Jean Monnet LectureDr. Jens Henrik Haahrwww.jens-henrik-haahr.dk

Governmentalityand European Integration

The EU’s Lisbon Strategy

The Men in Black

”The Union has today set itself a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustain-able economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

Lisbon March 2000

http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/ec/00100-r1.en0.htm

The Open Method of Coordination

European Council

Commission

Member State

Member State

Member State

The Open Method of Coordination

• 1993-2000 (Lisbon Strategy)• Overall objectives at EU level• Quantitative objectives (measurable)• Decentral implementation• Systematic monitoring• Today: A very comprehensive system

The Open Method of Coordination

• Overall economic policy• Product markets• Social policy• Labour market policy• Education policy• Research + development• ICT / information society• Environment

Treaty Base

Specific Objectives

and Indicators

Peer review

Bench marking

Re commenda

tions

Relevant Council

formation

Participa-tion of social

partners BEPG Art. 99 Guidelines

and indica-tors

National Plans

Yes Yes EPC reporting to Ecofin

No

EES Art. 128- 130

Guidelines and indica-tors

National Action Plans and specific reviews

Yes Yes Employ-ment Committee

Social Partners

Social Inclusion Art. 136- 137

Objectives and indica-tors

National Action Plans

Yes No Social Protection Committee

Participa- tion of social actors and NGOs

Education Art. 149- 150

Objectives and some indicators

Only review of progress on indica-tors

Yes No Education, Youth and Culture

No

Information Society / eEurope

No Treaty base

Targetsand Indicators

Review of progress to targets

Yes No eEurope Steering group

No

OMC

Explanatory theories: Why did Lisbon / the OMC develop?

Institutions

Actors / interests

Ideas

OMC

Explanatory theories: Why did Lisbon / the OMC develop?

Liberal intergovernmentalism

Neofunctionalism

Rational institutionalism

Constructivism

OMC

Explanatory theories: What are the effects of Lisbon/ the OMC?

- Policy reforms

- othereffects

Explanatory factors: actors (interests), institutions, ideas

Theoretical approach, e.g. intergovernmentalism, institutionalism, construc-tivism

OMC

Governmentality and the OMC:

How?

Which techniques?

Which knowledge?

Which implications / consequences?

Empirical / descriptive?

• Yes, but in an ”experimental” way:

• Analyse arguments, strategies, techniques, tactics on their own premises

• Bring forward the identities, objectives, presuppositions, types of knowledge etc. upon which arguments, strategies and tactics rest

• Bracket ”what we already now”

Example”The European Union is confronted with a quantum shift resulting from globalisation and the challenges of a new knowledge-driven economy.

These changes are affecting every aspect of people’s lives and require a radical transformation of the European economy.

The Union must shape these changes in a manner consistent with its values and concepts of society and also with a view to the forthcoming enlargement”.

Lisbon Strategy

The problematization: Globalisation. A new knowledge-driven economy. Requires radical transformation.

The political imaginary: The world as a dangerous, competitive place, consisting of competing economies.

The taken-for-grantedness: There is a European economy. The Union has certain personal characteristics (can shape, can have values). There are European Union values. There are European ”concepts of society”.

= Point to Lisbon Strategy as en exercise of identity-formation

The ambition of governmentality-studies

• To denaturalize / destabilise the self-evident

• To make us more aware of the ”web of conceptions” that we are entangled in

• To open up new possibilities

Michel Foucault

”If what does philosophy today consist, if not in the endavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?”

“My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do”.

Example: The OMC - the method involves

”fixing guidelines for the Union combined with specific timetables for achieving the goals which they set…

establishing, where appropriate, quantitative and qualitative indicators and benchmarks against the best in the world … as a means of comparing best practice

translating these European guidelines into national and regional policies by setting specific targets and adopting measures…

periodic monitoring, evaluation and peer review organised as mutual learning processes”

(Lisbon Strategy)

A ”conventional” understanding

• Symbolic politics / much ado about nothing

• ”Fashion” for benchmarking

• Legitimacy crisis of EU

A governmentality-reading

• Government as strategic management

• ”Indirect” government – through monitoring

• Member States as agents who are capable of devicing strategies and achieving objectives

• Located in context of global competitiveness

A governmentality-reading

• Technologies of performance: The plural technologies of government that are designed to penetrate substantive domains of expertise and to subsume these domains to new formal calculative regimes.

