Ideas, Interests, and Institutional Change: the European Commission Debates the Delegation Problem

The forthcoming Commission White Paper on Governance devotes a good deal of attention to the possibility of delegating rule-making powers to independent European agencies. The extensive debate stimulated by thepreparation of this document has revealed deep differences of opinion. The orthodox doctrine, stubbornlydefended by the Legal Service, holds that such delegation would upset the balance of power among ECinstitutions, reduce the Commission’s ability to fulfill its duties under the treaties, and ultimately undermine theconstitutional foundations of the Community. By contrast, the reformers maintain that the received view ondelegation is by now completely outdated, and that the principle of institutional balance should be interpreteddynamically. These officials work at the cutting edge of regulatory policy and hence are particularly concernedabout the loss of status and credibility of the Commission. A career in an independent European agency isviewed as a promising alternative. The discourse of both reformers and defenders of the status quo depends crucially on the concept ofinstitutional balance. I argue that this concept can be properly understood only in the context of the venerabletheory of mixed government. This suggests that the European Community is not so much sui generis as the latterdayversion of a pre-modern model of governance.ideas; national interest; common interest; institutions; Europeanization; Europeanization

International Economic Integration, National Autonomy, Transnational Democracy: An Impossible Trinity?

democracy; constitutional change; WTO; national interest; Nation-state; supranationalism

Choice Among Policy Instruments for Pollution Control

This paper discusses alternative approaches to the problem of pollution control, from the point of view of a closed model in which regulators, regulated, and other interest groups interact in a single decision structure. It is argued that policy instruments cannot be selected only, or even primarily, on the basis of their formal properties, for these allow a number of different, often conflicting institutional realizations. The crucial choices involve not the instruments themselves, but institutionally determined ways of operating them. But to discuss institutional choice adequately, the usual model in which people pursue their self-interest within exogenously determined rules must be extended to cover the determination of the rules themselves. The comparison between, say, an uncorrupted system of effluent charges, and regulatory machinery captured by special interests is then seen to be a specious one. Where effluent charges have been used, they have proved to be as subject to bargaining and as conditioned by considerations of political and administrative expediency as standards, licenses, and other regulatory measures

Technology Assessment in a Dialetic Key

Technology and institutions interact dialectically. Institutional factors affect the range of alternatives considered by innovators, the resolution of disputes over the consequences of innovation, and even the efficiency of technical projects. Thus, technological impacts are determined in the arena of institutional choice just as much as in the laboratory and on the drawing board. Examples from the fields of medical care, nuclear power generation, and broadcasting technology are used here to illustrate this interdependence. Dialectic thinking, in the Greek sense of a systematic critique of assumptions, arguments, and conclusions is necessary to counteract institutional and conceptual biases, and to support unconventional approaches. As the current interest in adversary proceedings and other dialectic modes of discourse shows, the narrow paradigm of decisionism is being replaced by quasi-jurisprudential methods for assessing the adequacy of arguments, the strength of evidence, and the intrinsic limitations of technical solutions

The Craft of Applied Systems Analysis

The central goal of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis is to apply the craft of systems analysis to important national and international problems. To support and improve this work, the Institute explores its philosophical and scientific foundations, as well as the lessons of practice. This paper focuses its attention on the central conceptual issues of the field: the scientific nature of applied systems analysis, the search for standards of quality for it, its relation to problem solving, the craft aspects of the work, and the relation between argument and conclusion. The author has contributed significantly to clarifying foundational conceptions of applied systems analysis in other papers as well. Of these contributions, two related to this paper deserve mention here: G. Majone and E.S. Quade, editors, Pitfalls of Analysis (London: Wiley, 1980), a volume in the International Series on Applied Systems Analysis; and G. Majone, "Policies as Theories," issued by IIASA as RR-80-17 (originally published in Omega, 8, 1980, pp. 151-162). Other papers dealing with the craft of systems analysis are in preparation

Standard Setting and the Theory of Institutional Choice

The first elements of a theory of closed behavioral systems, or, more specifically, of a theory of institutional choice, have emerged in the last ten or fifteen years. Buchanan and Tullock (1962), Buchanan and Tollison (1972), Olson (1965), Posner (1974), Goldberg (1974), may be mentioned among the major contributions to the theory. What is common to these different theorists, whose viewpoints arc certainly not homogeneous and whose policy conclusions are often contrasting, is their interest in studying the behavior of people who, in pursuing their own self-interest, try to influence the public choices of institutional constraints. These constraints, once adopted, apply to all members of the community or to well-defined sections of it. Institutional choice differs from the kind of choice situations traditionally considered in economics, since the consequences of the adoption of a given system of institutional constraints cannot be assessed in relation to a single decision, but must be evaluated with respect to streams of future decisions made by a variety of more or less autonomous agents

Scientific and Social Aspects of Systems Analysis: Proposal for a Conceptual Framework for the State-of-the-Art Series in Applied Systems Analysis

The author argues that the accomplishments, failures, and future prospects of systems analysis can be properly assessed only by taking into consideration the craft characteristics and the social aspects of analytic activity. This broader view of the analytic process will then be used to outline a conceptual framework from which the editorial program of IIASA's Survey Project can acquire direction and meaning