IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v60y2022i2p374-390.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Back to the Future in EU Social Policy? Endogenous Critical Junctures and the Case of the European Pillar of Social Rights

Author

Listed:
  • Beatrice Carella
  • Paolo Graziano

Abstract

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights occurred at a phase of endogenous critical juncture for Social Europe. By analyzing the Pillar's formulation and adoption process, we investigate to what extent the European Commission used the involvement of civil society and policy responsiveness to foster change in the modes of governance and legitimize stronger intervention in the social sphere, by re‐launching the methods of coordination introduced in the 1990s. Methodologically, we rely on a content analysis of EU policy documents before and after the public consultations, a content analysis of over 60 position papers and on interviews with policy actors. We find that despite increased openness and responsiveness, the Pillar initiative did not allow to alter the predominance of ‘soft law’ routes and patterns of intergovernmentalism characterizing the governance of EU social policy, a result that further qualifies the conditions that lead (endogenous) critical junctures to generate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Beatrice Carella & Paolo Graziano, 2022. "Back to the Future in EU Social Policy? Endogenous Critical Junctures and the Case of the European Pillar of Social Rights," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 374-390, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:60:y:2022:i:2:p:374-390
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13236
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13236?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Copeland & Mary Daly, 2018. "The European Semester and EU Social Policy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(5), pages 1001-1018, July.
    2. Patrik Vesan & Francesco Corti, 2019. "New Tensions over Social Europe? The European Pillar of Social Rights and the Debate within the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(5), pages 977-994, September.
    3. Amandine Crespy & Georg Menz, 2015. "Commission Entrepreneurship and the Debasing of Social Europe Before and After the Eurocrisis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 753-768, July.
    4. Dür, Andreas & De Bièvre, Dirk, 2007. "The Question of Interest Group Influence," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(1), pages 1-12, May.
    5. Pierson, Paul, 2000. "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 251-267, June.
    6. Daniel Seikel, 2016. "Flexible Austerity and Supranational Autonomy. The Reformed Excessive Deficit Procedure and the Asymmetry between Liberalization and Social Regulation in the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1398-1416, November.
    7. James S. Mosher & David M. Trubek, 2003. "Alternative Approaches to Governance in the EU: EU Social Policy and the European Employment Strategy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 63-88, March.
    8. Christine Quittkat, 2011. "The European Commission's Online Consultations: A Success Story?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 653-674, May.
    9. Amandine Crespy & Georg Menz, 2015. "Commission Entrepreneurship and the Debasing of Social Europe Before and After the Eurocrisis," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/205514, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    10. Dimitris Tsarouhas, 2005. "European Integration and Path Dependence: Explaining the Evolution of EU Social Policy," European Political Economy Review, European Political Economy Infrastructure Consortium, vol. 3(Winter), pages 87-111.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valentin Marian Antohi & Romeo Victor Ionescu & Marius Sorin Dinca & Monica Laura Zlati & Costinela Fortea, 2023. "Dynamics of the Social Security Index in the Context of the Economic Crisis in Romania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-17, February.
    2. Paul Copeland, 2022. "The Juncker Commission as a Politicising Bricoleur and the Renewed Momentum in Social Europe," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(6), pages 1629-1644, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Copeland, 2022. "The Juncker Commission as a Politicising Bricoleur and the Renewed Momentum in Social Europe," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(6), pages 1629-1644, November.
    2. Mikkel Mailand, 2021. "Commission entrepreneurship and EU employment policy – The fate of a former darling," European Journal of Industrial Relations, , vol. 27(3), pages 249-267, September.
    3. Javier Bilbao-Ubillos, 2023. "The Social Dimension of the European Union: A Means to lock out Social Competition?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 267-281, January.
    4. Anna Elomäki & Johanna Kantola, 2020. "European Social Partners as Gender Equality Actors in EU Social and Economic Governance," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 999-1015, July.
    5. Alberto Arenal & Claudio Feijoo & Ana Moreno & Sergio Ramos & Cristina Armuña, 2021. "Entrepreneurship Policy Agenda in the European Union: A Text Mining Perspective," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(2), pages 243-271, March.
    6. Ana Paula Brandão & Isabel Camisão, 2022. "Playing the Market Card: The Commission's Strategy to Shape EU Cybersecurity Policy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(5), pages 1335-1355, September.
    7. Citi, Manuele & Rhodes, Martin, 2007. "New Modes of Governance in the EU: Common Objectives versus National Preferences," European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) 1, CONNEX and EUROGOV networks.
    8. Guglielmo Meardi, 2018. "Economic Integration and State Responses: Change in European Industrial Relations since Maastricht," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 631-655, September.
    9. Bernhard Zeilinger, 2021. "The European Commission as a Policy Entrepreneur under the European Semester," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 63-73.
    10. Volintiru Mihai, 2018. "The internalization context of private health service providers in Europe: Romanian market case study," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 1038-1047, May.
    11. Toni Haastrup & Heather Macrae & Annick Masselot & Alasdair Young & Milford Soko & Richard G. Whitman, 2022. "Editing ‘Europe’: Reflections from Inside, Outside and Beyond," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 853-866, July.
    12. Muireann O'Dwyer, 2022. "Gender and Crises in European Economic Governance: Is this Time Different?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 152-169, January.
    13. John Peterson, 2017. "Juncker's political European Commission and an EU in crisis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 349-367, March.
    14. Coban, Mehmet Kerem, 2020. "Diffuse interest groups and regulatory policy change: Financial consumer protection in Turkey," OSF Preprints f6t5y, Center for Open Science.
    15. Paul Copeland, 2023. "Poverty and social exclusion in the EU: third-order priorities, hybrid governance and the future potential of the field," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 29(2), pages 219-233, May.
    16. Wen Pan & Madeleine O. Hosli & Michaël Lantmeeters, 2023. "Historical institutionalism and policy coordination: origins of the European semester," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 141-167, April.
    17. Adina Akbik & Marta Migliorati, 2023. "Between Ideology and Nationality: Drivers of Legislative Oversight in the European Parliament's Economic Dialogues," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 1026-1046, July.
    18. Sandrino Smeets & Alenka Jaschke & Derek Beach, 2019. "The Role of the EU Institutions in Establishing the European Stability Mechanism: Institutional Leadership under a Veil of Intergovernmentalism," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 675-691, July.
    19. Paul Copeland, 2019. "Why Brexit Will Do Little to Change the Political Contours of the European Social Dimension," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(3), pages 30-39.
    20. Fu, Tong & Jian, Ze, 2020. "A developmental state: How to allocate electricity efficiently in a developing country," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:60:y:2022:i:2:p:374-390. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.