Creeping Competence: The Expanding Agenda of the European Community

TLDR

Lowi’s classification of regulatory, redistributive, and distributive policies is adapted to the European Community, showing that each type operates in a distinct arena with different actors, decision rules, and bargaining patterns. The article seeks to explain how the European Community’s policy agenda has expanded into new areas such as the environment, regional development, and research and technology, and why policy development varies across these areas. The authors examine these three patterns of task expansion through an empirical study of policy development across six policy areas. They find that regulatory policies arise from functional spillover of the Internal Market, redistributive policies function as side‑payments in larger intergovernmental bargains, and distributive policies result from Commission entrepreneurship and log‑rolling bargaining.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article attempts to explain the expansion of the European Community (EC) policy agenda to new policy areas such as the environment, regional development and research and technological development, and the variations in policy development from one area to another. Lowi's classification of policy types-regulatory, redistributive and distributive-is adapted for use in the EC context. Each policy type, it is argued, deals with a distinct arena featuring different actors, different institutional decision rules, and different types of Council bargaining, and each therefore corresponds to a distinctive pattern of task expansion. Thus, regulatory policies can be explained in terms of functional spillover from the Internal Market, while redistributive policies can be understood as side-payments in larger intergovernmental bargains, and distributive policies are the result of the Commission's policy entrepreneurship and log-rolling Council bargaining. These three patterns of task expansion are examined in an empirical study of policy development across six areas.