INSTITUTIONAL IMPACT ON POLICY-MAKING: AN INSTITUTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE ON DECISION-MAKING IN THE FIRST PILLAR OF THE EUROPEAN UNION (DUTCH TEXT, POLICYMAKING)

This dissertation deals with decision-making configurations within the first pillar of the EU. It argues that the preferences and the strategies of involved political-actors are shaped by the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ institutional context these actors have to work in.; Theoretically, the study pleads for the use of (1) the multi-level governance approach to conceptualise the EU, of (2) a combination of the pluralism-neocorporatism spectrum and the policy network approach to make detailed descriptions of the decision-making patterns and of (3) the new-institutionalist paradigm to explain the preferences and the strategies of political actors.; Empirically, the study identifies the decision-making patterns with respect to nine cases from the social, environmental and agricultural policy fields as loose or tight configurations. To explain the similarities and the dissimilarities between these cases a qualitative comparative analysis is used. It is argued that both ‘hard’ institutional variables (procedures, regulations) and ‘soft’ institutional variables (traditions, political culture) shape the strategies and to a certain extent also he preferences of European political actors, both decision-makers and interest groups. It is also described how the mechanisms exactly work.; In the end the study offers a new-institutionalist model of European decision-making. It also points to the fact that the knowledge of institutional mechanisms seriously enhances the chances of success for political actors in general.