Soft regulation and the subtle transformation of states: the case of EU employment policy

Abstract:

This article studies the soft regulation developed in the field of EU employment policy from the late 1990s onwards, a type of policy co-ordination that has been termed the 'Open Method of Coordination'. It focuses on particular regulatory mechanisms, in the section entitled 'Discursive regulatory mechanisms', built into this 'soft' system of governance, which are related to language use and knowledge making. These include: joint language use (Eurodiscourse); the building of a common knowledge base (including collection and standardization of statistics); the strategic use of comparisons and evaluations; the systematic editing and diffusion of knowledge, combined with social pressure and time pressure. It is argued that these measures together constitute a systematic system of governance with the potential to transform the practices of the member states and thus add to the integration process, albeit by a partly different kind of dynamic than regulation and integration by hard law.