In 2010, the agenda was re-launched with different specific objectives but with the same final goals. Why do the European Union leaders engage with these ten-year plans? What exactly do they commit to when they do so? Do they learn from the results, or is this a rhetorical exercise that complex organizations need to raise attention to certain issues?

This volume is the first-ever systematic study of the Lisbon agenda of the European Union, now called Europe 2020. It explains the rise of the Lisbon agenda as governance architectures and examines its components across time and sectors.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Susana Borrs is Professor of Governance and Innovation, and head of the Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Claudio M. Radaelli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Exeter, where he directs the Centre for European Governance.

Journal of European Public Policy Series

Series Editor: Jeremy Richardson is a Professor at Nuffield College, Oxford University

This series seeks to bring together some of the finest edited works on European Public Policy. Reprinting from Special Issues of the Journal of European Public Policy, the focus is on using a wide range of social sciences approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, to gain a comprehensive and definitive understanding of Public Policy in Europe.

Towards a Federal Europe

Edited by Alexander H. Trechsel

The Disparity of European Integration

Edited by Tanja A. Brzel

Cross-National Policy Convergence:

Causes Concepts and Empirical Findings

Edited by Christoph Knill

Civilian or Military Power?

European Foreign Policy in Perspective

Edited by Helene Sjursen

The European Union and New Trade Politics

Edited by John Peterson and Alasdair R. Young

Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas

Edited by Frank R. Baumgartner, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Bryan D. Jones

The Constitutionalization of the European Union

Edited by Berthold Rittberger and Frank Schimmelfenig

Empirical and Theoretical Studies in EU Lobbying

Edited by David Coen

Mutual Recognition as a New Mode of Governance

Edited by Susanne K. Schmidt

France and the European Union

Edited by Emiliano Grossman

Immigration and Integration Policy in Europe

Edited by Tim Bale

Reforming the European Commission

Edited by Michael W. Bauer

International Influence Beyond Conditionality

Postcommunist Europe after EU enlargement

Edited by Rachel A. Epstein and Ulrich Sedelmeier

The Role of Political Parties in the European Union

Edited by Bjrn Lindberg, Anne Rasmussen and Andreas Warntjen

EU External Governance

Projecting EU Rules beyond Membership

Edited by Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig

EMU and Political Science

What Have We Learned?

Edited by Henrik Enderlein and Amy Verdun

Learning and Governance in the EU Policy Making Process

Edited by Anthony R. Zito

Political Representation and EU Governance

Edited by Peter Mair and Jacques Thomassen

Europe and the Management of Globalization

Edited by Wade Jacoby and Sophie Meunier

Negotiation Theory and the EU

The State of the Art

Edited by Andreas Dr, Gemma Mateo and Daniel C. Thomas

The Political Economy of Europes Incomplete Single Market

Edited by David Howarth and Tal Sadeh

The European Unions Foreign Economic Policies

A Principal-Agent Perspective

Edited by Andreas Dr and Michael Elsig

The Politics of the Lisbon Agenda

Governance Architectures and Domestic Usages of Europe

Edited by Susana Borrs and Claudio M. Radaelli

Agency Governance in the European Union

Edited by Berthold Rittberger and Arndt Wonka

The Politics of the Lisbon Agenda

Governance Architectures And Domestic Usages Of Europe

Edited by

Susana Borrs and Claudio M. Radaelli

First published 2012

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Taylor & Francis

This book is a reproduction of the Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 18, issue 4. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN13: 978-0-415-68963-2

Typeset in Garamond by
Taylor & Francis Books

Disclaimer

The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book are referred to as articles as they had been in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.

Contents

Susana Borrs and Claudio M. Radaelli

Caroline de la Porte

Stijn Smismans

Susana Borrs and B. Guy Peters

Anna Gwiazda

Jeff Loder

Giliberto Capano and Simona Piattoni

Susana Borrs and Claudio M. Radaelli

ABSTRACT Governance architectures are strategic and long-term institutional arrangements of international organizations exhibiting three features; namely, they address strategic and long-term problems in a holistic manner, they set substantive output-oriented goals, and they are implemented through combinations of old and new organizational structures within the international organization in question. The Lisbon Strategy is the most high-profile initiative of the European Union for economic governance of the last decade. Yet it is also one of the most neglected subjects of EU studies, probably because not being identified as an object of study on its own right. We define the Lisbon Strategy as a case of governance architecture, raising questions about its creation, evolution and impact at the national level. We tackle these questions by drawing on institutional theories about emergence and change of institutional arrangements and on the multiple streams model. We formulate a set of propositions and hypotheses to make sense of the creation, evolution and national impact of the Lisbon Strategy. We argue that institutional ambiguity is used strategically by coalitions at the EU and national level in (re-)defining its ideational and organizational elements.