Justifying The European Communityas A Technocratic Apparatus?: A Critical Re-evaluation Of The Regulatory Model İn A Weberian Light
Teknokratik Bir Aygıt Olarak Avrupa Topluluğu: Weber’ci Bir Bakışla Düzenleyici Model ÜzerineEleştirel Bir Değerlendirme
Melike AKKARACA KÖSE
This article discusses changing nature of the Community authority and emerging legitimacy problems in the course of the completion of the single market. It analyses the transformation of the European Community into a more bureaucratic and technocratic authority since the Single European Act, in the light of regulatory model developed by Majone. By adopting a Weberian approach, this work attempts to understand the legitimacy crises of the European Community through critical evaluations of Majone’s regulatory model.
Single European Act, the European Community, Max Weber, Majone, Regulatory Model, Legitimacy.
Bu makale Avrupa Topluluğunun 1980’lerin ortalarından itibaren tek pazarı tamamlama çabalarını, Topluluğun iktidarındaki değişimler ve ortaya çıkan meşruluk problemleri açısından tartışmaktadır. Avrupa Tek Senedi ile Avrupa Topluluğu’nun giderek daha bürokratik ve teknokratik bir iktidara dönüşümünü önce Majone’un düzenleyici kuramı açısından incelemekte, daha sonra bürokrasi ve meşruluk sorunsalına ilişkin Max Weber’in yaklaşımları yardımı ile düzenleyici modelin eleştirisi ışığında Avrupa Topluluğu’nun içine düştüğü meşruluk krizini açıklamaya çalışmaktadır.
Tek Avrupa Senedi, Avrupa Topluluğu, Max Weber, Majone, Düzenleyici Model, Meşruluk.
Introduction
In the 1980s, the European Community (from now on, the EC) was about to make the first major revision to the Rome Treaty. The main aim of this reform effort was to add new momentum to the process of European construction so as to complete the internal market. The Single European Act (the SEA) signed in 1986 accomplished the transformation of the Common Market into a single market in 1993, by creating new Community competencies and reforming the institutions. But liberalization of European market was accompanied paradoxically by a rise of bureaucratic power at supranational level and a significant increase in supranational legislation regulating many areas at national level.
Regulatory model developed by Majone and adapted to the EC is an attempt to explain expanding powers of the Community and to justify empowerment of supranational bureaucracy in the 80s and 90s. A new theory of legitimacy with a special emphasis on technocratic rationality was needed because there was an expansion and deepening in the nature of the Community activities, from the realm of negative economic integration into the areas such as environmental and consumer protection, and health and safety issues. The single market program had just contributed more to the gradual Europeanization of regulatory policies. It has also become apparent that – unlike the mere removal of trade barriers –managing a single market entails a degree of positive action that does not always fit within the neat categories inherited from the past. In one sense, the Community was experiencing just an extension of the executive-technocratic governance that has characterized the development of the modern administrative state at the national level over the course of the twentieth century, due to the growing complexity of policy problems requiring delegation of power to committees and independent agencies. In this sense, regulatory model of Majone may be read as an attempt to legitimize the supranational administrative authority at the Community level growing in a similar way to the development of the modern administrative state at the national level since 1920s and to the development of modern bureaucracy together with system of capitalism two centuries ago. Therefore, a well-known critique of bureaucracy at the age of modernization, namely Max Weber, may serve great help to evaluate this theory and the legitimacy problem of the EC in general at those times.
The article first starts with a brief discussion of the Single European Act. It summarizes the conditions and motives which lead the Member States to make concessions for reaching the objective of single market and it shortly discusses the consequences of the SEA. In the following part, the regulatory model as developed by Majone is explicated theoretically and how this model adapted to the Community is studied.Lastly, Weber’s theory is utilized to critically evaluate the regulatory model and its capacity to justify the Community’s rapidly extending powers.
