EUROPEANIZATION AND DE‐EUROPEANIZATION IN UK EMPLOYMENT POLICY: CHANGING GOVERNMENTS AND SHIFTING AGENDAS
| Author | PAUL COPELAND |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12283 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12283
EUROPEANIZATION AND DE-EUROPEANIZATION
IN UK EMPLOYMENT POLICY: CHANGING
GOVERNMENTS AND SHIFTING AGENDAS
PAUL COPELAND
This article analyses the UK’s engagement with, and the subsequent impact of, the European
Employment Strategy (EES). In doing so, it provides an example of the process of Europeanization
under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in a Eurosceptic centralized polity. Under New
Labour (1997–2010) the UK actively engaged to upload its preferences to the European political
arena. At the national level, the UK experienced a process of Europeanization that was most evident
in the cognitive and procedural dimensions. By contrast, during the coalition government the UK
strategically withdrew from the EU governance process and reversed the procedural and cognitive
shifts that had occurred under its predecessor. During the coalition government the UK therefore
experienced a process of de-Europeanization. The ndings of the article highlight the limitations of
OMC-inspired Europeanization in a setting such as the UK.
INTRODUCTION
The Europeanization of employment policies has been examined in the context of the
European Employment Strategy (EES), which utilizes the EU’s Open Method of Coordi-
nation (OMC) (Büchs 2007; Heidenreich and Zetlin 2009). This legally non-binding mode
of governance involves the establishing of EU guidelines, annual member state report-
ing of progress, and the issuing of Country Specic Recommendations in areas of policy
weakness. Since the OMC is a more voluntary form of governance, adaptational pressure
is not an important factor driving the process of Europeanization, as there are few tangi-
ble EU pressures (López-Santana 2009, p. 145). Changes at the member state level can be
explained by the ‘creative appropriation by domestic actors’ who advance their own goals
by embracing OMC concepts, categories and metrics, and hence ‘reinforce the discursive
legitimacy of common European objectives and policy approaches’ (Zeitlin 2009, p. 233).
Creative appropriation intersects with mediating factors, which also determine the degree
of change and include: multiple veto points; mediating formal institutions; political and
organizational culture; differential empowerment of actors; and learning (Graziano 2011;
Graziano and Vink 2013).
In this context government change is acknowledged as having an impact on the process
of Europeanization (Gwiazda 2011). A limitation of the current literature is the implicit
assumption that Europeanization is a continuous ‘positive’ process, but it has very lit-
tle to say when government change results in a de-prioritization of EU objectives at the
national level. This article analyses the process of Europeanization under such conditions
by focusing on the UK’s engagement with the EES from the New Labour governments
(1997–2010) through to the coalition government (2010–15). While New Labour had devel-
oped a broadly pro-EU position, the coalition government (2010–15) was less favourable,
as its majority partner was the Eurosceptic Conservative Party.These particular conditions
enable the analysis to explore how ‘sticky’ the process of Europeanization was under New
Labour.
Paul Copeland is at the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary,University of London, UK.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (1124–1139)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
UK EMPLOYMENT POLICY AND EUROPEANIZATION 1125
This is important in the context of the UK polity in which, despite a process of devolution
since the late 1990s, the UK remains a relatively centralized state whereby the devolved
administrations and regions are not in a position to be formally involved with policy mak-
ing at the national level (Büchs 2007, p. 64). Since the 1980s, social partner involvement in
policy-making has focused on the local and workplace levels rather than the national level;
it is also more voluntary than in other northern European countries. The UK polity there-
fore provides a limited number of veto points during the engagement with, and imple-
mentation of, EU policy. It also provides very few avenues for actors to strategically use
the OMC to inuence national policy decisions. The latter is also important in the context
of the UK’s Eurosceptic tradition and the limitations of using ‘Europe’ to justify domes-
tic policy reforms (Hopkin and Van Wijnbergen 2011). The article argues that during the
Blair and Brown administrations, UK engagement resulted in a Europeanization effect in
employment policy via some procedural and cognitive shifts. In contrast, during the coali-
tion government the UK disengaged and experienced a process of de-Europeanization.
This article proceeds as follows. The rst section analyses the existing Europeanization
literature on the OMC, denes de-Europeanization, identies a framework through which
to analyse impact at the member state level, and discusses the methodology adopted. The
second and third sections analyse the impact of the EES during the New Labour govern-
ments and the coalition government. The article concludes with some reections on the
ndings of the research, notably the limitations of cognitive and procedural Europeaniza-
tion in a Eurosceptic centralized polity.
EUROPEANIZATION AND DE-EUROPEANIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE
OPEN METHOD OF COORDINATION
Given the voluntary nature of the OMC, programmatic shifts at the national level, that is
changes to policies and programmes such as new legislation or regulations, remain rel-
atively small. Research therefore moves beyond, but includes, a focus on programmatic
shifts, the aim being to unpack the complex direct and indirect effects of the OMC in the
broadest possible sense. Analysing the impact of the EES requires research to conceive
Europeanization through a number of different variables. Agenda shifts referto the ability
of the OMC to place new issues on a national political agenda, or to reinforce their position
within the agenda hierarchy (Barceviˇ
cius et al. 2014, p. 11). Procedural shifts focus on the
changes in governance and policy-making arrangements, such as the need to strengthen
the horizontal integration of interdependent policy elds, the creation of new governance
bodies, the creation or reinforcement of consultative and participatory structures, or closer
cooperation between national and regional/local administrations through the creation
of new formal coordination bodies and inter-ministerial working groups (Zeitlin 2005;
Hamel and Vanhercke 2009).
Cognitive shifts refer to changes that occur within the mental frameworks of domestic
political actors. The OMC has helped to reframe national policy thinking by incorporating
EU concepts and categories into domestic debates; exposing domestic actors to new pol-
icy approaches, often inspired by foreign examples; and questioning established domestic
policy assumptions and programmes (Zeitlin 2005). On a second level, the participation
of national actors in the OMC can result in the internalization of common discursive con-
ventions and behavioural norms. The construction and diffusion of EU ideas, and the
socialization provided by EU institutions and policies, have constituted a motor of change
in their own right (Graziano and Vink 2013).
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (1124–1139)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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