POLITICS VERSUS SCIENCE: APPORTIONING ... - Buffalo State

Wessels (1997, 36) attributes the proliferation of networks to the Commission’s
failure to institute EU-wide corporatism, “The problem is thus not that the Brussels arena
is a ‘closed shop,’ but that the new political space in which national and European
institutions and groups compete is composed of complex and differentiated networks.”
In an advisory (information) agency outside the comitology web, Dehoussee
(1997, 247) sees the spate of agency creation “as part of an ongoing process of the
deepening of European Community regulatory inventions.” Although the functions of
the 15 agencies differ, some are informational, others executive, one regulatory (Kreher
1997, 238), they share the mandate of establishing and maintaining policy networks
among National Authorities, interests, and experts.
Dehousse (1997, 259) reminds us that networks are the inevitable and paradoxical
result of the EU’s need to “expand the scope of its influence in the administrative
sphere…(while) greater centralization is politically inconceivable.” 24 But he adds:
One may, of course, wonder how durable such a solution will be. The network
approach certainly responds to important concerns, both political and functional,
as the relevant expertise is generally at the national level. Like an institution,
regulatory networks are likely to be subjected to contradictory pressures. Yet
because they are loosely structured, (emphasis added) they may find it more
difficult to give a coherent answer.
Cosmopolitanism—the influential Habermas brand of postnationalism—predicts a
diminishing role for states, pointing to the power international organizations now wield in
setting standards for economic relations, in the respect and protection of human rights,
democracy, and the rule of law. Europeans are weltbürger [world citizens] (Gottdiener,
24 See Majone’s (1996a & b, 1999, 2000) earlier work in which he is favorable toward EU regulatory
agencies, comparing the EU’s current concerns with those that led to the American administrative response
of executive agencies with legislative oversight as the solution to market failure (rather than the European
path of nationalization).
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