Accountability and Law in Europe: Towards a New Public Legal Order?
| Author | Michelle Everson |
| Published date | 01 January 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2004.06701007.x |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
REVIEWARTICLE
Accountability and Law in Europe:
Towards a New Public Legal Order?
Michelle Everson
n
Carol Harlow,Accountability in the European Union,Oxford: Hart Publishing,
2002, xvi þ192pp, hb d45.00.
LAUDATIO BREVIS
Accountability in the European Union
1
is a timely book. A patient and conscientious
work,it takes a new lookat the issue of the‘democracyde¢cit’ in Europe. Moving
beyond classical perceptions of democracy as being simply secured within parlia-
mentary processes, the volume concedes that a new post-national governance
structure like the EU is bound to contain various non-majoritarian institutional
elements, such as regulatory committees and agencies. It then moves on to scruti-
nise such bodies, along with the Commission, Council, Court of Auditors,
European Parliament and Court of Justice, for their degree of ‘accountability’ to
the public or publics of Europe.
The focus on the role of ‘accountability’rather than representative democratic
processes in securing European democracy re£ects both Carol Harlow’s primary
concern to secure the continued vibrancy of civil society within Europe ^ after
all, only an informed public canjudge how it is beinggoverned ^ and reveals her
intellectual roots to lie, not in the grand designs of constitutional theory, but
within the patient and comprehensive methodologies of administrative law. This
‘administrative’ legal heritage is the major factor that characterises Harlow’s careful,
comprehensive analysis of accountability within Europe. It is also, however, a
renewed indication of Harlow’s methodological commitment to what might be
termed ‘empirical modesty’. This is not an author who seeks insight through
grand conceptual schemes or ¢nely wrought theoretical frameworks. Instead,
the method is one of a stubborn tracking down of all available legal institutional
‘facts’, the solid ordering of the same and the down to earth presentation of this
bulky mass ofi nformation.Importantly, however,this de¢ant refusal tobe drawn
into fantasies of legal theory or the transient trends of (often imperfectly
mastered)interdisciplinarity, nor yetinto the myriad devices and desires of meth-
odological obfuscation, does not, cannot, and should never hide the simple fact
from readers that at the core of Harlow’s‘modestly empirical’ approach l ie nuggets
n
Birkbeck College.
1 C. Harlow, Accountability i nt he European Union (Oxford:Hart, 2002). Pagereferences in the text are
to this book, referred to as Accountability.
rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2004
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2004) 67(1) MLR 12 4^138
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