Understanding the European Union and its Political Power: The Contribution of European Studies to Adult Education Policy Research

The European Union (EU) is frequently seen as an important actor shaping globalised education policy space but its complex architecture and policy-making processes carry a constant challenge to researchers. There is a growing tendency in the academic literature to avoid separating the national and the EU level of policy-making. The globalisation pressures and national interest advocated by each EU Member State are strongly mediated by specific ‘actorness’ of the EU: number and variety of actors involved in education policy-making and implementation. This chapter brings a political science perspective to help open a ‘black box’ of policy-making in the EU. It contextualises the inner-workings of the EU, its structure and relationship with its Member States. It begins by providing a theoretical background of the day-to-day policy making by analysing the agency- structure dichotomy in the EU policy-making. Next, it analyses the institutional arrangements of the EU focusing on ‘soft law’ and policy-making of the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament. Further, it defines the growing in prominence concept of Europeanisation which is understood as a three-way analytical concept which includes the infiltration of the Member States’ policy preferences or rules into the EU, the ‘national adaptation’ of EU policies as well as horizontal exchanges. The chapter also provides explanation of how the EU is perceived through ‘normative power’ concept, as well as how Member States themselves become ‘norm entrepreneurs’