"Governance and institutional development"

Given this complexity in a rapidly evolving field of research, this article does not attempt to explore the varieties of governance approaches, but makes an argument about the contribution that a governance perspective can make towards a more comprehensive understanding of the development of the Euro-policy as compared to other approaches such as classical integration theory, policy analysis or the constitutional debate. In our view, this contribution is threefold. First, a governance perspective is able to link policy-making and institution-building. Second, it re-introduces the competition for political power into the analysis. Third, it allows to discuss normative issues of a good political order for the EU without losing contact to empirical research on how political life in the EU actually functions