Abstract
Heindenreich and Zeitlin's edited volume focuses on the open method of coordination (OMC) as an implementation tool in European employment and welfare policy. The volume asks whether this tool has been effective in reforming national employment and welfare systems. The OMC has been successful, the editors argue, at inspiring ‘substantive changes in national policy agendas’ (p. 3). These changes are analysed in the volume by placing emphasis on different issues: transnational learning and discursive diffusion; supranational adaptation pressures and national institutional trajectories; and domestic actor constellations and political dynamics. In short, the book explores the way in which OMC processes influence – or not – national reforms in key policy areas.
The volume places particular emphasis on the importance of past policy practice, examining the path dependency of existing policies and the extent to which the OMC radically changes that or whether it allows for reform within existing policy paths. The chapters contain a great variety of contributions which explore these issues within the 27 EU member states. However, there is an old-Europe bias throughout the book, with some chapters repeating this geographical focus, and Southern and Eastern European countries being under-represented. The book is aimed at a specialist audience of postgraduate students and researchers.
The authors offer a timely analysis of European employment and welfare policy by considering the extent to which the OMC is encouraging policy convergence within national reforms in these two policy areas. The novelty of these chapters lies in how policy influence is not just understood as leading to policy change but in a much broader sense. Jonathan Zeitlin, in the last chapter, considers the way in which this influence manifests itself in two key areas: through substantive policy change (appearing in cognitive, political or programmatic shifts) and via procedural shifts in governance and policy-making processes (which, crucially, involves the participation of non-state actors and the near institutionalisation of policy networks) (pp. 216–26).
With an increased role within European policy making the OMC is proving to be a policy-making and implementation tool widely used in policy areas where the EU does not necessarily have regulatory control. It represents an effective tool in policy-making processes suited to soft-law procedures, yet it is also a victim of similar shortcomings. A key problem is the irregularity of funding procedures for such policy areas; sometimes good intentions alone are not enough.