The EU ‘partnership principle’: still a sustainable governance device across multiple administrative arenas?
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| Author | Michael W. Bauer |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00328 |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
THE EU ‘PARTNERSHIP PRINCIPLE’: STILL A
SUSTAINABLE GOVERNANCE DEVICE
ACROSS MULTIPLE ADMINISTRATIVE
ARENAS?
MICHAEL W. BAUER
This article analyses the ‘partnership principle’ – which is of particular importance
for multilevel governance interpretations of European integration – as it evolved in
EU regional policy-making. After sketching in the crucial analytical lines of the
current debate on ‘partnership’ on the example of the implementation of the EU
structural policy in Germany, I examine how it functions. A closer look at two
important sub-fields of ‘partnership’ – ‘societal participation’ and ‘policy evalu-
ation’ – reveals that theoretical expectations regarding its transforming potential, in
terms of pitting supranational and subnational actors against central state authority
and thereby circumventing the latter, have not materialized. On the contrary,
recently rising resentment and out-and-out conflict between the European Com-
mission and regional authorities so far point to theoretically unexpected limitations
of ‘partnership’, calling into question whether it is an appropriate and sustainable
inter-administrative co-ordination device – at least when viewed from the perspec-
tive of the EU multilevel governance thesis. In the light of the reported insights
into the practice of ‘partnership’, this ‘new mode of EU governance’ thus needs to
be reassessed.
INTRODUCTION
This article analyses the ‘partnership principle’ as it organizes actor
relationships across administrative arenas in EU policy-making. The parti-
cular focus lies on the implementation of EU structural policy in Germany.
In the light of more than 12 years of operation, the question raised is
whether ‘partnership’ has indeed transformed administrative interaction as
expected by the advocates of the multilevel governance thesis.
The article starts by pointing to the tremendous success of the ‘partner-
ship principle’ as it is now applied in an increasing number of EU policy
areas. It is then shown how the partnership principle has been welcomed
among integration scholars and has been taken as empirical evidence that
can be used to advance the multilevel governance explanation of day-to-
day policy making in the European Union. Most scholars have focused on
the partnership’s potential for regional mobilization and subsequently on
the distributional conflict between the Commission and member states’
Michael W. Bauer is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Project Group on Common Goods,
Bonn.
Public Administration Vol. 80 No. 4, 2002 (769–789)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
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770 MICHAEL W. BAUER
sub-national authorities on the one hand, and member state national auth-
orities on the other. However, the dominance of that perspective may have
prevented more scrupulous empirical investigation into whether the
relationship between sub-national administrative authorities and the Com-
mission is indeed always one of ‘natural allies’. Put differently, what does
it mean for the multilevel governance interpretation of EU policy making
in general and for the advocacy of partnership as a core principle of the
Commission’s blueprint for the future of ‘European Governance’in parti-
cular, if distributional conflict and outright resistance in the application of
this governance device is actually rising?
In order to approach such questions, an empirical investigation into the
implementation of structural funds in Germany is undertaken. Can we
detect distributional conflicts between the Commission and sub-national
actors and do they have as important an effect on outcomes as do conflicts
between the Commission and central member state authorities? Further-
more, can EU multilevel governance approaches appropriately account for
such supranational-regional conflict or has the enthusiasm for the central-
state circumventing capacity (and thus the supposed pro-integrationist
potential) of EU multilevel policy making, blinded them to possible disinte-
grative effects?
The hypothesis thus is that the presuppositions about EU governance
theory have diverted European integration scholars’attention from empiri-
cal evidence regarding disturbing counter-productive actor interaction in
the practice of structural fund policy making. The main conclusion of this
article is that such bias indeed exists and has to be corrected if a realistic
understanding of the possibilities and limits of the partnership mode is to
be reached.
PARTNERSHIP ON THE RISE
Forms of ‘partnership’as devices to interlock layers of government and
organized social interests across multiple arenas in order to prepare and
implement supranational policies, have emerged as ubiquitous modes of
co-operative governance in the European Union (Hooghe 1996a, b; Kohler-
Koch 1998b; Scott 1998; He
´ritier 1999, 2001). Originating from the 1988
reform of the structural funds, derivates of ‘partnership’have, for example,
spread quickly to areas as diverse as research and development, social pol-
icy and environmental policy.
In the 1990s, social scientists analysed ‘partnership’in terms of its poten-
tial to change territorial politics, patterns of interest intermediation and
national regional development approaches –to name but a few areas. The
great appeal of ‘partnership’seemed to be at least partly due to the fact
that it offered an empirical testing ground for competing sets of hypotheses
derived from various theoretical corners of the discipline.
More precisely, ‘partnership’came to be taken as the tangible expression
of a trend that was seen as transforming European Union politics into a
system of multilevel governance (Allen 2000, p. 259). It was hoped that it
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
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