New governance and the transformation of European law

"The development of non-binding new governance methods has challenged the traditional ideals of EU law by suggesting that soft norms and executive networks may provide a viable alternative. Rather than see law and new governance as oppositional projects, Mark Dawson argues that new governance can be seen as an example of legal 'transformation', in which soft norms and hard law institutions begin to cohabit and interact. He charts this transformation by analysing the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) for Social Inclusion and Protection. While this process illustrates some of the concrete advantages for EU social policy which new governance has brought, it also illustrates their extensive legitimacy challenges. Methods like the OMC have both excluded traditional institutions, such as Courts and Parliaments, and altered the boundaries of domestic constitutional frameworks. The book concludes with some practical suggestions for how a political 'constitutionalisation' of new governance could look"-- "'Integration through Law' and the Rise of New Governance in the European Union If integration through law was the great slogan of legal academia in the late 80's and early 90's, the following decade has ushered in an era of uncertainty about the place of law in Europe's ongoing integration project. This uncertainty can be charted through the fate of integration through law's most famous idea - the notion of law as both 'object' and 'agent' of integration. As agent, law was the medium through which the re- organisation of the European polity, and the building of the internal market, was to be completed. As object, law was no simple instrument, but the very metric by which the progress of integration could be measured. The defining achievement of the age was the bare fact that - by the time the Union got to writing it down in 2003 - the essential elements of an autonomous 'Constitution for Europe' were already in place. In combination, law was seen as the pioneer of the integration process, creating a constitutional space for political actors to follow"--