Serafin Pazos-Vidal
PhD European Union, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) Cum Laude awarded 25 September 2017
Master in European Union (UNED) 2015
Postgraduate Diploma in Public Financial Management , CeFIMS, SOAS, University of London , 2013
Master in EU Integration, Universidad del Pais Vasco EHU-UPV, 2003
Head of Brussels Office, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
Secretariat of Committee of the Regions Members,
Member CoR Subsidiarity Expert Group
Chair, Cohesion Expert Group, CEMR
Areas of interest: regionalism. multi-level governance, EU integration, Local and Regional Government, Cohesion Policy, Decentralisation and Governance, Comparative Politics.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Luís Domínguez Castro, Profesor Titular, Universidade de Vigo
Master in European Union (UNED) 2015
Postgraduate Diploma in Public Financial Management , CeFIMS, SOAS, University of London , 2013
Master in EU Integration, Universidad del Pais Vasco EHU-UPV, 2003
Head of Brussels Office, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
Secretariat of Committee of the Regions Members,
Member CoR Subsidiarity Expert Group
Chair, Cohesion Expert Group, CEMR
Areas of interest: regionalism. multi-level governance, EU integration, Local and Regional Government, Cohesion Policy, Decentralisation and Governance, Comparative Politics.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Luís Domínguez Castro, Profesor Titular, Universidade de Vigo
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Papers by Serafin Pazos-Vidal
(Scharpf, 1997) this chapter seeks to point out the continuities,
discontinuities and differences between the competing initiatives of the EU Urban Agenda (Pact of Amsterdam Leipzig 2.0), SDG 11, Reference Framework of Sustainable Cities, Cohesion ERDF Sustainable Urban Development, ISO TC-268 and European Urban Initiative. Presented at URBANRED Seminar Oviedo 26 October 2016
dealing with the EU (Marks, Sharpf et al. 1996; Mazzolenia 2006; Zerbinati 2012). This often coalesces into policy communities (Adshead 1996), advocacy networks (Sabatier 1993) or epistemic communities (Haas 1992). These eventually become formal multilevel partnerships (Marks and Hooghe 2003). However, we have moved on from “the great regional awakening” and the arrival of the mesogovernments (Keating 2013). While not uniform due to the contingency of the regional question (Loughlin and Peeters 2007, Heinelt 2018) the 2008 crisis has tested the very idea of regions and regionalism.
This reflected Kingdon (1984) model of policy entrepreneurs within government – and their outside policy communities- wait for the political window of opportunity to turn ideas into formal rules and policies. Indeed, the aim of achieving EU recognition for urban matters took priority over content: what was originally an EU-wide initiative focused on territorial socio-economic development was turned into a form of multi-level governance.
The new European Commission focus on “better regulation” offered the window opportunity of achieving that recognition by creating 12 partnerships of EU, national and city officials to assess the appropriateness of existing policies for urban areas; they address not just on “classic” Territorial Cohesion/funding targeting issues but also a wider set of domains such as digital, migration or climate adaptation. This successful recasting is however problematic: what is a “city” remains a normative concept and many of these 12 themes are not necessarily “urban” in nature.
This will affect the survival of this initiative in the future for it fails to build a sufficiently large multi-level coalition (Type II, Marks and Hooghe,2003) to be self-sustained if the current Commission, national and city network entrepreneurs falter in their support.
Keywords: Multi-Level Governance, subsidiarity, urban policy, territorial cohesion, metagovernance.
Presentation given at the Conference "Monitoring polycentric territorial development in Europe with novel indicators:
beyond GDP and NUTS2?" , Committee of the Regions of the European Union, 14 July 2015
La presente obra, en fin, constituye el resultado de la investigación colectiva sobre un fenómeno históricamente significativo y que alcanza el tiempo presente a través de nuevas formas de sociabilidad migrante y de los intentos de conformar la memoria colectiva de quienes abandonaron –y abandonan- España buscando un futuro mejor para sí.
Providing a theoretical assessment of real life case studies, the book reflects on a number of key events from the negotiations of the European Convention to the process that led to the ‘Brexit’ referendum and assesses the key agendas and institutional ethos of most actors involved in EU policy-making. It particularly focuses on the EU engagement of so-called non-privileged actors such as subnational authorities from the UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, as well as national and regional parliaments. The author goes on to examine the sometimes selfish behaviour and individual agendas of the European Commission, European Parliament, Member States and even that of the European Court of Justice, but also identifies many constructive ways of interaction that can decisively frame how EU decisions are made.
