Vol. 5 (2010) > lreg-2010-1

Living Rev. Euro. Gov. 5 (2010), 1

Affiliation(s)

¹ Technische Universität Darmstadt, Institute for Political Science, Residenzschloss, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany
² University of Hagen, Department of Political Science, State and Government, Universitätsstrasse 41, 58084 Hagen, Germany

Article Abstract

From the outset, European integration was about the transfer of powers from the national to the European level, which evolved as explicit bargaining among governments or as an incremental drift. This process was reframed with the competence issue entering the agenda of constitutional policy. It now concerns the shape of the European multilevel polity as a whole, in particular the way in which powers are allocated, delimited and linked between the different levels. This Living Review article summarises research on the relations between the EU and the national and sub-national levels of the member states, in particular on the evolution and division of competences in a multilevel political system. It provides an overview on normative reasonings on an appropriate allocation of competences, empirical theories explaining effective structures of powers and empirical research. The article is structured as follows: First, normative theories of a European federation are discussed. Section 2 deals with legal and political concepts of federalism and presents approaches of the economic theory of federalism in the context of the European polity. These normative considerations conclude with a discussion of the subsidiarity principle and the constitutional allocation of competences in the European Treaties. Section 3 covers the empirical issue of how to explain the actual allocation of competences (scope and type) between levels. Integration theories are presented here in so far as they explain the transfer of competence from the national to the European level or the limits of this centralistic dynamics. Normative and empirical theories indeed provide some general guidelines for evaluation and explanations of the evolution of competences in the EU, but they both contradict the assumption of a separation of power. The article therefore concludes that politics and policy-making in the EU have to be regarded as multilevel governance (Section 4). The main theoretical approaches and results from empirical research on European multilevel governance are summarised before we sketch suggestions for further discussion and research in the field (Section 5).

Keywords: integration theory, subsidiarity, multilevel governance, fiscal federalism, competences, Europeanization, federalism

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Article Citation

Since a Living Reviews in European Governance article may evolve over time, please cite the access <date>, which uniquely identifies the version of the article you are referring to:

Arthur Benz and Christina Zimmer,
"The EU's competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system",
Living Rev. Euro. Gov. 5,  (2010),  1. URL (cited on <date>):
www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2010-1

Article History

ORIGINAL	www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-3
Title	The EU’s competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system
Author	Arthur Benz / Christina Zimmer
Date	accepted 3 March 2008, published 30 June 2008
UPDATE	www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2010-1
Title	The EU's competences: The 'vertical' perspective on the multilevel system
Author	Arthur Benz / Christina Zimmer
Date	accepted 5 April 2010, published 25 May 2010
Changes	All sections have been reviewed, edited and supplemented with additional references. More substantial changes and additions were made to Sections 2.2 (Economic theory of federalism), 2.3 (Subsidiarity principle and constitutional delimitation of powers), 3.1 (Functionalist theories), 3.3 (Neo-institutionalist theories) and 3.4 (Policy- and actor-centred approaches). The list of references has been updated; 36 references have been added.
FAST-TRACK REVISION
Date	accepted 8 August 2012, published 24 August 2012
Changes	Revised some sections (primarily, 3.3, 3.5, 4, 5) and added 19 new references. For detailed description see here . RefDB records no longer cited by this article: Record 1389 Record 849 RefDB records now cited by this article: Record 1892 Record 1882 Record 1886 Record 1877 Record 1880 Record 1891 Record 1895 Record 1881 Record 1890 Record 1885 Record 1887 Record 1883 Record 1893 Record 1884 Record 1878 Record 1889 Record 1888 Record 1879 Record 1894