Policy Formulation, Implementation and Feedback in EU Merger Control



Introduction and Objectives

Research within the rubric of ‘EU policy-making’ has become a major focus for
students of comparative European politics over the last decade. Using Hix’s (1999, 2005)
classification, five main strands of EU policies have been analysed - regulatory,
redistributive, economic and monetary, internal security, and foreign policies. One may
argue that research has concentrated on the first three of these areas because
“approximately 80 percent of all social, economic and environmental regulation
applicable in the member states is adopted through the EU policy process” (Hix 1999,
211). The early 1990s thus saw scholars, guided by the concepts of pluralism,
corporatism, and elitism, paying more attention to interest groups’ role in the policy
process. Building on the American based literature by those such as Dahl (1961, 1982),
Lindblom (1977), and later Schlozman and Tierney (1986), scholars such as Gardner
(1991), Greenwood
et al. (1992), Mazey and Richardson (1993), Pedler and Schendelen
(1994) and Crouch and Menon (1997) made insights into how non-state actors sought to
influence EU integration by identifying patterns of private interest involvement in the
policy process. More recently, as discussed by Peterson (1995) and seen in the work of
Daugbjerg (1999), the ‘policy network’ approach, emerging as an alternative to pluralist
and corporatist analyses, is enjoying increasing popularity amongst EU policy scholars.

The term ‘policy network’ has its roots in Bently’s (1967) and Truman’s (1971)
work that “pointed to the existence of horizontal relations between government,
administration and organized interests” (Kenis and Schneider 1991, 27). Throughout the
1970s, the network approach evolved into different typologies and was applied to a
myriad of policies. As a response to critics highlighting the approach’s weak theoretical
underpinning, Benson (1982) defined networks as “a complex of organizations
connected... by resource dependencies and distinguished from each other by breaks in
structure(s)... ” Guided by Benson’s analysis, Jordan and Richardson (1982), and
Rhodes (1986, 1988) further clarified characteristics of networks, emphasizing the
interdependencies and the endurance of the relationship between the actors. However,
their work raised some confusion given synonymous usage of the concept of ‘network’
and ‘community.’ As a remedy, although perhaps confounding the issue even more,
Wilks and Wright (1987)2 differentiated between the types of actors involved in the



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