The Political Economy of Social Europe: The case of inclusion policies

EU governments have engaged in a coordinated effort to combat social exclusion. This is puzzling for empirical and theoretical reasons. The paper argues that integration of social inclusion policies can be explained by the political economy of domestic reform, driven by structural change in EU welfare states, facilitated by the new Open Method of Coordination. This explanation is contrasted with the Leviathan view of government in which European integration is motivated by EU bureaucrats' interest in expanding their competencies and national administrations' attempt to instrumentalise the EU for protection of their clientele.