Carol Harlow and Richard Rawlings, Process and Procedure in EU Administration, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014, 352 pp, pb £35.00.
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12163 |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| Author | Richard Craven |
Reviews
to a set of shared normative, political and theoretical commitments of its time’;
that was ‘embedded within a thick set of other institutional norms, practices and
understandings’; and that was ‘the product of a particular philosophy regarding
the organisation of social and economic relations in market-based economies’
(‘The Right to Work and Labour Market Flexibility: Labour Market Gov-
ernance Norms in the Inter national Order’ (315)). Consequently, she says,
‘the meaning of the right to work is subject to change and reinvention as the
background normative and intellectual structure in which it is situated shifts’
(316). Tracing these shifts through the era of the postwar settlement, that of
the Washington consensus, and the current period of economic crisis, Rittich
underlines the contingency, the fragility of RTW, and its incapacity (in her
words) to ‘do the heavy lifting’:
[T]he right to work hangs on the vision of political economy that informs it, the
theoretical paradigm through which it is refracted, the institutional structure that
gives it life, and the knowledge claims through which it operates (334).
This succinct and unsettling conclusion to Rittich’s argument applies of course
not just to RTW but to labour law in general. It explains, perhaps, the recent
outpouring of books and articles predicting, proclaiming or mourning ‘the
death of labour law’. And more generally, it constitutes a challenge to all
believers in the efficacy of rights discourse and the transformative power of law.
Dr Mantouvalou deserves our appreciation for posing a difficult question that
has clearly both inspired her contributors and brought her readers face-to-face
with issues of transcendent importance.
H. W. Arthurs∗
Carol Harlow and Richard Rawlings,Process and Procedure in EU Administra-
tion, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014, 352pp, pb £35.00.
In Process and Procedure in EU Administration, Harlow and Rawlings aim to ex-
hibit a variety of the processes and procedures found in EU administrative law.
In doing so they seek to examine how these procedures, each with different
purposes and workings, have developed against the backdrop of a constantly
shifting EU and to emphasise the importance of these procedures to the EU
project. The authors are also concerned with the actors engaged in admin-
istrative procedures. The European Commission, the EU’s core executive, is
unavoidably a dominant figure (the evolution of this institution is specifically
detailed in the opening chapter), as it would be in any consideration of EU
administration. However, Harlow and Rawlings highlight the fragmentation
of EU governance (discussed in chapter one: ‘A Fragmented Framework’).
The analysis aims to reflect the operations of various actors, along with the
∗York University, Toronto.
C2016The Authors. The Modern Law Review C2016 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2016) 79(1) MLR 183–206 185
bs_bs_banner
To continue reading
Request your trial