Institutional and Policy Analysis in the European Union: From the Treaty of Rome to the Present

Abstract

How did our knowledge of the institutions and policies of the European Union (EU) develop over the 50-year period since the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957? What have been the key contributions to institutional and policy analysis over this period? What have we learnt? These are the questions which are the concern of this chapter. In offering answers, I briefly explore the early literature on institutions and policy prior to 1970. I argue that it was approximately at that time, notably with the publication of Lindberg and Scheingold’s Europe’s Would-Be Polity (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970), that the study of the EU moved from the use of international relations paradigms towards a focus on policy-making. Secondly, therefore, I explore the policymaking literature and the institutional analysis that followed in the next two decades. The second key development in the literature, I argue, was the emergence in the 1990s of the governance ‘turn’ in EU studies. This period witnessed an explosion of studies on the EU’s institutions and policies. Comparative politics approaches emerged as a major reference point in studying EU institutions and policies.