Original scientific paper
COMMON COHESION POLICY AND MULTILEVEL DECISION-MAKING IN EUROPEAN UNION
Damjan Lajh
; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
One of the most significant results of European convergence is an
increase in the number of channels for the “European” policy activities
of subnational actors. These actors are no longer limited to bilateral
political relations and national i.e. state actors, but are to cooperate
and communicate with different actors in different arenas of decision-
making and make use of various channels of influencing the
European policy process. The question of subnational mobilization
has become extremely significant in the theory of European convergence, particularly following the major reform of the EU cohesion policy of 1988 and the introduction of the partnership principle.
In that sense, the mobilization of subnational actors is closely linked to the evolution of the EU cohesion policy. It should be noted that despite this, the EU cohesion policy is primarily the essential catalyst of subnational mobilization and thus not “exclusively” linked to the
public policy realm; it has increasingly become a prominent feature
of other public-policy areas. And finally, hand in hand with the
elaboration of the common cohesion policy (related to subnational
mobilization) the concept of the so-called multilevel governance was
formulated in the context of the European integration, in the sense of
identifying the environment in which the processes of the formation
and the implementation of common European policies are today taking place.
Keywords
EU; multy-level governance; public policy
Hrčak ID:
20372
URI
Publication date:
16.2.2007.
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