Advantages of a Polycentric Approach to Climate Change Policy

Lack of progress in global climate negotiations has led scholars to reconsider polycentric approaches to climate policy. Several examples of subglobal mechanisms to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions have been touted, but it remains unclear why they might achieve better climate outcomes than global negotiations alone. Decades of work conducted by researchers associated with the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University have emphasized two chief advantages of polycentric approaches over monocentric ones: they provide more opportunities for experimentation and learning to improve policies over time, and they increase communications and interactions — formal and informal, bilateral and multilateral — among parties to help build the mutual trust needed for increased cooperation. A wealth of theoretical, empirical and experimental evidence supports the polycentric approach

European integration assessed in the light of the 'rules vs. standards debate'

The interplay of various legal systems in the European Union (EU) has long triggered a debate on the tension between uniformity and diversity of Member States' (MS) laws. This debate takes place among European legal scholars and is also paralleled by economic scholars, e.g. in the ambit of the 'theory of federalism'. This paper takes an innovative perspective on the discrepancy between 'centralized' and 'decentralized' law-making in the EU by assessing it with the help of the rules versus standards debate. When should the EU legislator grant the national legislator leeway in the formulation of new laws and when should all be fixed ex ante at European level? The literature on the 'optimal shape of legal norms' shall be revisited in the light of law-making in the EU, centrally dealing with the question how much discretion shall be given to the national legislator; and under which circumstances. This paper enhances the established decisive factors for the choice of a rule or a standard in a national setting (complexity, volatility, judges' specialization and frequency of application) by two new crucial factors (switching costs and the benefit of uniformity in terms of information costs) in order to assess law-making policies at EU level

Telling stories about European Union Health Law: The emergence of a new field of law

The ideational narrative power of law has now solidified, and continues to solidify, ‘European Union health law’, into an entity with a distinctive legal identity. EU health law was previously seen as either non-existent, or so broad as to be meaningless, or as existing only in relations between EU law and health (the ‘and’ approach), or as consisting of a body of barely or loosely connected policy domains (the ‘patchwork’ approach). The process of bringing EU health law into being is a process of narration. The ways in which EU health law is narrated (and continues to be narrated) involve three main groups of actors: the legislature, courts and the academy

Introduction: The Evolution of EU Law (3rd edn)

This is the third edition of a work that first appeared in 1999. The inspiration and approach remain the same. It is for the contributors to consider how their particular subject has evolved over time, to analyse the principal themes, and to assess the legal and political forces that have shaped its development. This book is not, therefore, a text, and contributors have free rein to tell the story of the evolution of their chosen area as they think fit. A range of forces has shaped and continues to shape the evolution of EU law. The most obvious novelty of the first decade of the new millennium was Treaty reform, culminating in the Lisbon Treaty. The ensuing decade has been turbulent for the EU, as it has been beset by the financial crisis, the rule of law crisis, the pandemic, Brexit and problems concerning immigration. A number of important new chapters have been added to the book, including on the Rule of Law, Judicial Reform, Brexit, Constitutional and Legal Theory, Refugee and Asylum law, and Data Governance, while several chapters from the previous edition, such as the Legal Bases for EU Action, EU Enlargement, and the Regulation of Network Industries have, for a variety of reasons, not been included this time