• Technologies of agency: technologies of government that seek to enhance or deploy our possiblities of agency

• Forms of power that penetrate “advanced liberalism” – and now also the EU it seems

”Government” in governmentality studies

“The ‘conduct of conduct’: Any more or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by a multiplicity of authorities and agencies, employing a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge, that seeks to shape conduct by working through our desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs, for definite but shifting ends and with a diverse set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and outcomes"

”Government” in governmentality studies

“The ‘conduct of conduct’: Any more or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by a multiplicity of authorities and agencies, employing a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge, that seeks to shape conduct by working through our desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs, for definite but shifting ends and with a diverse set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and outcomes"

”Government” in governmentality studies

• A strategy of “bracketing”: Any firm pre-conception of the character of power and the character of rationality is put aside.

• Instead an ”open” analysis: What are the forms of power and rationality in the given historical, institional etc. context?

OMC ExampleSummary of the Commission’s assessment of progress made in relation to the countries specific recommendations within the 2002 Broad Economic Policy Guidelines

Public finances Labour markets Product markets

Belgium some some someDenmark good some goodGermany limited limited someGreece some some someSpain some some someFrance limited some someIreland some some someItaly limited some someLuxembourg some some limitedNetherlands some some someAustria limited limited somePortugal some some someFinland some some limitedSweden good good someUnited Kingdom some some good

A ”governmentality reading”:

• A technique of making visible (grid of visibilities)

• Elements in government as strategic activitiy - virtue is the ability to set and achieve objectives

• The identities which are created: The Commission as capable of passing out grades to Member States. Member States as entities engaged in a process of competitive self-improvement.

• The construction of Europe as an entity. The EU as a “community of destiny”.

OMC Example – Statements on the OMC The objective of the OMC is "to help Member States to progressively

develop their own policies“

It is “a method in which "the Union, the Member States, the regional and local levels, as well as the social partners and civil society, will be actively involved, using variable forms of partnership"

It is an approach where "a method of benchmarking best practices on managing change will be devised by the European Commission networking with different providers and users, namely the social partners, companies and NGOs”

The achievement of the Union's strategic goals "will rely primarily on the private sector, as well as on public-private partnerships. The Union’s role will be to act as a catalyst in this process, by establishing an effective framework for mobilising all available resources for the transition to the knowledge-based economy ".

A governmentality reading:

• “Technologies of agency”- contemporary technologies of government that seek to enhance or deploy our possiblities of agency

• Society as a pool of resources, the energies of which can be released through the use of partnerships

What does the OMC mean?

• How is the ”conduct of conduct” carried out in the OMC?

• Employing which techniques?

• Using / constructing which forms of knowledge?

• What does this mean?

What does the OMC mean?• Technologies of performance and agency. Visibilities,

identities.

• A reading: OMC as an illustration of Advanced Liberal Government:

• Society as a resource, not an object of regulation. Government: find the mechanisms which can unleash resources.

• Ambivalent notion of freedom: Government through “free subjects”. But freedom is shaped, guided, moulded, through technologies of agency and performance.

The Book: Governmentality perspective on

• The Coal and Steel Community

• The Common / Single Market

• The problem of democracy

• The problem of borders / security / Schengen

• The Open Method of Coordination

• Many fields not covered: Agriculture, FP etc.

What are the ”findings” of our book?

• Well, it makes you think, doesn’t it

• “We thought we knew what Europe was. We thought we knew what government was. Now we have to think twice. Perhaps one could think differently.”

• Self-reflection, reflectiveness, risk-awareness, critique

Online resources:

www.jens-henrik-haahr.dk/ research

Three online papers:

• Governmentality and the OMC• Governmentality and the problem of democracy in the EU• Conceptions of democracy in Danish debate

Buy the book – its only € 100!