This comprehensive book will be a useful reference to students, practitioners, and academic researchers working in European politics, policymaking, public policy and EU law and integration.
ISBN
The legal-political principle of subsidiarity has made it possible to organise the division of the growing number of competences that are shared between the EU, the Member States and sub-state levels of government.
Multilevel governance is, on the other hand, a paradigm that is both normative and descriptive of relations between different levels of government and within them. It has also been a conceptual tool for the study of various public policies that are exercised between these levels of government.
Both concepts, subsidiarity and multi-level governance, are therefore closely intertwined as they both deal with the legal, political, economic, structural, and cyclical aspects that affect relations between the European, national and subnational levels and hence the interest of this doctoral Thesis to study them together.
This Thesis will try to give a holistic view on their conceptual formulation, institutional recognition and application in practice. Analysing them separately would result in a partial view of such relationships between levels of government. They are complementary but not synonymous: subsidiarity, being a concept that has been given a legal grounding in the Treaties, refers to levels of government and their legally defined powers, while multilevel governance encompasses a wider range of relationships as they It refers to levels of governance, that is, it not only deals with institutions as they are formally defined and their specific competences but also of the whole system of actors, values and actions that directly or indirectly influence the process of decision-making both within government level and with regard to relations between various levels.
Although this Thesis seeks to draw a comprehensive map of multilevel governance in the EU, due to a matter not only of limited time and resources, but also to the methodological approach of focussing on cases that reflect of the author's own direct experience as a professional and as a researcher, particular attention is given to experiences around subsidiarity and MLG by those institutional actors that are "non - privileged" by EU law, primarily the regional authorities - in particular the regions with legislative powers , and, where appropriate, local authorities.
In fact, this Thesis assumes that the degree of real and effective involvement of these non-privileged actors in European governance is a good predictor of the health of the EU's governance system. In short, the central question that this Thesis will try to find out is the following:
"To what extent does the principle of subsidiarity and multilevel governance apply to levels of government below the level of the Member States?'
The methodology of this Thesis is markedly multi and interdisciplinary. This work seeks to be both a legal study on the recognition in the Treaties and in secondary legislation of the principle of subsidiarity and of the sub-state levels of government. It is also, and in some fundamental respects, a work of political science and analysis of public policies in everything related to the practical implementation of multilevel governance; Is also largely a work of historical interest because it reconstructs various significant and not sufficiently investigated academic episodes of parts of the recent process of European integration.
The thesis has a Part I and IV that focuses on a detailed legal analysis of these two principles and ensuing caselaw, subsidiarity scrutiny, constitutional dialogue , relations with parliaments and the new subsidiarity proposals post Brexit ( Craig; 2012 y Davies, 2006; Frosina, 2014; Fromage, 2014; Abels y Eppler, 2016Kumm, 2013; Kruma, 2009; Ragone, 2011; Poiares Maduro, 2003; Pernice, 2002; Cygan (2013, Panara (2013) o Moens y Trone (2015)).
Part II and III examine by way of specific case studies of the last 15 years the actual behaviour of the different bodies and agencies involved in EU multilevel governance.
For that purpose, an Actor-centred analytical model is used to examine the agendas, priorities and structures that non-privileged actors deal with to maximise their utility while reducing liability in a multilevel context (Simon, 1957; Niskanen,1974; Scharpf, 1997). Particular attention is given to policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon, 1984), formation of types I and II multilevel coalitions (Marks and Hooghe, 2003) , policy communities (Adshead, 1996), issue networks agency and agentic power (Weber) and how this is framed under given institutional traditions and organisational ethos ( Crozier and Friedberg,1977; North, 1991; Armstrong and Bulmer, 1998, Lijphart, 2007; Loughlin and Peeters, 2007.)-coalesces in a give structure of political opportunity (Tarrow, 1998) that often results in EU multilevel decisions being the reflection of problems of collective action (Olson, 1965).
Finally, this Thesis aims to be innovative since the author of the same is both an academic researcher and fundamentally a political agent directly involved in the events that will be described in this work. Hence participant observation methodologies are also applied. Indeed, most other research on these issues has been made "from the outside" without direct involvement in events that were subject of the researcher’s study. The ambition of this Thesis is therefore to analyse these events from within; it is no coincidence therefore that the period of the last 15 years is the main timeframe of this study matches that of the author´s career as a representative of local and regional authorities in Brussels from the European Convention until the British referendum.
Full contribution at European Futures : University of Edinburgh
http://www.europeanfutures.ed.ac.uk/article-4608