This paper seeks to contextualize the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) and
enrich our understanding of it by submitting constructivist insights to its policy
assessment with a focus on the Employment Strategy (EES). The most
developed and longest-standing OMC policy area, employment provides fertile
ground for the assessment of a rapidly expanding theoretical perspective in IR
and European integration applied to a growing policy process. Normative
considerations as to the essence of the EU and its future trajectory were highly
influential in the process of launching the OMC.
The paper provides a framework of integration theory and highlights the particular
contribution that the ‘thin’ variant of constructivism has made in understanding
different aspects of EU policy and politics. In the next section, the OMC is
discussed and its core characteristics identified. I claim that most of the OMC’s
core elements are directly linked to constructivist assumptions about policy
change. The paper identifies three of those, namely policy discourse, learning
and participation in policy-making. I subject those to an empirical and theoretical
assessment by use of the relevant literature. Concluding that the record shows
such mechanisms to be hardly present in the Employment Policy OMC, I argue
that an institutionalist reading of OMC provides a credible alternative by focusing
on power resources, preferences and strategies available to core OMC actors,
namely member states and the Commission. The paper concludes with a twofold
argument: firstly, constructivist hopes on OMC are, at least in the current context,
ill-founded. Secondly, while the OMC retains a number of advantages, practical
policy suggestions that will enhance its appeal to policy-makers and the public
alike are due before it becomes a credible policy option
