Getting into the Machine Room: New Institutional Leadership, Crisis and Post Crisis I

Abstract

This panel explores new forms of institutional leadership, moving beyond the classic notion of institutions acting as ‘engines’ or ‘entrepreneurs’. We aim to shed light on how the EU institutions have been – and still are - adapting to a ‘constraining’ environment, in which the key issues on the agenda are highly salient in many member states, because they deal with ‘core state powers’. There have been many scholarly assessments of the ‘re-intergovernmentalisation’ of EU decision-making, specifically the rise of the European Council and the decline of the supranational institutions and the Community method. Much has been written also about the (generally limited) ability of individual presidents and their institutions to steer the decision making at the highest political levels. We intend to move beyond such competitive judgments and images of decline. This panel contributes to the debate on the nature of institutional leadership and accompanying resources in today’s political environment. The papers are invited to address: -1- the benchmark (of supranational entrepreneurship) -2- the type(s) of leadership provided by different institutions (e.g. transformative vs. transactional) and -3- the level of the decision-making at which this leadership is provided. With regard to the latter, we make a distinction between the control room (the European Council and Sherpa level) and the machine room (the ordinary legislative levels within Council, Commission, EP including the committee and working party level). Moreover, we encourage contributors to look beyond individual institutions, to determine the joint impact of inter-institutional cooperation, across the intergovernmental-supranational divide. We invited empirical contributions, which can apply a variety of methodologies across a broad range of issues (i.e. moving beyond the crises, to new forms of leadership that might not be captured by traditional legal, institutional, and political approaches).

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