Paper Titles & Abstracts

The regulatory state thesis is increasingly influential as an explanation of the EU policy process, yet it is often accepted uncritically. This paper addresses this by offering a critique of the regulatory state thesis in both empirical and theoretical terms. Empirically, it places too great an emphasis on the importance of regulation, downplaying the EU's activity in terms of expenditure policy, macro-economic policy, foreign policy and cognitive activity. This has important implications in terms of the debate on legitimacy and effectiveness - regulation, I contend, is not the only activity which the EU does well. Theoretically, in accounting for how policy is made, it fails to account for the fact that regulation is frequently a by-product of a decision to expand the community's competences in other, non-regulatory, areas. Furthermore, the evolution of regulation is conditional on understanding the EU in terms of its cognitive and normative activity.