Hello, welcome back and nice to see you again. You've now researched the implementation of European policy in your vicinity. Or, if you're based outside European Union, the implementation of a similar national policy. You have assessed how successful this policy is and discussed all the possible cause for success or failure. With that assessment in hand, how can policymaking be redesigned so that citizens would experience better outcomes? The search for a better policymaking is a core theme in the policy literature. Over the last years, range of ideas have been proposed, which seemed to cluster into different perspectives, to top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Each put different emphasis on important features of the policy process. The top-down perspective on policymaking is a classical one, which follows a strong principal-agent perspective. It emphasizes lawmakers who both decide on common policy and indicate a way it needs to be implemented. This perspective seems to presume that lawmakers know how to best implement policy, while agency costs are rather limited. Key to this perspective is compliance. Member states, including the implementing authorities, need to comply with the requirements of the centrally determined common policy. This approach seems to ignore the existence of substantial agency cost. Which provide individual member states as well as national implementing organizations the possibility of deviating from European policy. Goals may not be clear and instruments may fail to work. Empirical research on transposition and implementation provides numerous examples of why compliance is problematic. The bottom-up perspective emphasizes the political and cognitive limitations of lawmakers. Who may not be able to fully understand the complexity of post-implementation. Moreover, information about implementation is costly if available at all. This requires that lawmakers rely on the knowledge and experience of the decentralized actors who implement policy. Key to this perspective is absorption and exchange. Lawmakers need absorptive views of these decentralized actors. And, in exchange, provide them ownership of policy, allowing them to make changes. Unfortunately, this approach seems to ignore the need for coordination. That is the making of a common policy that is similar in different areas. This is also the reason for making European policy in the first place. By only absorbing the views from implementing actors, lawmakers may not be able to collectively agree on policy. Common policy in the EU would narrow down the number of alternatives to one. Both positions illustrate the classical dilemma of the implementation literature. The tension between the government-based top-down perspective and the governance-driven bottom-up perspective in which various actors exchange their views and experiences. In a recent communication, the European Commission seems to be quite aware of this dilemma. It emphasized that, and I quote, we should not impose policies. But prepare them inclusively based on the full transparency and engagement. Listening to the views of those affected by legislation so that it is easy to implement, end of quote. However, the Commission also points out that European political priorities drives its actions. Policymaking requires a mixture of both. How can we improve European policymaking? By balancing the lawmaker's responsibility for policy. And also trust the implementing actors? In the following lectures, we will focus on a number of ways to improve European policymaking. We start with the Commission's ambitious better regulation agenda. Which aims to improve European law making. And focuses on incorporating implementing issues in the making of new legislative proposals. The second topic will be the consultations and ex-ante and exposed evaluations that have become part of the preparatory process. For legislative acts, the European Commission needs to consult widely and include and appropriate the views of regional and local governments. The question arises as to who participates in these consultations? And what kind of information will be received? Also, how responsive is the European Commission? These consultations are closely connected to the ex-ante evaluations or impact assessments the European Commission makes in preparing for important legislative proposals. These impact assessments try to determine which goals should be set as part of a policy and how these goals can be realized. Ex-post evaluations differ and focus on actual goal achievements and the extent to which the means have contributed to this result. Based on the idea of the policy lifecycle, which we discussed in the first week, ex-post evaluations are seen as an important tool to close the circle between policy initiation and implementation. It would help to have accurate information about current implementation in order to further improve policy. The Commission and the European legislators use these results of evaluations in that way. The third topic is experimentation. With 28 member states or so, the EU is almost a perfect environment for experimentation. Unfortunately, this option is perhaps the least used. Since it requires more freedom for implementing authorities to try out new instruments and ways of working to realize specific policy goals. Since experimentation puts more emphasis on the bottom-up way of working, it also comes with the risk of less policy coordination and harmonization. Still, it might be helpful to first learn about the different ways in which policy can be implemented before deciding about some level of harmonization. The last topic refers to an ongoing discussion in the EU about subsidiarity and proportionality. These discussions about whether certain issues are best handled at the European level are as old as the Union itself. The Lisbon Treaty offers a number of official channels to raise subsidiarity concerns. National parliaments have an ex-ante check through the early warning mechanism or yellow card procedure. The Committee of the Regions has an ex-post check through bringing forward cases for annulment at the European court. How is the use of these instruments developing? In this lecture, we look to handle the topics that will be discussed on redesigning European policymaking. Still, the dilemma between top-down and bottom-up policymaking will continue to be our concern as we refer to the different levels of aggregation. It points at the trade off between the common ambition of policy coordination and the individual needs for a leeway on implementation.
