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How does the European Commission make its own policies? Research on EU policy-making has generated many indirect, informed answers to this question. However, a focus upon the Commission’s internal practices remains under-theorized and under-specified. Drawing upon constructivist, institutionalist and sociological policy analysis, this article instead mobilizes a generic approach to policy-making as ‘political work’ entailing three overlapping processes: problematization, instrumentation and legitimation. This conceptual framework is then applied to a comparison of Commission policy-making as regards the wine and pharmaceuticals industries. The principal finding is that there are three scope conditions for Commission policy-making which seeks deep institutional change: problematization must be precise rather than vague; instrumentation needs to be programmatic rather than dispersed; and commissioners and senior Commission officials must commit to sustained strategies of legitimation. Overall, this theory-driven approach to policy-making provides a means of shedding new light upon both the Commission and its role within European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policing policy in member states of the European Union (EU) increasingly overlaps with the latter's laws and policies, but what causes how national actors set and ‘project’ their respective positions within EU decision-making? Based upon research into the French and British cases in this field over the 2000s and sociological public policy theory, our analysis reveals that while these states formally share strongly centralized systems of co-ordination based on specialized ministries and interministerial mediation, considerable differences exist over the type of inter-administrative competition within each civil service and the linkages to politics this entails. Although national administrations and police forces in both countries have reorganized to engage in EU negotiations, intra-policy community tensions are much greater in France than in Britain. Secondly, the piece shows why British preference formation and projection in this sector is more systematically shaped by parliamentary, media and interest group scrutiny than its French counterpart. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]