ABSTRACT
Nine years after its annunciation at the March 2000 Lisbon Summit as a broadly applicable new governance instrument for the EU, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) remains the subject of intense controversy among academics and policy practitioners alike. Much of this controversy revolves around normative questions concerning the OMC’s democratic legitimacy and its implications for European integration (Zeitlin 2005a, 2005c). But the most widespread and persistent critique of the OMC remains its limited practical effectiveness and alleged lack of impact on policy reforms in Member States. Despite the explosion of research on the OMC in recent years,2 much of the debate over its effectiveness continues to suffer from a serious empirical deficit, relying on a limited range of often outdated evidence onto which authors project their own theoretical and normative assumptions.3
Thus many of the most critical assessments of the OMC are not based on original, first-hand research on the method in action (e.g. Radaelli 2003; Moravcsik 2005; Citi and Rhodes 2007; Hatzopolous 2007).4 The 2004-5 mid-term review of the Lisbon Strategy, which reached harsh conclusions on the ineffectiveness of the OMC in promoting domestic reforms in EU Member States, was also a surprisingly non-evidence-based process. Thus the Report of the 2004 High Level Group chaired by Wim Kok did not systematically review the available evidence on the performance of OMC processes, such as the extensive mid-term review of the EES in 2002, or the report of the 2003 Employment Task Force (also chaired by Kok), both of which reached more positive assessments. Similarly, the European Commission’s (2005) Lisbon New Start communication appears to have neglected both internal and external evidence on the successes and failures of different OMC processes, such as an independent evaluation of the eEurope programme and other information society initiatives, which concluded that the OMC in these areas ‘cannot yet be said to be a success or failure’, because it ‘simply has not been fully implemented’ (Tavistock Institute et al. 2005). Empirical assessment of the OMC is extremely challenging, for a number
of interrelated reasons. These include: the variety of distinct processes with
different institutional characteristics subsumed under the OMC rubric; their relative newness, and the frequency of procedural changes to even the most highly institutionalized processes such as those for employment and social inclusion; and the horizontal and vertical complexity of OMC processes, which typically cut across sectoral policy domains and involve multiple levels of governance (European, national, subnational) in 27 Member States (15 before 2004). Most fundamental, however, are the methodological difficulties of assessing the causal impact of an iterative process based on collaboration between EU institutions and Member States, without legally binding sanctions. Thus, Member State representatives continuously participate in the definition of OMC objectives, guidelines, targets, and indicators, allowing ‘uploading’ of domestic concepts and preferences, which blurs the causal boundary between the national and European levels. OMC processes do not necessarily result in new legislation or justiciable obligations, rendering the concept of Member State ‘compliance’ problematic. Member States may often have political reasons for playing up or down OMC influences on domestic policy, from strategies of blame avoidance and credit claiming at home, to self-presentation as a ‘good European’ or a defender of the national interest in Brussels. Nor is it easy to isolate the influence of the OMC on national policy from those of other EU-level processes (such as the Stability and Growth Pact, European Court decisions, or the structural funds), other international organizations (such as the OECD, the World Bank, or the IMF), and domestic political changes (such as shifts in government). In each of these respects, the OMC encapsulates in extreme form the broader methodological problems involved in studying the impact of ‘Europeanization’ on domestic policy and politics.5
