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International cooperation in networks between national civil servants is often judged necessary to address global policy challenges. The civil servants cooperating with each other in these transgovernmental networks (TGNs), are often employed by national agencies that are not part of a ministry. It is therefore assumed in the literature that participating in a TGN renders account giving to a political forum difficult. We offer in this paper a state-centered perspective on the functioning of TGNs to assess whether a trade-off exists between accountability and the creation of technocratic driven networks. We develop a typology of TGNs and accountability, based on the function and the governance style of networks. In three out of four cases studied, variation in the institutional set-up influences which type of accountability is dominant. In one case we expected to find political accountability but observed that elected politicians did not hold civil servants in TGNs to account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prominent multilateral surveillance tools that is used in the European Union namely the Open Method of Coordination is described. It is felt that for the development of the infrastructure of and on a policy field an instrument has to be present that can neutralize the conflict between an incentive and reluctance to act on the European Union.

Since the Lisbon Treaty National Parliaments (NPs) can play a formal role in the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). One of the complexities of this legislative process is that the formal decisions are pre-negotiated in informal trilogues between the Council, the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission. NPs have no role to play in trilogues, and have difficulties accessing information discussed in trilogue meetings, hindering MPs to hold their national government to account for decisions made in the Council. This article explores whether NPs monitor trilogue negotiations, and, if so, how and why do they do this. The empirical material is collected through semi-structured interviews with actors from several NPs and a content analysis of debates in two Member States. The results show that NPs operate in a formal and informal institutional context, both at the EU and national level. These institutional arrangements are used by MPs to lower costs of collecting information on trilogue negotiations in order to be able to hold the government to account and to steer the negotiation position of the government in the direction of their own policy positions. However, the increased attention for trilogue negotiations by NPs cannot alleviate the phenomenon of domestic de-parliamentarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars interested in the role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process hardly paid attention to the differences in scrutiny between Upper Houses of EU member states. It is hypothesized in this article that structural differences between bicameral systems can explain differences between Upper Houses in scrutiny of EU legislative proposals. The hypotheses are assessed with a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates in the Dutch and British Upper Houses on the scrutiny of EU directives agreed upon through the ordinary legislative procedure in the period 2000–2010. The empirical findings indicate that differences in the set-up of bicameral systems can only in part explain the variation inex antescrutiny. Moreover, in both the British and Dutch bicameral systems, MPs of the Upper and Lower Houses most of the time do not contradict each other on substantive grounds when the same EU legislative acts are scrutinized. The results also show that the scrutiny by Upper Houses improves the output legitimacy of the EU legislative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article answers the question of which EU-level characteristics of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) are most likely to result in pressure on national governments to reconsider their policies as a result of OMC-related parliamentary activities and media coverage. On the basis of interviews with European Commission officials and an analysis of parliamentary debates in committee meetings and newspaper coverage on six OMCs in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in the period 1996–2009, three characteristics are selected and their empirical relevance assessed. The findings indicate that, when an OMC is adopted in a policy field without any other type of EU-level activity already present, or does not include indicators/benchmarks or peer learning activities, the OMC will not increase the pressure on a national government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]