Participation in the Open Method of Coordination: the case of the European Employment Strategy – From the theories on the New Modes of Governance to the practice of the Open Method of Coordination

The development of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) stems from the emergence of new challenges faced by the EU policy making. The debate over the OMC often overlaps with academic considerations over the New Modes of Governance (NMG). These two issues raised an increasing awareness of the importance of the participatory dimension in EU governance. The present paper aims at illustrating the template of the OMC and to compare the latter with the findings drawn from literature review on the NMG. Then, in order to bridge the gap between the ideal-typical features of the OMC and the concrete practice, the final sections are devoted to an attempt to evaluate whether the OMC has fulfilled its ideal typical promise of Participation in one of its main fields of application, namely the European Employment Strategy (EES).